Stanford Prison Experiment AO3

Question 1

What are the strengths of the Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment?

Answer 1

• it can be applied to real life as it can be used to explain why the guards in Abu Graib acted the way they did (it was because of situational factors)
• the experiment had high internal validity as the prison felt real to the participants which was shown by 90% of their conversations being about prison life according to McDermott

Question 2

What are the weaknesses of the study?

Answer 2

• there are clear ethical issues as participants felt they couldn’t leave (no right to withdraw) and they were harmed physically as well as mentally (no protection of participants)
• it is affected by demand characteristics as the participants which was shown by Banuazizi and Movahedi who found that their participants guessed the aims of the experiment even when they’d never heard of it