QHow did the researchers get the guards to be so mean to the prisoners?
AThey didn't. They merely set up a situation in which the guards held all the power, gave them five rules for the prisoners to follow, made it their duty to reprimand the prisoners commensurately, and informed them that, if they didn't handle the prisoners, the red light would come on, the experiment would be ended, and they wouldn't be paid. The guards took it from there.
QWhen was this movie supposed to take place?
AThe original experiment was conducted in 1971. However, the fact that Barris (Forest Whitaker) is watching a flat screen TV near the beginning of the movie, indicates a more recent setting. At the end of the movie, as Barris places his check in his wallet, the date on the check reads Jan. 14, 2010.
QIs this movie based on a true story?
ATo a certain extent, yes. The movie, and the book that inspired it, is loosely based on the real-life Stanford prison experiment conducted in 1971. A group of test subjects was divided in two subsets, one assuming the role of prisoners and the other assuming the role of prison guards. The main researcher participated in the simulation himself as the prison's superintendent. The guards were only forbidden to physically harm the prisoners, but they were not given any other limitations in order to keep the peace. The goal was to see if personality traits in prisoners and guards could lead to power abuse in prisons.The experiment was supposed to last two weeks but was discontinued after just six days. The reason was that the guards and prisoners got into character too deeply. When the prisoners started to rebel against the strict prison regime and the uncomfortable clothing, the guards started to display increasingly sadistic behavior in order to keep them subdued and maintain discipline. Prisoners were subjected to regular humiliation and psychological torture, but strangely, they started to accept their treatment, even though they became increasingly stressed and troubled. None of them even wanted to quit the experiment when they were offered the chance. The main researcher himself became so absorbed in his role as superintendent that officials had to deny his increasingly excessive requests. He did not stop the experiment until his girlfriend confronted him with the immorality of the situation. By that time, one-third of the guard population had shown genuine sadistic traits and many of the prisoners were emotionally traumatized. The experiment was said to have demonstrated how easily people will conform to and obey a convincing ideology and group pressure. The subjects had been selected for their psychological stability, suggesting the excesses were not due to inherent personality traits but to the situation in which they were placed.Similar results had been demonstrated some years before in the so-called Milgram experiment, where test subjects had to apply electric shocks to another person when the latter answered a question wrongly (at least they thought they were really hurting another person but it was only simulated). It turned out that many people, despite increasing objections to the experiment, continued applying the shocks as long as they were subtly ordered to go on and were assured that they were not responsible for the outcome.
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