Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment

Question 1

What did Zimbardo’s experiment research?

Answer 1

Looked at how social roles change how people act and the issues with prisons.

Question 2

What was the procedure?

Answer 2

• 25 male Stanford student volunteers and each were assigned at random prisoner or guard.
• The prisoners were blindfolded, sprayed with disinfectant allocated numbers, made to wear prisoner uniform and put into a fake prison in Stanford University.
  The guards were given Khaki shirts, dark glasses, wooden batons and were told they must control the prisoners using anything but physical violence.
• Experiment planned on lasting 2 weeks.

Question 3

What did Zimbardo find about how the guards acted.

Answer 3

• Guards Acted peacefully in beginning however soon became more violent and commanding.
• Guards exploited their power and ordered the prisoners to do meaningless tasks, press ups and facing the walls.
• Guards who disagreed with how the prisoners were treated did not speak up explained by NSI.

Question 4

What did Zimbardo find about how the prisoners acted.

Answer 4

• Prisoners did not conform to begin however started conforming to their roles.
• Became less supportive of each other and only cared for themselves.
• Prisoners were mentally tormented and experiment had to be ended after 6 days.

Question 5

Negative conclusion, lack of realism:

Answer 5

• Some argued that the guards were only ‘play acting’ in their position. One guard even confessed to being inspired by the guard in a movie, explaining why he was so stern. This inter shows guards did not become bad due to their social position.
• Prisoners stated they only rioted as that was what they believed they were to do.

Question 6

Negative evaluation, no control:

Answer 6

-Experiment lacked control. Zimbardo would not know if the participants really conformed to their position or if they already possessed those characteristics.

Question 7

Negative evaluation, Ethical issues:

Answer 7

Prisoners so mentally tormented after experiment and prisoners believed they could not leave. Many psychologists argue experiment was very unethical.

Question 8

Real world application.

Answer 8

• Iraq prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison were subjected to extreme human rights violations by US army.
• Prisoners were tortured, physically and sexually abused and some even murdered.
• This shows how extreme conformity makes people act and is a real world application of the SPE.

Question 9

Positive Evaluation:

Answer 9

• Emotionally stable individuals were chosen.
• Behaviour shown to be caused from pressure of situation.
• Test gave consistent results showing validity.