Essay Example: Changes in Human Behavior

There are various values that can be compared related to Abu Ghraib and Stanford Prison Experiment. The prisoners at Stanford Prison experiment were provided with counseling while the convicts at Abu Ghraib jail were not offered counseling, which illustrates the competing values in both cases. On the following day after the Stanford Prison experiment started, prisoners started to plead to be released. During the coming days, five prisoners were released. After this incident, the prisoners were allowed to be visited. The visitors were their close relatives and friends. Also, many well-known psychologists, public defenders, a catholic priests, visited the prisoners to provide them with counseling which is supposed to help them. All the above was never done at Abu Ghraib prison, and even the idea was never considered since it was not valued as an important factor because the prisoners were real and had broken the law. This writing will consist of the various values that can be compared related to Abu Ghraib and Stanford Prison Experiment, the participants of the action should have abandoned for them to do the right thing, and the reason, why they did not do so, can also be explained and finally, the various similarities and differences that caused changes in a human trait in both Abu Ghraib and Stanford Prison Experiment.

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Race was one of the significant factors that influenced the behavior of participants in the Stanford Jail Experiment and the Abu Ghraib jail. The guards at Abu Ghraib were whites while the inmates were Iraqis. The Americans did not value the Iraq prisoners at all; in fact, they hated being there. These guards did not understand Iraq, and the constant attack from the Iraqi forces outside the prison walls caused the guards to loathe the prisoners, even more, increasing their torture (Saletan, 2020). The guards and prisoners chosen for the Stanford Prison Experiment were all white except one of the prisoners who was an Asian-American. The relationship between the two was not as bad as the one in Abu Gharib since the guard participants valued the prisoners and did not go beyond what was expected from them because the prisoners valued the research material that the experimenters required for their study.

There are actions participants should have abandoned for them to do the right thing and the reason, why they did not do so, can also be explained. The supervisors in both the Abu Gharib prison and Stanford Prison experiment should have looked over the reports of abuse and acted to correct the wrongdoings that the guards were doing to the prisoners. It is their responsibility that they should have carried out without fail. In most cases, the guards did what their supervisors told them to do. The supervisors failed to carry out their duties because the situation made them do whatever they did. The reason for carrying out the Stanford Prison experiment, which mostly reflected what happened in Abu Gharib prison, was to discredit personal responsibility (Stangor, 2020).In most cases, a person's conduct is mainly under the control of social forces together with environmental contingencies rather than the trait of an individual ("Stanford Prison Experiment", 2020).

There are many similarities and differences that caused changes in human traits in both Abu Ghraib and Stanford Prison Experiment. In the Abu Ghraib prison, the guards wanted less communication with the convicts as compared with the guards at the Stanford Prison experiment. The roll calls at Stanford at first concluded within ten minutes, but with time, it lasted for hours because the guards enjoyed toying with prisoners (Campbell, 2020). While at Abu Ghraib, the roll call was meant to be carried out two times a day but was instead carried out twice a week.

Furthermore, the guards at Stanford Prison experiment appeared to be unhappy when the decision was made to put a stop to the operation, in fact, all the guards reported to their work in time without fail, and most of the time, they were even willing to remain to work voluntarily. They never once complained about the extra hour which they were not being paid for. For the above reason, the more the guards met with the prisoners, the more their behavior changed drastically towards inmates because they looked like they enjoyed whatever they were doing to them. On the other hand, none of the above was right; in fact, the opposite at Abu Ghraib prison. With this difference, the more the guards at Abu Ghraib met with the prisoners, they performed in human behaviors since they were not pleased at all to meet or see the prisoners.

The guards and convicts selected in Stanford experiments were recognized to be more stable in terms of physical and mental, and they were also considered mature. These participants were not involved in anti-social behavior. These participants were law-adhering citizens who feared breaking the act itself and were not used to the kind of environment they were being introduced to. On the other hand, the guards at Abu Ghraib were veteran prison guards who were used to the environment, which influenced them mentally, causing them to perform unethical behaviors to prisoners.

In both cases, the supervisors were at fault for everything that happened in the Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Ghraib prison. The supervisors ignored the report of abuse, which was brought forward to them, and therefore, they contributed the most in the scandals carried out by the guards. The guards became crueler to prisoners due to more freedom given to them and power over the prisoners. The supervisors never interfered in whatever the guards did, in which the guards took it as a sign to continue with what they were doing to the prisoners, thus their action led to a change in the behavior of the guards. These changes in their behavior were clearly noticed because no human being with a clear conscience would let a fellow human being to experience the torture that the prisoners in both Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Ghraib prison went through.

References

Campbell, T. (2020). Stanford Prison Experiment [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAX9b7agT9oHuffPost is now a part of Verizon Media. (2020). Retrieved 2 February 2020, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-humanity-learned-from-the-stanford-prison-experiment_b_596ff248e4b04dcf308d2a0c

Saletan, W. (2020). Why social science can't explain Abu Ghraib. Retrieved 2 February 2020, from https://slate.com/technology/2004/05/why-social-science-can-t-explain-abu-ghraib.htmlStanford Prison Experiment. (2020). Retrieved 2 February 2020, from https://www.prisonexp.org/

Stangor, D. (2020). Obedience, Power, and Leadership. Retrieved 2 February 2020, from https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/chapter/obedience-power-and-leadership/