The Stanford Prison Experiment

As a movie lover I am always looking for a new movie to watch. Last week I decided to watch "The Standford Prison Experiment", a great movie idea that can mix a good story with psychology.

The movie it's about a psychologist named Zimbardo that wanted to study the roles that people play in prison situations, so he converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison. He advertised asking for volunteers to participate in a study of the psychological effects of prison life and 24 men judged to be the most physically & mentally stable, the most mature, & the least involved in antisocial behaviors were chosen to participate. The participants did not know each other prior to the study and were paid $15 per day to take part in the experiment.

Despite de expected, that was a normal experiment with good behaviors, the guards lost the control of the situation and the prisoners went crazy with all the rules. The experiment should have last two week but it only happened for 6 days. If you would like to know why feel free to watch the trailer and this brief that you can access through this links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXv91xFipLM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XN2X72jrFk

You can relate this movie with psychology by seeing the effect that it had in the prisoners. By not having simple things like sleep time, sun light and a good treatment (do to the fact that the guards made them do a lot of things) their minds went crazy and they started being against each other and demanding good conditions and their lawyers. Most of the men that were in the experiment stayed with secondary effects in their brains after the experiment that continued with them for the rest of theirs lives.