The Stanford Prison Experiment

The Stanford Prison Experiment is an example of what Foucault was talking about in chapter 4. Specifically on pages 554 and 555 because it’s talking about how soon constant surveillance was not needed because the effects had taken permanency, just how the people in Stanford's experiment so forgot that they were just acting and soon became the thing they were pretending to be.

This shows just how much an environment can impact the mind and how people perceive themselves. This study shows just how malleable people are when it comes down to it. Surveillance is a high factor when it comes to people and how they act, and in the Stanford's experiment when see this happening. The people that were chosen to play guards soon forgot that this was an experiment and they began displaying abusive qualities that guards display. The people that played prisoners soon feel into line of real prisoners because this surveillance and treatment that the guards displayed were reinforcing how they acted and how they perceived themselves. This experiment shows just how far people are influenced by what they see and how they are surveyed.  “In October, 1971, soon after the study’s completion—and before a single methodologically and analytically rigorous result had been published—Zimbardo was asked to testify before Congress about prison reform. His dramatic testimony, even as it clearly explained how the experiment worked, also allowed listeners to overlook how coercive the environment really was. He described the study as an attempt to understand just what it means psychologically to be a prisoner or a prison guard.” But he also emphasized that the students in the study had been “the cream of the crop of this generation, and said that the guards were given no specific instructions, and left free to make up their own rules for maintaining law, order, and respect. In explaining the results, he said that the “majority” of participants found themselves no longer able to clearly differentiate between role-playing and self, and that, in the six days the study took to unfold, “the experience of imprisonment undid, although temporarily, a lifetime of learning; human values were suspended, self-concepts were challenged, and the ugliest, most base, pathological side of human nature surfaced” ( Konnikova). This brings up how the effects of constant surveillance leads people to fall into certain roles and these roles are hard to distinguish from what you really and the one of what people believe you to be. The power of surveillance leads there to be a compromise of identity.

One thing I find very interesting is how fast the effects of the experiment started. The experiment was to last for two weeks but it only lasted six days. The fact that the power of surveillance happened so quickly was shocking to me, and it goes to show how much people are influenced in how people view them. So in our society if the government is constantly surveying us it makes us think that we are doing something wrong and we fall into a Stanford experiment ourselves.