Homework Zimbardo Questions

1. What police procedures are used during arrests, and how do these procedures lead people to feel confused, fearful, and dehumanized? Tazing, car searches, home searches, strip searches, and so much more are a couple of procedures that could lead people to feel harmed and fearful by a police officer. 2. If you were a guard, what type of guard would you have become? How sure are you? What prevented "good guards" from objecting or countermanding the orders from tough or bad guards? If I were a guard I would be somewhere in between a tough guard and an understanding guard. I think for good guards in particular it’s hard for some to be firm and to stand their ground. I also think that being known as a pushover is something good guards have in mind so that prevents the good guards from objecting orders from the tougher guards. 3. If you were a prisoner, would you have been able to endure the experience? What would you have done differently than those subjects did? If you were imprisoned in a "real" prison for five years or more, could you take it? If I were a prisoner I don’t think I would be able to endure the experience. I would just close my mouth, keep my head down and obey orders. I know that if I were to cause trouble or disobey guards then they would start to be more harsh towards me. I know that I would not be able to take more than a couple weeks in a prison, let alone years. 4. Why did our prisoners try to work within the arbitrary prison system to effect a change in it (e.g., setting up a Grievance Committee), rather than trying to dismantle or change the system through outside help? Prisoners see that the system needs crucial change first hand so they do it within the prison system 5. What factors would lead prisoners to attribute guard brutality to the guards' disposition or character, rather than to the situation? Being in that situation you can see the difference between the guards. Some could argue that the subjects who were portrayed to be “bad guards” might truly hold these awful characteristics and are taking advantage of the experiment by expressing those qualities. The “good guards” more than likely aren’t terrible people and truly didn’t have it in them to act a certain way just because they were put in the position to do so. 6. What is identity? Is there a core to your self-identity independent of how others define you? How difficult would it be to remake any given person into someone with a new identity? Identity is qualities, beliefs, personality, and expression that make a person who they are. I think there definitely is a core to my self-identity of how others define me. Of course there are always deeper qualities that not everyone knows. I think it would be extremely difficult to remake any person into someone with a completely new identity. 7. Do you think that kids from an urban working class environment would have broken down emotionally in the same way as did our middle-class prisoners? Why? What about women? I think kids from an urban working class environment would have broken down emotionally slower than the middle-class prisoners. I think when you’ve already been through more difficult experiences, you grow thicker skin and can tolerate more than someone of a higher class would. I believe women would have been more emotional throughout this experience in that time period. But if this experience would have been conducted today, I feel that women would be more rebellious. 8. After the study, how do you think the prisoners and guards felt when they saw each other in the same civilian clothes again and saw their prison reconverted to a basement laboratory hallway? After the study, I would assume that the guards would feel a tremendous amount of guilt when seeing the prisoners in the same civilian clothes as themselves. A lot of the subjects of this experiment are probably traumatized.