AO3

• Strengths:

  • Debriefing – participants were fully and completely debriefed about the aims and results of the study. This is particularly important when considering that the BPS ethical guidelines of deception and informed consent had been breached. Dealing with ethical issues in this way simply makes the study more ethically acceptable, but does not change the quality (in terms of validity and reliability) of the findings.
• Weaknesses:

  • Ethical issues: Lack of fully informed consent due to the deception required to (theoretically) avoid demand characteristics and participant reactivity. However Zimbardo himself did not know what was going to happen, so could not inform the participants, meaning that there is possible justification for a breach of ethical guidelines.
• • Reliability- Reichler and Haslam tried to recreate the Stanford Prison study in a programme for the BBC. However in this simulation prisoners became dominant over the guards and became disobedient to the guards who were unable to control their behaviour.
  • This suggests that the results of Zimbardo’s study may be down to individual differences. The reason his guards had such control over the prisoners was perhaps because all or most of those randomly assigned to be guards were those with more dominant personalities, and all or most of the prisoners had more submissive/agreeable personalities