Zimbardo’s research

• Participants

  • a group of students that volunteered
  • those selected were deemed emotionally stable after extensive psychological testing
  • roles were randomly assigned
  • 21 males
  • university students
  • payed $15 a day
• Procedure

  • To increase realism, ‘prisoners’ were arrested in their homes and delivered to the ‘prison’
  • they were blindfolded, strip-searched, deloused and issued a uniform and a number
  • The prisoners’ daily routines were heavily regulated. There were 16 rules to follow, enforced by guards working in shifts, three at a time
  • Prisoners’ names were never used, only their numbers.
  • Guards had their own uniform – wooden club, handcuffs, keys and mirror shades. They were told they had complete power over the prisoners, for instance deciding when they could go to the toilet.
• Finding

  • Within two days, the prisoners rebelled against their treatment. They ripped their uniforms and shouted and swore at the guards, who retaliated with fire extinguishers.
  • Guards harassed the prisoners constantly by conducting frequent headcounts, sometimes in the middle of the night.
  • Guards highlighted the differences in social roles by creating opportunities to enforce the rules and punish slight misdemeanours.
  • The guards took up their roles with enthusiasm. Their behaviour threatened the prisoners' psychological and physical health.
• Examples of what happened

  • After the rebellion was put down, the prisoners became subdued, anxious and depressed.
  • The study was stopped after six days instead of the planned 14 days.
  • Three prisoners were released early because they showed signs of psychological disturbance.
  • One prisoner went on hunger strike; the guards attempted to forcefeed him and punished him by putting him in 'the hole', a tiny dark closet.
• Conclusions

  • The simulation revealed the power of the situation to influence people's behaviour.
  • Guards, prisoners and researchers all conformed to their social roles within the prison.
  • The more the guards identified with their roles, the more brutal and aggressive their behaviour became
• Ethical issues with the study

  • lack of appropriate debriefing
  • lack of fully informed consent
  • physical harm
  • abuse of participants
  • not protecting participants from psychological and physical harm
• Supporting research - Orlando 1973 ‘mock psychiactric mental ward’

  • staged a mock psychiatric ward
  • 29 of the hospital staff played the role of patients
  • other staff played their normal roles
  • study only lasted a few days
  • mock patients began to act like real patients
  • they took their roles very seriously = tried to escape, cried, had nervous breakdowns, increased tensions, anxiety, frustration and despair
• Contrasting research = Reicher and Haslam 2006 “BBC prison experiment“

  • they claimed that zimbardos conclusion from the stanford prison experiment were wrong
  • they claimed that evil behavior wasn’t a result of group conformity
  • they claimed that the study showed when groups didn’t have a shared identity when there was a power vacuum and that led to tyranny being seen as an acceptable outcome
• How did zimbardo control his variables?

  • controlled environment
  • all wore the same uniforms
  • all given the same information before the study