Human Aggression and the Stanford Prison Experiments

Studies of human aggression tend toward myriad and often competing conclusions about that which drives us to behave ethically or unethically, about the forces that incline us toward altruism as opposed to those which incline us toward aggression, about the impulses to behave according to internal values and the pressures to bend to contextual authority. Perhaps few studies on the subject have penetrated the question with more troubling results than the Stanford Prison Experiment. Overseen by human psychology professor Phillip Zimbardo in 1971, the experiment would see Zimbardo assuming the role of Prison Warden, converting a basement space in an academic hall into a prison and casting young college students as prisoners and guards. The resulting events are nothing short of revelatory, illustrating a tendency for both prisoners and guards, and even Zimbardo himself, to be consumed with the appointed experimental roles. It...
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