Everyone in life takes on a role, whether it be a parent, student, teacher, nurse. Roles are a cycle in society to continue the working process of functionality which keeps everyday life consistent and organized. Roles in prisons are similarly portrayed, however there is no order or limits to power which are established. Prisons are places for rehabilitation, but instead are turned into a place of punishment with its own rules. the punishment in which takes place in prisons is more like torture and breaking of ones will until they are turned into something completely unrecognizable. There are two roles in prisons, the prisoners and the prison guards. In Zimbardo’s experiment, he takes volunteers to willingly go in and portray one of the two roles. By the final days he had to cut the experiment short because of the new reality that was created for these volunteers. They took the role they were given to portray but instead they soon come to live by that role. They psychologically determined that was their new reality and all they could do was live it day by day. In reality they could opt out of the experiment at any given moment but they instead began to live in their roles as if they were truly prisoners and guards.
The massive turn of reality for these volunteers because so astounding in where these college students who had their own opinions about prison institutions now became those who abused power and those who came to hate the ones on the other side of the cell blocks. Prison has its own reality that leads to the abuse of power and the twist in the minds of petty thieves into people with hatred for those in abuse of power. Prison does not function as a place for rehabilitation and righting their wrongs but instead it switches the roles of prisoners and guards. The guards are now the people who are a danger to society and the prisoners the victims of their tyranny. Guards are given guidelines to follow but they imply their own definition of punishment without any consequences from outside influences because in their eyes they run the prison how they like and the prisoners inside it deserve their punishments. It becomes a twisted reality which doesn’t come to serve its purpose of institution and foundation it was built on.
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