Zimbardo

• Zimbardo


  Psychologist who set up a mock prison experiment
• Zimbardo procedure


  1. Set up a mock prison in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University

  2. Recruited 24 'emotionally stable' students determined by psychological testing

  3. Randomly assigned participants to the role of guards or prisoners

  4. Increased realism by arresting 'prisoners' in their homes and delivering them to the 'prison' blindfolded, strip-searched, deloused and issued a uniform and number

  5. Heavily regulated the prisoners' daily routines with 16 rules enforced by guards working in shifts, three at a time
• Zimbardo's methods to increase deindividuation


  • Prisoners' names were never used, only their numbers
  • Guards had their own uniform, including mirrored sunglasses
• The purpose of Zimbardo's experiment was to test whether the brutality of prison guards was the result of sadistic personalities or whether it was created by the situation (conformity to social roles)
• Findings


  1. Within two days, the prisoners rebelled against their treatment

  2. They ripped their uniforms and shouted and swore at the guards, who retaliated with fire extinguishers

  3. Guards harassed the prisoners constantly by conducting frequent headcounts, sometimes in the middle of the night
• Guards


  • Completely adopted their social role by creating opportunities to enforce the rules and punish any slight wrongdoings
  • Trying to show the prisoners that they were in charge
  • Took up their roles with enthusiasm
  • Their behaviour threatened the prisoners' psychological and physical health
• After the rebellion was put down


  The prisoners became subdued, anxious and depressed
• Three prisoners were released early because they showed signs of psychological disturbance
• One prisoner


  1. Went on hunger strike

  2. Guards attempted to force feed him

  3. Guards punished him by putting him in 'the hole', a tiny dark closet
• The study was stopped after six days instead of the planned 14 days
• Conclusions

  The study revealed the power of the situation to influence people’s behaviour

  Guards and prisoners all conformed to their social roles within the prison

  The more the guards identified with their role, the more brutal and aggressive their behaviour became
• Zimbardo's Guard Behavior Study Limitations:

  • ignored dispositional factors that may have influenced guards behaviour
  • Only a third of guards exhibit brutal behavior.
  • Another third applies rules fairly.
  • Rest support prisoners with cigarettes and privileges.
  • Overemphasizes conformity to social roles.
  •  suggests Guards' behavior determined by individual personalities, not situational pressures.
• • A limitation of the prison experiment is that there were major ethical issues
  • Although the study was actually conducted ethically, was approved by the university’s ethics committee and did not deceive participants, Zimbardo acknowledges that the experiment could have been stopped earlier • 'This is because Prisoners' experienced emotional distress, causing psychological harm.• Zimbardo's over-seriousness limited participant protection.

  • Study emphasizes importance of ethical considerations in psychological research.
• limitation - demand characteristics may have affected the results, weakening the studies internal validity

  • Students that were unfamiliar with the Stanford prison experiment correctly predicted experiment's purpose and behaviour.

  • pisoners felt powerless due to briefing by Zimbardo to the guards before the study

  • This suggests that internal validity of the study might have seriously been threatened by the presence of demand characteristics as the guards only be behaved in the way that they were told to
• strength - real world applications

  • Zimbardo believes that conformity to social roles in his present experiment also occurred in the same way at Abu Ghraib, in which Iraqi prisoners were tortured and abused by American soldiers
  • suggest that certain situational factors combined with an opportunity to misuse the power associated with certain roles can lead to people behaving in cruel and abusive ways

  
  

  • strength as helps us to understand the factors that lead to abusive behaviour so it can be prevented in the future