The Stanford Prison Study - Zimbardo (1971)

Question 1

What was Zimbardo’s aim?

Answer 1

To see whether people will conform if given new social roles

Question 2

What was the method Zimbardo used?

Answer 2

The participants were all male students at Stanford university. They volunteered to take part (PAID) and randomly allocated to two groups prisoners and guards. The prisoners were to spend 2 weeks locked in cells in the basement of the university. The prison guards were to keep them under control.
Prisoners were unexpectedly arrested at home and taken to the prison; they were stripped, deloused and given uniform and a number.
The guards were given uniforms, batons and mirrored sunglasses

Question 3

What were Zimbardo’s results?

Answer 3

The experiment was called off after 6 days. The guards became so brutal that two prisoners had a nervous breakdown. The prisoners became apathetic and submissive to the guards.

Question 4

What was his conclusion?

Answer 4

An explanation for why the participants’ reactions were so extreme was because they conformed to social roles they were given based upon their schema of that role
Another explanation is deindividuation, which is a state when a person becomes so immersed in the norms of the group that you lose your sense of identity and personal responsibility

Question 5

What are the strengths and limits of the prison study?

Answer 5

Strengths:
- Control over variables
- Real world applications (Abu Ghraib Prison)
- High mundane realism
Limits:
- Investigator effects as he was part of the study
- Lacked realism
- DRIPP
- Lacks temporal validity (Reicher and Haslam)