The Zimbardo Experiment Summary

The Stanford Prison experiment was conducted by Philip Zimbardo and his associates, David Jaffe, Craig Haney, Curtis Banks and Carlo Prescott. The experiment began in 1971 and was located in the Stanford Psychology department’s basement, converted into a makeshift simulated prison able to hold 24 male participants who were interviewed and randomly sorted into guard and prisoner roles (McLeod). The experiment was initially conducted to further understand “interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison” (Haney, Banks, Zimbardo) meaning the way individual persons react

Haney, Banks and Zimbardo (1973) were fascinated as to why people do bad things. Convinced the answer was attributed to bad environments corrupting good individuals, Haney et al. (1973) created a prison simulation to explore Zimbardo’s hypothesis that personality characteristics of guards and prisoners underlie aggressive behaviour in prisons. A newspaper advertisement asking for volunteers to participate in a two week study examining prison life, was used to recruit twenty-four participants, who were assigned randomly the role of prisoner or guard. Prisoners were arrested, referred to by identification numbers, dehumanised and made to wear identical clothing (nylon cap, a smock); whilst the guards wore khaki shirts and trousers and were given black sunglasses. Haney et al., (1973) told participants physical misconduct was prohibited; claiming this was the only direction participants were given regarding how they should behave.

The two experiments were a tested at different time periods and for different purposes. For instance, the Milgram experiment was originally tested to study obedience to authority, in response to Adolf Eichmann trial, a Nazi war criminal, that stated he,” was just stating orders under the Reich.” The experiment proved to be that under authority rule, actions, even if morally wrong and unethical can be still taken forward with due to a strict authority presence.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by a research group led by Dr. Philip Zimbardo using Stanford students during August 14 through the 20th of 1971. Dr. Zimbardo wanted to see how people reacted when they are either put in captivity or in charge of others. The study was funded by the US Office of Naval Research and grew interest to both the US Navy and the Marine Corps for an investigation to the purpose of conflict among military guards and prisoners. In the study, 24 male students were selected out of 75 applicants to take on randomly assigned roles. One of the surprises of the study was how participants quickly adapted to roles well beyond expectations. After the first eight hours, the experiment turned to be a joke and nobody was taking it seriously but then prisoners

The Stanford Prison Experiment sought to recreate a prison experience to study behaviors of prisoners and guards. The authors were seeking answers to the question of dispositional hypothesis which states “that the state of the social institution of prison is due to the “nature” of the people who administer it, or the “nature” of the people who populate it, or both” (A Study of Prisoners and Guards in a Stimulated Prison, 1971, pg. 2). In other words, they were studying whether the prisoners and guards behaviors changed due to their personalities or was it the prison environment that caused these changes. The authors considered the recidivism rate that was 75 percent at the time, conditions in prisons, and the belief that prisons

The article on the Stanford Prison Experiment titled, A Study of Prisoners and Guards in a Simulated Prison and written by the Office of Naval Research, provides us with the overall information that deals with this controversial psychological study. The study was conducted by

In 1973, in an attempt to understand the conformity to roles of guards and prisoners, Zimbardo launched a role-playing experiment that modeled prison life and reflected the environment of an American prison. The experiment was to see if prison guards are brutal and cruel because that’s their sadistic personality types that cause conflicts with the prisoners or if its due to the prison setting itself. In other words, there is a dispositional hypothesis that states that prison guards act the way they do because their personalities cause

How would you handle prison? Would you stay you, or would prison change you? Prison, its inmates, and its guards, have many harsh and unforgiving characteristics associated with them. The guards are cruel, and the inmates are frightening people who are often perceived as “crazy”. But why is this? In the summer of 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo, professor at Stanford University, set out to answer this question.

Zimbardo decided to run an experiment where he would turn a basement under the Stanford campus into a mock prison where he would interview several participants where they would randomly get assigned either guard, or prisoner. Zimbardo aimed to see how everyone pertained the roles they were placed in. Interviewing 75 potential participants, Zimbardo only chose 24 male college students which they received payments of $15/day. They had two reserves in which were the back-ups just in case any of them wanted to drop out. The prison simulation was kept as real as possible. The participants were “arrested” taken to the police station booked, finger printed, and photographed. Then being blindfolded they were taken back to the campus in the basement where Zimbardo created the mock prison with real barred doors and windows along with bare walls with small cells. Once the “prisoners” arrived, they were stripped naked and given the prison clothes and bedding. The prisoners had their own number which they were only referred to. They wore just a smock with no clothes under along with a nylon cap and a chain around their ankle. Guards were given a stereotypical khaki outfit with whistles, handcuffs, and mirrored glasses working 8 hour shifts a day with three people working each shift. Physical violence was not permitted to the guards. Observing the behaviors of the guards and prisoners, Zimbardo realized how everyone was

“The Stanford Prison Experiment” by Philip G. Zimbardo was written to explain the results of the Stanford prison experiment. Zimbardo while trying to gain support for his conclusions of the experiment, demonstrated many errors in his writing, and in his own experiment. The errors that Zimbardo commits call into question the validity of his argument, and the experiment. The goal explained by Zimbardo was “to understand more about the process by such people called “prisoners” lose their liberty, civil rights, independence, and privacy, while those called “guards” gain social power by accepting the responsibility for controlling and managing the lives of their dependent charges” (Zimbardo 733).

This experiment was first designed to investigate how people “would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life” (Mcleod 1). Zimbardo was interested in learning about whether the brutality in the prisons was because of the behavior of the guards towards the prisoners or if it was because of the prison environment. He beginned his experiment by placing an ad in the newspaper calling out for males that were willing to be part of the experiment, 70 individuals answered the ad. Every individual had to go through a background check to check for mental issues or past drug or alcohol use. In the end only 24 students were chosen (McLeod). The “prisoners’ were treated just like they would be treated at a your average prison. Half of the 24 students that were selected were prisoners and the other half were the guards. The guards had no specific direction as to how to treat the prisoners, “Guards were instructed to do whatever they thought was necessary to maintain law and order in the prison and to command the respect of the prisoners. No physical violence was permitted” Mcleod 11). As the days went on the prison began to seem and become more like a real life one was. The guards began to become more aggressive in order to maintain control over the inmates. Some of the prisoners began to show early signs of depression by the third day. Although the experiment was supposed to go on for a longer period of time, it had to be cancelled on the sixth day.This concluded that “People will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles are as strongly stereotyped as those of the prison guards” (Mcleod

The aim of this experiment was to investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of a guard and a prisoner. In this role playing simulation, individual would experience prison life. Zimbardo was interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was dispositional: due to the sadistic personalities of the guards, or Situational: having more to do with the prison environment. For example, prisoner and guards may have personalities which make conflict inevitable, with prisoners lacking respect for law, order, and any authoritative figure and guards having domineering and aggressive personalities. Alternatively, prisoners and guards may behave in a hostile manner due to the rigid power structure of the social environment in prisons. If the prisoners and guards were not aggressive towards one another this would support the dispositional hypothesis, or if their behavior was similar to those in real prisons this would support the situational explanation.

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 Stanford Prison Experiment was designed to allow 24 participants (college students) to be arrested in a mock police state scenario without any charges being brought against them. The participants were hooded and put into a prison cellblock with other mock prisoners. The purpose of the experiment was to see how non-criminals would be affected by the prison culture and the oversight of prison guards. Philip G. Zimbardo (2004)

In 1971 Philip Zimbardo conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) in the basement of Stanford University as a mock prison. Zimbardo’s aim was to examine the effect of roles, to see what happens when you put good people in an evil place and to see how this effects tyranny. He needed participants to be either ‘prisoners’ or ‘guards’ and recruited them through an advertisement, 75 male college students responded and 24 healthy males were chosen and were randomly allocated roles. Zimbardo wanted to encourage deindividuation by giving participants different uniforms and different living conditions (the guards had luxuries and the prisoners were living as real prisoners). The guards quickly began acting authoritarian, being aggressive towards the prisoners and giving them punishments causing physical and emotional breakdowns. Zimbardo’s intention was for his study to last for 2 weeks, however, it