Unit 1 Blog

After watching the Zimbardo Experiment a sociologist that has the Symbolic Interaction P.O.V. would probably start by asking questions alongs the lines of; Why did the mind sets of the test subjects change so dramatically from the beginning of the experiment to the end? Why did the prisoners decide to follow some of the rebellious leaders but not others? All of these questions have to do with how the people in the experiment interacted with each other on a social basis. Which is what the Symbolic Interaction perspective deals with. A sociologist from this P.O.V. answer's to these questions might look something like this. The mind sets of the guards changes so dramatically from start to end because they realized they had all of the power in this situation and it got into their heads that they controlled the lives of the prisoners. The mind set of the prisoners changed so drastically because they realized that they had absolutely no power in this situation and when one realizes that they are powerless they loose hope and when that happens they start to get depressed. They realized that the control in their lives was out of their hands and into the hands of the guards. The reason that some leaders were followed and some weren't was because to be followed you have to gain the respect of your peers. The leaders who were followed(8612) was followed because he was there from the start and started rebelling, which gained the respect of the others, but when he left the other inmates lost hope and when prisoner 416 came in and decided to go on a hunger strike the others just viewed his as a trouble maker because they didn't respect him and thus is why they didn't follow him.

A sociologist with the P.O.V. of the Social Conflict would respond differently, he would rather ask questions like; Why did the prisoners rebel? Why did Zimbargo change the appearance of the prison when the parents came to visit? Why did the prisoners follow the orders of the guards?. These questions have to do with conflict and inequality, which is the main focus of the Conflict perspective. His answers to these questions would be along the lines of, the reason the prisoners rebelled was because they were not happy with their level of power in this society and they believed the only way out was to try and rebel. The reason Zimbargo changed the appearance of the prison for visiting day was so that the parents wouldn't feel that their kids were being treated unfairly, they were trying to avoid any conflict with the outside world that would harm their data. The reason that the prisoners followed the guards was that after a couple days being treated like prisoners without any power they started to believe that they really were prisoners without any power, so they followed orders so they wouldn't be punished. But, when 416 inserted into the test as a replacement for 8612, 316 still realizes he is not an actual prisoner so he tries to rebel and go on a hunger strike, but all the other inmates believe they are actually inmates so when the guards start punishing the entire prison for 416's misbehavior the rest of the inmates turn on 416 because they are afraid of more punishment/conflict with the guards. 

A sociological imagination would have helped the participants in this experiment because if Zimbargo had a sociological imagination he would have realized that what he was doing in this experiment had gone way too far and gotten way to out of hand before the grad student had to tell him this. He could have used this to see that this was torture to the inmates and that this was not socially healthy. He could have used past experiences of what healthy social behavior is to realize that locking the inmates up with fake guards that became power crazy could very well become a problem.

I can use this to help improve my sociological imagination by remembering that using psychological means to harm one's mental health and their sense of hope is not a good thing, and will harm that person's abilities to function in society as a normal person. That you need to treat everyone well to keep society running like a smooth machine.