Stanford Prison Experiment Zimbardo

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

In Maria Konnikova’s “The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment” she reveals what she believes to be the reality of sociologist Philip Zimbardo’s controversial study: its participants were not “regular” people.

In the documentary Quiet Rage, the story of Zimbardo’s prison experiment is retold. In the documentary, Zimbardo develops a hypothesis that the abusive behaviors in prison is either caused by pre-existing personality traits of the inmates and guards, or the prison environment itself is the cause. He tested his hypothesis by carefully selecting 24 physically healthy, and mentally stable, male college students to participate in a “mock prison” experiment. The basement of Stanford’s psychology department was used to recreate a prison environment, complete with cells, a prison yard, Warden and Superintendent’s offices, and solitary confinement. Half of the test subjects were randomly selected to be prisoner, and the other half to be guards. They were to be placed in the environment, and their roles, for two weeks, and to be carefully observed by Zimbardo who also acted as the prison superintendent. Zimbardo planned to observe the affects the prison environment had the subjects. Due to the extremely abusive characteristics guards developed, and the swift decline of

The participants adapted to their roles well beyond Zimbardo 's expectations, as the guards enforced the measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it. The experiment even

In 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues created the experiment known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. Zimbardo wanted to investigate further into human behavior, so he created this experiment that looked at the impact of taking the role of a prisoner or prison guard. These researchers examined how the participants would react when placed in an institutionalized prison environment. They set up a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University’s psychology building. Twenty four undergraduate students were selected to play the roles of both prisoners and guards. These students were chosen because they were emotional, physically, and mentally stable. Though the experiment was expected to last two weeks, it only lasted six days after the researchers and participants became aware of the harm that was being done.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a physiological study made to understand what affected the police brutality in prison environments. Zimbardo conducted this experiment in 1973. The goal was “To investigate how readily people would confirm to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that stimulated prison life. 24 male college students were tested for their psychological normality. The chosen ones were paid $15 a day to take part in the experiment.

Philip G. Zimbardo conducted an experiment called The Stanford Prison Experiment back in 1973. Zimbardo sets out to see the outcome if you create a false prison and get ordinary college students and make half of the students guards and the other half of the students prison inmates how will the volunteers react with their new roles. Zimbardo main points of the prison experiment were to see if the volunteers can handle their new positions. Also another main point of Zimbardo’s experiment was how much the volunteers will psychologically withhold in the new penitentiary environment by obeying order. After reading Zimbardo's experiment the volunteers did not only have short term trauma but also long term effects to their personality.

The Zimbardo prison experiment was a study of human responses to captivity, dehumanization and its effects on the behavior on authority figures and inmates in prison situations. Conducted in 1971 the experiment was led by Phlilip Zimbardo. Volunteer College students played the roles of both guards and prisoners living in a simulated prison setting in the basement of the Stanford psychology building.

There was a rumor about an escape after the parents came but the guards heard about it and started making the prisoners do menial chores to keep their morale down. In an attempt to make it the most like a real prison as possible Zimbardo invited a catholic priest to come evaluate the authenticity of the prison, and talk to the prisoners. One of the prisoners who was talking to the priest ended up breaking down while the priest was with him, the experimenters let him go rest and relax in another room so that he could calm down and get himself together. While he was in there the guards had the prisoners start yelling out “Prisoner #819 is a bad prisoner. Because of what Prisoner #819 did, my cell is a mess, Mr. Correctional Officer.”

The Stanford Prison Experiment was an experiment to see if normal people would change their behavior in a role-play as a prisoner or a prison guard. The experiment was conducted by Dr.Philip Zimbardo in 1973 at Stanford University and caused numerous amount of trauma to both prisoners and prison guards in their role-playing position which forced Dr. Zimbardo to officially terminate the experiment six days after it was introduced. Due to the cruel aggressive behaviors from the guards, the experiment led to a question, "Do "normal" people have the capability of behaving badly?" The answer to that question is that most likely an individual who behaves normally will have the capability of expressing evil behavior due to the environment they are

The men who would be prisoners were mock arrested, finger printed, and photographed and taken to the basement of the university. They were strip-searched and given clothing made to make them feel uncomfortable, and also given a hat/smock, and a chain was put around their ankle and were put 3 a cell. The purpose of the experiment "Zimbardo (1973) was interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards (i.e. dispositional) or had more to do with the prison environment (i.e. situational). " The mock prison had viewing windows, also video and and audio recordings were made. As a hypothesis Zimbardo wished to understand what character traits if any caused by both Prisoners and Guards and if and how it would lead to abusive behavior The experiment was made up of 24 individuals all from similar backgrounds as all were college students, and were randomly chosen to be either "prisoners" and "guards".

For the prison experiment, Zimbardo picked random people that applied. People that applied were either going to be chosen to act as a prisoner or a guard for a set up fake prison. The people that got the position to act as the roles got paid. The point for this experiment was to see how long it would take for people to adjust to their role. Zimbardo wanted to find out if how they acted was affected by their surrounding environment or the roles that they had to fill.

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

This paper serves to summarize The Zimbardo Prison Experiment, better known as The Stanford Prison Experiment which was conducted by Phillip Zimbardo in 1971 at Stanford University. The purpose of the study was to conduct research in order to better understand the psychological components of human aggression and submission to include conformity and obedience in a prison environment with a select group of subjects playing roles as either prison guards or inmates, however, I should note, according to McLeod, S. (2016), The Navy’s intent or purpose for the experiment was to better understand how to train members of the armed forces on how to cope with stress associated with captivity as opposed to making American Prison systems more humane. Another interesting point of note is that Zimbardo conducted this experiment shortly after World War II, and the Vietnam War where concern was raised as to some of the atrocities carried out in those wars where “ordinary” people conducted heinous acts per instruction from so-called authoritative figures. Experiments with similar objectives were carried out by Stanley Milgram and others. (Jones, A. D., & Milgram, S. 1974)

The Zimbardo prison experiment was set up to investigate the problem of what the psychological effects for normal people result from being a guard or inmate, and in a broader sense are normal people capable of being ‘evil.’ The research question being asked was, “How would normal people react to being in a simulated prison environment? In Zimbardo’s own words, "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, (when) put in that bad, evil place (have) their goodness triumph?"