Gender Roles in America

When first reading Zimbardo’s prison experiment, I was disturbed with the ethics. However, once I got past my disturbance, I was able to actually consider the implications. And, I became fascinated with the impact that resulted from randomly placing otherwise equal individuals into roles that forced them to interact with each other on a new uneven playing field. The volunteers were thus no longer able to relate to or understand each other in the same way. Both the prisoners and the guards were forced to accept the strengths and/or weaknesses that came with the roles they were given. This is true of many roles we could look closer at. One example is the gender roles that are forced on to all of us. In my analysis of the prisoner experiment I saw an amazing parallel between our behavior as men and women in America and the behavior of the guards and prisoners in the Zimbardo experiment. More specifically, I could see this connection most distinctly in men and women still in thei...