Philip Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment

Dr Philip Zimbardo created the Stanford prison experiment in 1971, the aim of this experiment was to find out the psychological effects of prison life, and to what extent can moral people be seduced to act immorally. The study consisted of 24 students selected out of 75, the roles of these 24 men were randomly assigned, 12 to play prison guards and 12 to play prisoners. The prison set up was built inside the Stanford’s psychological department, doors where taken of laboratory rooms and replaced with steel bars in order to create cells. At the end of the corridor was the small opening which became the solitary confinement for the ‘bad prisoners’. Throughout the prison there were no windows or clocks to judge the passage in time, which resulted in time distorting experiences. After only a few hours, the participants adapted to their roles well beyond expectations, the officers starting

Zimbardo and his colleagues aimed to study how participants would react when placed in a simulated prison environment. Cherry (2010) quotes Zimbardo in an interview: “"Suppose you had only kids who were normally healthy, psychologically and physically, and they knew they would be going into a prison-like environment and that some of their civil rights would be sacrificed. Would those good people, put in that bad, evil place—would their goodness triumph?"

Method of conduction- To conduct the experiment Zimbardo and his team chose university’s basement of psychology’s department and turned it to a mock prison. The surroundings of prison were made like the surroundings of prison in real life. Cells of prison were not big, walls and windows were barred. In this experiment Zimbardo acted as prison’s superintendent and he also played his duties of a researcher.

To ensure to have satisfactory results in his study, Zimbardo required some preconditions. One of which was the period of time for the experiment to be conducted. He believed that one-to-two weeks would be essential in “providing our research participants with sufficient time for them to become fully engaged in their experimentally assigned roles of either guards or prisoners. Having [our] participants live in that setting day and night, if prisoners, or work for long eight-hour shifts, if guards, would also allow sufficient time for situational norms to develop and patters of social interaction to emerge, change and become crystallized” (Zimbardo, 2013). Other preconditions he had were the mentalities of his volunteers; are they “normal,” healthy mentally and physically, are they without any prior history of conviction or drug usage?

Social psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, has lead one of the most infamous experiments in the modern history with the Stanford Prison Experiment. The immense popularity of the experimental research on situational power, although having cultivated great recognition, has overshadowed the multiple contributions and accomplishments that Zimbardo continues to assume in his lifetime. Many of Zimbardo’s recognitions have been brought upon due to the Stanford Prison Experiment, yet in this paper will extensively examine Zimbardo’s psychological career from the beginning to the current date to recognize his notable influence in the field of Psychology, specifically the field of Social Psychology. This brief review of Zimbardo’s lengthy career will include various facts and personal accounts of Zimbardo’s regarding his life and work. Zimbardo’s lifetime of work has mainly focused and researched the multiple flaws of human’s beings, and it’s through his findings that society is truly able to progress forward positively. Zimbardo’s long career exemplifies that of an unrestricted devotion; he has and still works to better society through its various flaws, making him undoubtably impactful.

Philip Zimbardo, who categorizes himself as “good” fell victim to the situation of the “Stanford Prisons Experiment” (SPE). Even though it was a mock prison environment, Zimbardo fell heavily invested in his role as superintendent and lead investigator of the SPE, whose main concern is to make sure the SPE continues running, led him to accept that his actions were normal. Which in turn allowed him to ignore his moral conscience; allowing for the suffering from the participants surrounding the SPE. When Zimbardo came to the decision to end the program, disconnecting from his both his roles he was able to realize that he was not in control, that the situation had controlled his logic affecting his actions. Zimbardo states, “The negative

After learning about conducting research in an ethical way, I do not believe that Dr. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment was ethical in anyway. During the process of conducting his research, a lot of unethical events took place, especially with his participants that were chosen to be casted as “inmates”. According to the book, there are certain rules that must be followed when dealing with participants to ensure they are taken care of in an ethical manner.

The experiment was conducted by psychologist Philip Zimbardo at the Stanford University in 1971. He recruited some special test subjects, 24 students who were physically and mentally healthy, with high stability in their emotion. Then divided them into two groups. A group dressed as guards and others act as prisoners. The experiment was planned for fourteen days, but was abolished in the seventh day. The reason for the termination was that the experiment had caused a damage to the prisoner 's both mental and health performance.

Zimbardo’s research concluded that if “good” people were placed in a negative and evil institution, the environment will overcome the individuals and they will embody the nature of their setting. This implied

Stanford Prison Experiment In 1971, an experiment was conducted by Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, along with his under-graduate assistants Craig Haney and Curtis Banks. The experiment was to study the basic psychological understanding of the mind for both prisoners and guards in a stimulated prison setting. The experiment would consist of a group of students who agreed to participate in a two week study with an incentive of fifteen dollars a day.

The study failed the first ethical guideline for people. According to the textbook, the book states the “the rights and well-being of participants must be weighed against the studies value to science” where in other words, the participant’s well-being is the primary concern before the research. However, Zimbardo was driven to investigate the human behavior from a mock prison where he took the research more into account than the participant’s

The Stanford Prison Experiment The video about the Stanford prison experiment is an experiment that the social psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted. This experiment was a mock prison that he set up in the basement of the Stanford campus building, 24 males were selected to take part. Randomly chosen these men were split in half, 12 would take the roles of prisoners the other half would be the guards. Meanwhile, Zimbardo would take the role of the superintendent.

Zimbardo and others came to an agreement stating that it would be interesting to study how boys would become socialized into the niche of police officers and what went into transforming a rookie into a “good cop”. He wanted to understand how it was possible for the personalities of these young people to be so transformed in such a small amount of time that they could do these illogical deeds. The Stanford Prison Experiment was designed to determine the results of when one group was granted authority over another. Before starting the experiment Zimbardo and a group of coworkers spent a few weeks cleaning out the basement of Stanford's Psychology Department to put in false cell doors and the prisoners beds. They cleaned out a closet in the hall and labeled it the Hole, which would serve as the “timeout” place for prisoners who

Throughout history there have been hundreds upon hundreds of influential figures, although not all of them have devoted their career to understanding the human mind. Of the few who have devoted their time to this hugely important task, Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo’s theories and experiments have made him stand out, and differentiate himself from the rest in his profession. Zimbardo 's area of expertise in the field of psychology is social psychology, the branch that deals with social interactions, including their origins and their effects on the individual. Zimbardo may be most well known for his Stanford Prison experiment, an experiment that seems to address the definition of social psychology perfectly. In this experiment Zimbardo had clinically healthy and sane people volunteer for the position of a prison guard or a prisoner and see how they behaved, for fifteen dollars a day. The prison was actually the basement of the Stanford psychology building, where the experiment would take place for a planned 14 days. As said before, the prisoners and guards were all tested as mentally healthy, and for the sake of the experiment were arrested, and processed on a random morning, August 14th 1971. (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 23). The results of this experiment are outstanding, shocking, and somewhat disturbing, making this one of, if not, the most unethical psychological experiments. Although the experiment is considered wildly immoral, Zimbardo is one of the most influential psychologists

Philip Zimbardo is known for his famous prison experiment that revealed some important facts about human nature. This type of experiment had never been done before. The Stanford prison experiment was designed to find out “whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards or had more to do with the prison environment” (McLeod 1). Zimbardo was influenced by the Milgram experiment, which was a study of the power of the situation. He says that the Milgram experiment was focused on one-on-one social power. Zimbardo’s experiment was focused on institutional power over the individual in groups due to the change of the environment. Zimbardo has written many books about social psychology, which is the study of human behaviors and the social situation. I learned about Zimbardo in my Psychology 100 class. He was born on March 23, 1933, and is still alive to this day. His studies and experiments are what influenced me to go into the field of psychology. Zimbardo is a crucial social psychologist because of his prison experiment, which led to unique discoveries.