zimbardo's research

• what was the aim of zimbardo's study?

  to show how taking on social roles would lead to excessive conformity to those roles

  to test the disposional hypohesis
• what is the dispositional hypothesis?


  questioned if prisons are bad because of the personality of the guards/prisoners or is it because of the situation
• zimbardo's sample...

  24 white, American, male, healthy college students

  offered $15 a day
• 70+ people...


  originally applied to be participants in the study
• voluntary sample...

  means that Zimbardo's participants willingly volunteered to take part in the experiment, through a newspaper ad
• how long was the experiment meant to last?

  2 weeks
• what did Zimbardo do to all of the participants who had applied?

  screened them for a history of mental health problems and a criminal record
• how were the roles decided?

  coin toss, randomly assigned
• prisoners...


  signed a contract for "adequate basic diet and healthcare" but warned that they would lose some basic civil rights

  told to wait at home on this sunday evening for a call beginning the experiment
• guards...


  told that their role was to maintain order within the prison, but told they could not use violence against prisoners
• prisoners wore...

  gown, stocking covering head, chain around right ankle, no underwear, leather sandals, number ID
• guards wore...

  khaki shirt and trousers, reflective sunglasses, baton and whistle
• the prison...

  was a stimulated prison made in the basement of one of he buildings in Stanford University

  consulted with prisons and former inmates to make the prison as realistic as possible - example = 3 prisoners to a cell, no clocks, no windows
• when did the experiment commence?

  when police cars arrived and arrested prisoners publicly outside of their homes

  prisoners were then taken, blindfolded, finger printed, searched, stripped naked, deloused before being taken to "prison"
• what behaviours did the guards show?


  humiliate/punish prisoners - example = strip them naked, wake them up in the middle of the night to do exercise

  acted the same way on extra shifts, and when they knew that they weren't being recorded
• what occurred on day 2?


  prisoners attempted to revolt against their conditions

  guards used fire extinguishers and quickly regained control
• what happened to the prisoners?

  they were punished with little/no justification

  their rights were redefined as privileges
• did guards and prisoners quickly adapt to their roles?

  yes
• how many prisoners had to be released early due to extreme emotional reactions?

  5
• after how many days did the experiment end?

  6
• does the study support the dispositional hypothesis?

  no - it rejects it
• what was an important factor in creating the guards brutal behaviours?

  the prison environment
• what does the study demonstrate?

  participants were ready to conform to their given roles

  it's the role that a person plays that shapes their behaviours and attiudes
• when did the stanford prison experiment take place?

  1971
• does zimbardo's study have good internal validity?

  yes - he ensured that all participants were screened prior to the experiment to show that behaviours they showed in the prison was due to the situation not their personalities
• internal validity...

  is a strength to the research
• what are demand characteristics?


  characteristics that participants display to purposefully go along with/sabotage the experiment
• banuazizi and mohevedi (1975) argued that...

  participants may have been "play-acting" and displaying demand characteristics (what they believed zimbardo would have wanted/what they believed prisoners/guards would act like)
• how did zimbardo combat banuazizi and mohevedi's claims?

  argued that the situation was very real to participants - quantitate data showed that 90% of what prisoners talked about was prison life

  participants viewing the prison as real gives the experiment good internal validity
• what did fromm (1973) accuse zimbardo of doing?


  exaggerating the results of his experiment - only around 1/3 of guards were brutal, and the others actually stuck to the rules, and even offered the prisoners sympathy, offering them cigarettes
• who created the bbc prison experiment?

  steve reicher and alex haslam
• results of the bbc prison experiment...

  were very different to zimbardo - it was the prisoners who took control of the prison, subjecting the guards to harassment and mockery
• what role did zimbardo play in the experiment? why was this an issue?

  superintendent - zimbardo payed too much attention too his role rather than to being an experimenter