A03

• strength- methological strengths

  • control in sample, all men emotionally stable, having participants who are extremely aggressive for example would affect the results heavily.
  • Additionally, ensuring random allocation was used prevented the more aggressive outgoing individuals picking the guards and the submissive choosing to be inmates. Both these techniques reduce the effect of individual differences and increase the validity of the results.
• limitation- methological design/sample

  • all male participants leading to beta bias, findings are not representative and consequently cannot be generalised to half the population
  • . Additionally, there is age bias in the sample, all young student volunteers which biologically would have increased levels of testosterone compared to an older man, thus findings cannot be generalised to all ages.
  • all American participants are used, an individualistic culture, therefore these findings cannot be applied to eastern collectivist cultures or the risk of imposed etic would be present.
• limitation- ethical issues

  • For example, on day 4 a participant had to leave due to psychological disturbances and was not protected for psychological harm here. Zimbardo’s participants were also deceived about the aim of the study so would not have been able to give informed consent, this was to reduce the effects of demand characteristics on results
  • A cost benefit analysis would have to be used here, do the positive effects on the American prison system e.g., not keeping young and adult prisoners together anymore outweigh the ethical issues.
• strength- zimbardo carried out debriefing

  • where he told the participants the true aim and results of the study as bps ethical guidelines of deception and informed consent were present
  • . Debriefing still does not make the study ethically acceptable. However, the ethical issues which arose from this study allowed ethical guidelines to be put in place and informed in future research. This helps to protect future participants from the dangers of ethical issues 

   
• limitation- low ecological validity

  • All participants were aware they were not actual guards or inmates and thus is was apparent they were playing a role for the research, this means demand characteristics would have been present. Therefore, participants may have played up to their role to please the researcher, via the please-u-effect.
  • supported by interviews- ppts stated playing up to stereotypes seen in films, findings not true representation, reducing val of result