DWQA QuestionsTag: Dr. Philip Zimbardo
Filter:AllOpenResolvedClosedUnanswered
The recently deceased Stanford Emeritus Professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo wrote the book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Dr. Zimbardo is famous for his 1971 “Stanford Prison Experiment” that he was compelled to abruptly terminate as it quickly got out of hand and turned into a dangerously oppressive and health-threatening situation for the experiments’ participants after only a week. In the experiment, the prison guards became overwhelmingly sadistically abusive and cruel, and the prisoners became shockingly powerless and submissive to the point of losing their objectivity and grip on reality and actually believing they were real prisoners and not just participants in an “experiment.” The findings of this experiment were deeply disturbing and shocking on many levels. Zimbardo wrote, “One of the dominant conclusions of the Stanford Prison Experiment is that the pervasive yet subtle power of a host of situational variables can dominate an individual’s will to resist.” He continued, “We see how a range of research participants … have come to conform, comply, obey, and be readily seduced into doing things they could not imagine doing when outside those situational force fields.” Can Creator tell us how this MOCK prison with randomly chosen guards and prisoners almost immediately took on the atmosphere and oppressiveness of some of the world’s worst prisons and concentration camps? Zimbardo wrote, “We were surprised that situational pressures could overcome most of these healthy young men so quickly and so extremely.” Is this widespread and disturbing proclivity, to quickly slip into either extreme perpetrator or extreme victim roles, an inherent flaw in the human makeup? What can Creator tell us?
ClosedNicola asked 1 week ago • 
41 views0 answers0 votes