Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment

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A total institution is a place where individuals are removed from the rest of society in order to abandon old roles, and establish new ones. Some examples of total institutions are prisons, cults, mental hospitals, boarding schools, nursing homes, monasteries and the military. The goal of these institutions could vary from punishing criminals to creating good soldiers in the military. In the case of what happened in Abu Ghraib, the differences in power within groups caused “seemingly normal people” to behave sadistically. The soldiers in this experiment treated Iraqi prisoners as people who had to be interrogated to the extent of being humiliated emotionally and sexually. Similarly, The Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment is a study that …show more content…
The study only lasted for six days and it included everything from extreme dehumanizing behavior to prisoner emotional breakdowns. Under both situations, unrestricted behavior was granted to groups that had unequal distribution of power. This showed that when there is a disparity in regards to power, and previously restricted behavior is deemed unrestricted, people are capable of even the most brutal, unimaginable behavior. When taking a look at our society and its figurative “prisons”, we can see them disguised as racism, sexism, ageism, and poverty. In the case of racism, certain groups of people are treated differently than those who do not have to endure hate. For these people, they cannot change the ethnicity they were born with, but they are still put into a category of being inferior, which is fueled by hate. Another social prison that we have in our society is sexism. In the case of sexism, women are constantly being treated unequally and it the inequality shows when the pay-gap between men and women is