The Stanford University Experiment

Stanford University Experiment

This experiment also known as Lucifer effect was a psychological study that went through in Stanford University in 1971 in which the plan was to create a prison like ambiance and the conducts that man develops being under these circumstances like the marine corps of the United States. The people that were part of it were chosen with an ad posted up for a job offering a salary of $15 per day for participating in an experiment. Out of 70 persons that applied to the ad, only 24 were chosen, the ones with the best conditions in physical and psychological health. They were all college students.

The group was divided into guards and prisoners, and a rumor started that the students assigned to guards were chosen because they had more physical strength, although they were really chosen by flipping a coin so that there would be no preference.

The prison was built up in the basement of The College of Psychology in the same university. The guards were given military uniforms and shades so they wouldn’t cross eyes with the prisoners, which were just given robes without any underwear and flip-flops and a stocking over their heads in order to create an aspect of inferiority between them and the guards, and the prisoners were called by numbers instead of their names and they also had a chain on their ankles as a reminder of their imprisonment.

One day before starting the experiment, the guards had a meeting in which they were explained all the rules and procedures they had to follow, which were al focused in humiliating the prisoners as well as intimidating them in a way of letting them know that the guards were the ones that were in control of their lives. The prisoners were only told to wait for a visit in their houses. Without any notice, they were arrested by real cops that cooperated in the experiment and they were transferred to the fake prison and this way the first real part of the experiment was done.

The experiment came out of control really fast because the prisoners were so trapped in their character that they accepted the sadistic mistreatment they were given by the guards who didn’t even follow instructions and little by little the prisoners started suffering big emotional traumas only by the second day of the experiment. As the time went by the participants of the experiment forgot that it was only a research experiment and this caused a big problem; the guards separated the good prisoners and bad prisoners making them do denigrating chores like cleaning the bathrooms with bare hands as well as homosexual acts particularly at night when the guards thought the cameras were off.

Two of the prisoners had to leave the experiment because they started showing too big psychological traumas. After 6 days, the experiment had to be canceled because it was getting out of control. It lasted only two days of the scheduled 2 weeks.

This experiment was kind of an impact on me and this is why I decided to share it with you. Hope you liked it. Thanks.