Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment Essay

This is a critique of an article published in Chronicle of Higher Education, (v53 n30 pB6 Mar. 30, 2007) on â€Å"Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: a Lesson in the Power of Situation† by Philip G. Zimbardo. This article discusses issues related to how good people can turn bad. SUMMARY In this article, Zimbardo looks at his previous social experiment on physical abuse in prison and discusses the issues related to the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard, the social power of groups, and how people would behave if they were brought into direct confrontation; whether it would turn good people bad. The author discusses his past social experiment on physical abuse in prison that was conducted in the basement of the Stanford Psychology department. PROBLEM SPECIFIED IN THE ARTICLE One of many of studies in psychology, the Stanford Prison Experiment reveals from its usual set point, the extent to which human behavior can be transformed and are readily accepting a dehumanized conception of others. â€Å"Even to readily accepting a dehumanized conception of others, as ‘animals,’ and to accepting spurious rationales for why pain will be good for them,† (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 4). The Stanford Prison Experiment is compared to the Abu Ghraib situation, and also discussed are the implications of this research to the criminal justice system. The problems specified in the article addresses the social power of groups and as to whether a person  could be influenced to exert power over someone else. The experiment called for twenty-four student participants to act as either a prisoner or a guard in the â€Å"prison† basement,† (Zimbardo, 2007, para 5). After the first day, the guards exercised their powers with increasing authority, forcing the prisoners to do things like making them say abusive things to each other and forcing them to participate in sexual perversion. The experiment was getting out of hand; Zimbardo himself was engrossed in his role. The problem with this experiment was that Zimbardo should have appointed someone with oversight over the whole project, in which could be terminated immediately if things were to go bad. This did not happen. Zimbardo was not only over the experiment, but he played the role of prison superintendent, but nobody to watch over him. STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT COMPARED TO THE ABU GHRAIB SITUATION In the Abu Ghraib situation, U.S. soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners, in which were stripped, and forced to wear bags over their heads, and were sexually humiliated. The guards would laugh and mock the prisoners while taking pictures of them in degrading positions. This abuse is similar to what took place in the Stanford Prison Experiment but in Stanford, the experiment was ended when it became known that the student guards were starting to do this to the student prisoners, unlike that of Abu Ghraib. ANALYSIS OF THE DATA The experiment was to last fourteen days but it was an outsider that made Zimbardo realize that he had gone too far. â€Å"That powerful jolt of reality snapped back into my senses. I agreed that we had gone too far, that whatever was to be learned about situational power was already indelibly etched on our videos, data logs, and minds,† (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 3). A colleague and fellow psychologist, Christina Maslach came to visit the mock prison and became very upset at what she witnessed. She seen the emotional breakdown of the prisoners, who were â€Å"lined up with bags over their heads, their legs chained, and guards shouting abuses at them while herding them to the toilet, † (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 3). Christina became very upset, and  yelled, â€Å"It is terrible what YOU are doing to those boys,† (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 4). Zimbardo realized what he had become in his newfound role and put an end to the experiment early on day 6. The criminal-justice system largely ignores situational forces and focuses primarily on individual defendants and their state of mind. Other factors should be considered by the criminal-justice system, such as what made them want to apply physical, psychological, and emotional abuse to the prisoners. AUTHOR’S CONCLUSIONS The author claims that people alone are incapable of criminal culpability. After reviewing the videotapes, Zimbardo argues â€Å"like the horrible behavior brought out by my experiment in good, normal young men, the situation and the system creating it also must share in the responsibility for illegal and immoral behavior,† (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 4). I am in agreement with the author in that the situation and the system creating it must also share in responsibility for illegal and immoral behavior because of the pressures of groupthink. CONCLUSION The Stanford Prison Experiment came about because at that time, social-science research did not have any studies with the direct confrontation of good versus evil against the forces inherent in bad situations. Psychologist Philip Zimbardo wanted to create a situation in a controlled experimental setting with â€Å"a host of variables, such as role-playing, coercive rules, power differentials, anonymity, group dynamics, and dehumanization, (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 1). The author wanted to know who would win if brought into direct confrontation; good people or an evil situation. References Zimbardo, P. G. (2007). Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: a Lesson in the Power of Situation. _The Chronicle of Higher Education_, 53(30). 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4 Top Tips for the Common App Honors Section

4 Top Tips for the Common App Honors Section SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips When you’re applying to college, each part of your application counts. You want to maximize every opportunity to make yourself stand out from the thousands of other applicants vying for a spot at the school of your dreams. One of the many places you can distinguish yourself is in the Common App Honors section. In this article, we’ll talk about what the Honors Common App section is and how to maximize it to show your best work. What Is the Honors Common App Section? You can find the Honors section in the Education section of the Common App. The instructions for this section are simple: you can list up to five honors in 100 characters or less. You’ll need to indicate the name of the honor, the years you received it, and the level of the honor: school, state/regional, national or international.A school-level award means that only the students in your school could qualify for that award. A national-level award means that students in your country could qualify for that award. The larger the pool of potential applicants, the more impressive your award will seem. You’ll want to lead with your most impressive awards first. What Count as Honors for the Common App? You might be wondering what should be listed in the Common App honors section and what should be listed elsewhere - in your activities, for example. In general, honors that are tied to your extracurricular activities should be listed in the activities section, while those that aren’t connected to a specific activity should be listed in the honors section. For example, if you earn a varsity letter for the football team, you can put that in the activities section, because it’s directly related to an activity at school. If you’re a National Merit Semi-Finalist, on the other hand, you’ll want to include that in academic honors, since it doesn’t easily tie to a specific activity. 4 Tips for What to Include in the Honors Common App Section You don’t have a ton of room on the Common App to list and describe your honors, so you should keep it brief and use the space allotted as strategically as possible. Here are tips for what to include and how to write in the Common App honors section. #1: Lead With Your Most Impressive Achievements You should lead with your most impressive achievements and make sure that only the best honors make it onto your application. Don’t, for instance, include that you were voted â€Å"Most Likely to Forget When Graduation Is† by your peers- stick to real honors that you had to compete to get. #2: Describe the Award If It’s Unclear While national awards like National Merit are self-explanatory and obvious to the admissions committee, city or school-level awards might not be. Use the 100 characters of space to describe what it is and why isn’t important, like so: â€Å"Julius Caesar Award for the Highest Latin Score in All of Rome.† You should avoid using acronyms unless they’re widely recognizable (think SAT-level recognizable); otherwise, they’ll just confuse the admissions committee and take away from your achievement. #3: Indicate the Level of Competitiveness Show off! Use your character limit to show why the award was important. If you won money, say so! If you were selected as one out of 15,000, own it! The more competitive you make the prize (particularly for city and school level honors), the more your application will stand out. #4: Be Honest It should go without saying, but don’t lie on your application just to make yourself sound better. Not only is that a scummy thing to do, it can result in some serious punishments. You’re already a stellar applicant - focus on your real achievements, rather than your fake ones. Recap: Filling Out the Common App Honors Section The Common App honors section is a great place to call attention to your different achievements. Don't be shy - celebrate the hard work you've done and the recognition you've received for said hard work! What’s Next? Wondering how to prepare for your college interview? Check out this list of college interview tips to be sure you know exactly what to prepare for during your interview. Headed to an interview soon? This list of questions to ask a college interviewer will help you get the most out of your experience. Are you worried about standardized tests and their role in your college application? Read this article to find out when these tests might not matter for you.Also take a look at this list of colleges that don't require SAT scores. Want to build the best possible college application? We can help. PrepScholar Admissions is the world's best admissions consulting service. We combine world-class admissions counselors with our data-driven, proprietary admissions strategies. We've overseen thousands of students get into their top choice schools, from state colleges to the Ivy League. We know what kinds of students colleges want to admit. We want to get you admitted to your dream schools. Learn more about PrepScholar Admissions to maximize your chance of getting in.

Job analysis project (rating system part) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Job analysis project (rating system part) - Essay Example It also tells how applicable such criteria in the performance of the task as it relates to the job. Standard deviation on the other hand tells how close or how far the actual performance deviates from desired performance of the task. Combining these two criteria will tell how the tendency of an SME to deviate from the ideal performance as it relates to the criteria of importance, frequency, difficulty and flexibility. A survey was conducted indicating the major tasks involved in the job. The criteria used to evaluate each task were frequency, importance, flexibility and difficulty. Frequency meant how often the specific task was done as it relate to the job. Importance is the level of significance of the task to the job. Flexibility on the hand relates to the responsiveness of the task to the job while difficulty is the level of complexity in doing the job. The tasks are rated from the scale of one to four with four the highest and one the lowest on the scale. The standard deviation shows the degree of deviation of the actual task compared to the desired performance with zero as the most desirable result as it indicate no deviation. The results being closer to zero indicate more desirability of performance where the farthest indicate the least desired performance. The result of survey indicate that there are three criteria in the job where deviation is very susceptible. Actual performance consistently varied from desired performance in the area of flexibility as the deviation is consistent across all tasks from scrutinizing documents to querying decisively about ambiguities in the text. Standard deviation on all task is 0.471404521. This would tell that flexibility is the number issue among proofreaders and suggests that proofreaders should be trained with flexibility as all respondents deviated from desired performance. The second is area of the task of a proofreader that has consistent deviation is difficulty. Except