Zimbardo's study

• What was Zimbardo's aims ?

  the aim was to understand the psychological impact of situational forces by observing how typical, healthy individuals would conform to assigned social roles of guards ( oppressive) and prisoners (Submissive)
• What was Zimbardo's procedure?


  an observational study of 24 male students from the US who volunteered to participate in a 7-14 day study, receiving $15 per day. after psychological assessments to ensure they were stable and healthy, participants were randomly assigned to either prisoners or guards
• What was Zimbardos Findings?

  participants quickly lost their personal; identities and adapted to their assigned social roles. Prisoners, after initial failed attempt at resistance , showed signs of stress , anxiety passively and helplessness; some were released to emotional breakdowns

  Guards , empowered by their uniforms and anonymity provided by sunglasses , displayed static aggression and domineering behavior. the study was halted after 6 days due to ethical concerns
• Advantages to Zimbardos

  carefully chose participants and randomly allocated roles caused a well controlled experiment

  Practically applied to real life situations
• Disadvantages to zimbardos study ?

  • Ethical concerns to mental health of participants
  • Zimbardo took a dual role as a principle investigator aswell as prison superintendent thus leading to experimenter bias as demand characteristics were likely to occur creating serious doubts about the validity