Currently, there is a fun set of movies on Netflix. One of them just was added today, the one I'm reviewing here. The other one that goes nicely with it is Experimenter; they are both about psychological experiments that are now considered to be unethical.
I had been waiting awhile for this movie to be on Netflix as I remembered reading that it was being added in June, and apparently today was the specific day. So I got to watching it. The only actor that I recognized in this movie was Ezra Miller; he played Prisoner 8612. I don't know how closely the movie reflects what actually happened in the experiment, but regardless it was interesting. However, I think that I liked Experimenter somewhat better because it was... I don't know, somewhat broader in scope? It was mostly about Milgram's obedience experiments, but it also went into things past that. Plus, it has to be mentioned that I enjoyed Peter Sarsgaard's performance in it. That's where it all began for me. I would say that The Stanford Prison Experiment was a bit duller of a movie than Experimenter.
Speaking of Peter's performance as Milgram, I felt that the actor who played the pyschology professor conducing the experiment in The Stanford Prison experiment portrayed the man (Philip Zimbardo) in a more nefarious way than Milgram was portrayed in Experimenter. He seemed to almost relish, in a way, the sadism that the guards began to enact on the prisoners. Milgram, on the other hand, seemed to take a more objective perspective towards his obedience experiments and did not seem to overtly enjoy the way that the teachers shocked the learners when they were ordered to. Although of course this might just be chalked up to personal bias in that Peter Sarsgaard is one of my favorite actors now. But at the time I first watched the movie, I had never heard of him before, so I can't really say. I would be curious to know if other people without my bias towards Peter Sarsgaard would come to the same conclusion about these two people as they were portrayed in the movies.
As far as the experiments go, I think the Stanford Prison Experiment was more unethical because the guards were actually inflicting various unpleasant acts towards the prisoners, as opposed to the teacher in the Milgram experiment only being made to think he was shocking the learner, who was actually left unharmed. However, they both have similarities in that they involved the question of how far will people go (the guards, the teachers) when put in certain positions. They both have to do with authority, although in somewhat different ways. The Milgram experiment was focused on obedience to authority, whereas the prison experiment was focused on how people would abuse authority when given it. I am kind of curious about how far the prison experiment would have gone had they played it out for the intended 2 weeks, instead of stopping it after only 6 days. I belive that it took place a number of years after Milgram did his experiment, which is kind of interesting because they both are considered to be unethical. If Milgram's experiment was unethical, why/how did Philip Zimbardo come to do his experiment, which I think was more unethical?
I think it would be interesting if obedience experiments were done today, but with the task being different: what different things would people obey or refuse to obey doing? I'm currently reading the report about the obedience experiments, so it might be interesting to read the report about the prison experiment as well..
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