Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 10.0 [Focus.]

It's not often that a class assignment leaves your faith in humanity shattered.

Tonight, as an part of an assignment for my Social Psychology class, I had to go on campus to view The Experiment, a dramatized version of an experiment set up like the famous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment.

We wanted to see what the psychological effects were of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. To do this, we decided to set up a simulated prison and then carefully note the effects of this institution on the behavior of all those within its walls....
Our study of prison life began, then, with an average group of healthy, intelligent, middle-class males. These boys were arbitrarily divided into two groups by a flip of the coin. Half were randomly assigned to be guards, the other to be prisoners.

In the movie, things escalate to an exaggerated, Hollywood-esque high boiling point. However, many of the early events in the film were lifted right from the original real experiment, namely, systematic and sadistic humiliation of the “prisoners” by the “guards”.

I honestly haven't felt this sick and upset by events having nothing to do with me since seeing the film taken of the Milgram experiment, in which participants were admonished by authority figures to deliver what they believed to be possibly lethal electric shocks to other participants (actually actors working as confederates).

It's disheartening that, despite all our claims of individualism and our confidence in our own free will, I am reminded that given certain situations, nearly anyone can be molded, devalued, given anonymity, shaped by group-think, their will beaten down, or else, made to do things that go against their own conscience.

My plan was to come home and study for my test on Wednesday, but honestly I feel so nauseated I can't concentrate.

I probably wouldn't be so strongly affected, of course, if I was in more of a happy-go-lucky mood lately. What I really need at this time is reminders that life is indeed worth living; all I seem to be getting is avowals that it's not.