The Stanford Prison Experiment: Does Authority Change Human Behavior?

Human being, the most civilized creature in the plant of earth, believed that their actions are based on their own moral and ethical values. However, sometime those values were not strong and can easily be affected by external factor which led to an “different” behavior. These factor can be culture, social norms, ethics of a society, religious inclination, coercion, and human influence by authority. The milgram experiment showed that our behaviors can be drastically impacted by higher-level authority factor. Several test subjects were given the authority to shock a subject when answering a question incorrectly, under the supervision of a “professional doctor”. Over time, the voltage of the shock increased as the subjects continued to answer questions incorrectly. At one point, the subject complains that the shock is too strong and that he has heart problems. At that time, the people in charge were affected by the test subjects’
complaints about the pain, but most of them continued on with increasing the voltage because the doctor who was supervising the experiment was telling them to go on with the process. When asked why they continued, they said they did so because of the doctor being a professional in the field and some were used to being told what to do by an authority figure. Only a few people refused to increase the voltage and terminated the experiment immediately. Two outside factors were impactful during this process. The test subjects screams for pain, and the doctor in the room supervising the experiment. Both had an impact on the behavior of the other subjects.
The Stanford Prison Experiment is also one of the examples how authority changes human behavior.
In the dramatic simulation of this experiment the conductor posted some question “what happens when you put good people in an evil place?” Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? The result of the experiment answer does questions very well, and it was proven that most of the individual participating and acting as authority were becoming sadistic and the prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress. A controlled experiment meant to last two weeks had to be stop by the sixth day because of the way that the guards and prisoners were acting, and these participants were college students with no background of violence or psychological problems, but just by impersonating their role in the experiment their behavior changed and adapted. The overall results of the experiment show that external situations are more powerful than internal characteristics of the individual, so we can say that circumstances shape our
behavior.
On the other hand, the Good Samaritan social experiment tries to find answers on why some people help others. The experiment consists in giving an individual a wallet and observing if he or she will do whatever it is possible to return the wallet to its owner. What the experiment found is that people were willing to help others depending on how busy they were. People with low hurry situations were willing to help more than people with high hurry situations. External factors like time and pressure can have an impact on our good acts and willingness to help others. The Good Samaritan Experiment leaves the door open to think that people's good behavior is based more on external factors than internal factors like values, personal beliefs, and religion.
All in all, there is no doubt that the external factors play a significant role in influencing human behavior. When the situation of the higher-level authority having conflicts with the lower-level authority, people in the lower position usually will obey the orders, and this is why we can see so many illegal actions around us, such as bribery, sexual harassment and etc. However, at same time, the Good Samaritan social experiment showed us the good actions also can be brought by the external factors. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with this influence, if we can stick with our moral and ethical values and be ourselves, then there will be no more “bad” actions.