I found it interesting that the Stanford Prison Experiment took place in 1971, which was 17 years after William Golding’s Lord of the Flies was published. In some ways, the Stanford Prison Experiment was a real-life test of the theories about human behavior that Golding expressed in Lord of the Flies. There are some key differences. For example, the boys chose leaders among themselves, whereas the Stanford Prison Experiment assigned prisoners and guards. The boys also were given no structure, but the Stanford Prison Experiment had some structure to it.
But even in their differences, Lord of the Flies and the Stanford Prison Experiment both showed the willingness of people to be cruel to each other, when given power. The progression of the guards and the boys with power in Lord of the Flies was similar, as initially they were uncomfortable with oppressing others, but quickly became accustomed to it once they realized no one would stop them.
I agree with this because it shows that human nature is embedded in everyone. Even if someone is well educated or part of the middle-class, they are not immune from the appeal of power over other people. I found similarities in Millgram’s study as guards were willing to inflict pain and abuse to retain order in the jail.
That is a really good connection. I had never thought of the Stanford Prison Experiment and its similarities with the Lord of the Flies. But I would argue that even though the researchers choose guards and prisoners, the prisoners and guards still choose leaders among themselves. Also even though it had structure as an experiment, the prison had no rules and the guards had no training so I would argue that it was a very unstructured environment.
Your relation of the Stanford Prison experiment to The Lord of the Flies was really interesting and made a lot of sense for me. In this experiment, there were few rules and so in the end, it was all about which group could control the other: the guards or the prisoners. In the end of course, the guards took over because of their additional power and equipment, however there were times, such as the night of the rebellion, that the prisoners probably felt they held the power for at least some amount of time.