Social constructionism of psychology in the films the stanford prison experiment and the 13th

The two films that are going to be used are The Stanford Prison Experiment as well as the 13th are two films that contribute a lot to the topic of Social Constructionism. Each one gives its own individuality to Social Constructionism, however they can both be tied into one similar thing, that one thing that can tie it together is that without the human interaction in both films it would not have a deep connection to psychology.

In psychology with it studying our mind we get all our knowledge from it as our judgement, memory, actions, and language. This ties in a lot for the paper with how the prison system affected their way of thinking. With the 13th it gives na act of Social Constructionism with trying to see what was going on in the peoples head and why what happened did happen. Social Constructionism is the theory that looks at understandings of the world that form the basis for shared assumptions about reality. That ties in with reality perfect since psychology is looking at something deeper then what is shown on the surface.

With the Stanford Prison Experiment, it was needed to see how the prison system is. With at the time there was many speculations with how the guards where treating the convicts in the correctional facilities. The Experiment was very crucial to the world of psychology with it showing a partial truth of what can happen to men when they get a hold of unnecessary power. They start using it unfairly and start treating other unhuman like without any consideration of the damages that they are doing. This concept also fits very well with the film 13th on how whites treated blacks at the time after the civil war. There was a movie that was made called “ Birth of a nation” to where it just undermined the black citizens and made them look like cruel humans. This movie brought on one of the worst groups that mankind has ever witnessed which is the KKK. This group pushed heavily the segregation of whites and blacks since to them the whites had more power than the African Americans. There is always stuff that gets told or done just for others to accept it, however Social Constructionism throws that out the window and gives it a deeper analyzation to make sure what is actually going on is shown instead.

With the film the 13th it homes in on the deeper meaning behind the 13th amendment which states that slavery in not allowed in the united states unless for punishment on a crime. And in psychology there is countless of things that are overlooked, only because there is not proper thought put into the thing being analyzed. The film 13th has a great piece in it to where it mentions how the white women were able to just yell rape and have a black male arrested and people at the time never thought anything of it even though there started to become many rules and laws alike to make sure that the African Americans stay down. In The 13th film it gives a great outlook onto how when this law was created it gave it a loophole to where at the time white people could incarcerate African Americans with ease and have control over them again.

As well in the Stanford Prison Experiment it was to see if the brutality that was being done in the prison was because of the guard’s personalities or just the environment that everyone is in. Looking deeper into the film there is a lot of Social Constructionism going on, because things that were going on where meant to be portrayed as normal and a casual prison environment, however things are actually a lot worse than to be said with all the violence and aggression being done. In psychology if you do not process things further then things will just go over your head and Social Constructionism is very similar to that since it needs plenty of research to get to the bottom of things.

In the Stanford Prison Experiment all the psychologist attempt to persuade themselves and each other that this is just a normal psychologist experiment when in reality it is something that needs to be looked at multiple times because the aftermath of it is a crucial research topic to the world. Giving all the prisoners dresses would just seem as a form of uniformity however the means behind it’s a great mixture of the two because in reality they are just trying to take their manhood’s away. Psychology as a whole is a very intriguing topic, and one of its biggest parts is Social Constructionism. Psychology being the study of the brain brings in an aspect that one has to make connections with Social Constructionism in how it brings out the curiosity of human nature. In psychology it being all about looking at why something happened Social Constructionism fits right in since that’s what Social Constructionism is. A great example would be in the film 13th it gives in a descriptive analysist to the harshness that black people had to endure after the civil war. Using psychology scientist have figured out that nobody is actually racist they only grow into it.

“ You want to know who to trust and share resources with, and who is your enemy. From an early age, we show our natural tendency as social creatures to pay attention to the cues that our caretakers pay attention to. ” With this the white people back in the day would only act like this to the black people because they watch others do it as well. Everyone becomes a bystander to the crimes being taken because it has nothing to do with them. Since being racist is all they know it was very easy for them to just become racist as well and join the pack since more people being racist feels like it is accepting to be cruel to the African Americans. Psychology gives Social Constructionism another way to look at things with double and triple checking that things are why they are it gives Social Constructionism a new way to think and some more knowledge.

Social Constructionism helps the brand of psychology by dwelling onto things. It goes in depth into things that go on that can be analyzed in. It gives a great point to that Social Constructionism challenges all the cultural turns of something and enforces them into its discipline. A perfect example that can correlate with this from the film would be the parole meeting that each prisoner had with all the psychologist into trying to get out and the newly acquainted psychologist that was added realized that what was going on brought on much more danger then something more beneficial and she puts all her effort into getting the experiment shut down, Social Construction it is more beneficial to actually ponder onto things for a longer time since the benefits can become much greater. Since Social Constructionism goes in on actions being made a person and why they did it. With Psychology that is all it is about since it is giving things a second thought and making sure something is what it is said to be. With Social Construct the normality of the thoughts of a prison environment get thrown out the window in the film Stanford Prison Experiment, because what was thought to be normal acts in their simulated prison was actually acts of craziness by everyone involved. For example, the psychologist that helped Zimbardo throughout process let the guards keep up the intense violence near the begging of the film, this decision was very wrong my all means since everyone had signed a contract stating there should be no violence at all in the two-week span that this experiment was said to be going on. Even though they knew the ramifications that where going to lead to them not stepping in and putting a stop to the violence right away they just let it happen. With Zimbardo accepting what they had done it was clearly seen how the intentions of all of the people in charge was not to secure everyone’s safety, however it was getting the most information out of the experiment that was possible any means necessary. This scene shows a good knowledge of what social constructionism truly is with how Zimbardo not influencing into what his graduate students were doing it led to great danger for every individual involved. All of the developing findings that come along with Social Constructionism influence that it provides the knowledge of human behavior and interactions into psychology.

In the film Stanford Prison Experiment there are a lot of Sociocultural Components that can be said that affect the film as a whole. With Sociocultural being dealing with people these films show many instances to where it changes the narratives. For example, In the Stanford Experiment the guards after a day started saying many vulgar things to the inmates to which led to consequences for the inmates since they where not able to respond back since they do not have that power. In those harsh words that the guards would say to the convicts there was some orders in there and the convicts would not listen to them, so they had to endure the punishments of their actions. “ The prisoners were taunted with insults and petty orders, they were given pointless and boring tasks to accomplish, and they were generally dehumanized. ” All of this was because the power of being able to control people got to the guard’s heads. The guards made the prisoners remake their beds after the beds where perfectly fine numerous amounts of times throughout the night just to see the agony on their faces and for their own enjoyment. The prisoners had enough so Zimbardo not making the guards ease up on the prisoners led to many instances to where the prisoners tried to rebel on them and act out of character and intend on fighting the guards, however the guards would always out muscle them which led to the guards taking away their beds and push ups and pretend intercourse with each other only because they knew how uncomfortable it was for each individual prisoner involved.

Throughout the whole movie the prisoners just got their manhood taken away from them just because the guards felt it was fun to torture them, so when the prisoners had to walk in a straight line with chains on their feet and had to march to the bathroom it just made each individual feel like they were worthless. In the Stanford Prison Experiment there are numerous amounts of times that Behavioral Components are seen in the film. With a Behavioral Component being how one reacts to its environment the prisoners and guards where in for a rude awakening when they walked into that hallway that was formed into a prison. The first day was more of getting the feel of each other and where they would reside for the next two weeks. In prison the guards do not give the inmates much food so the people that acted as prisoners had to adjust to having less food then normal. The guards would wake up the inmates at the middle of the night just to do line checks and force them to stand up for hours just to bother the prisoners. It gave the Prisoners a sense of certain things that went on in real prisons. They had to sleep in bunk beds next to each other which they where not pleased about. They came from living in their own room and having their own bed to having room with complete strangers. Things just got very difficult and different for them since confinement is not something that these young men are used too. These young men before the experiment lived in an environment that had free will and choice, however it all changed when they step foot in that building and got the dresses with their new prison numbers on it. They would be put into a hole for a punishment that they would do which would take away the little power and self-freedom that they had in there.

In the film the prisoners and guards state of mind is what is being looked at throughout. So, the mental damage that each prisoner gets put through is beyond sane. The guards had a much easier go of things since all of the power was in their hands. Each individual guard had the authority and rights to make each prisoner do whatever they wanted to each prisoner. This fact brought on much pain and agony to the prisoners since they had to endure so much physical and emotional assault. All of the prisoners that endured pain started to have mental breakdowns on the second day in. Prisoner 8612 got it worst out of all the young men involved. Him being incarcerated and not having freedom led to him having mental problems and acting out of character. Prisoner 8612 needed the control that he had one the first day over the others because once he realized that he could not control the other prisoners or guards he completely lost it. He started going crazy and acting in a manner that one would only illustrate with the mentally ill. One prisoner that had his mental state changed as well was prisoner 2093. Ever since the experiment started he made it clear that he was going to take all in and act as an actual prisoner. When the prisoners had to write to their families he signed it off as prisoner 2093 instead of his actual name just like his other cellmates. When ordered to do something by the guards he did it without hesitation, because he knew what the consequences would be if he were to act like the others and rebel. prisoner 819 was someone that the longevity of being closed in got to him. He just ended up losing it and stopped eating and hurting himself. He started going to an unpleasant mental state that got him almost taken out of the whole experiment since he started to threaten to call a lawyer.

There was one guard that was one hundred percent in was someone that was then labelled as John Wayne. He took his character as being the top guard very serious. Some of his judgements and actions were not very sane since he just acted in a very demonic way. Most of what he wanted to do he got it done since all of the other guards did not know how to react to what he would demand so they just went along with it since in their heads they were not taking this seriously. However, there was one other guard that took his role very seriously that was on the other shift. He was well made many choices that would mess up the prisoners since he wanted to be top dog and make sure he was respected. Him and the John Wayne character where the two main guards that were responsible for the mental damages that each prisoner faced. Being under control of by eight or nine guards put each prisoner under a leash that they could not handle since they where under the control of all of them.