Zimbardos Prison Experiment Flashcards
What were the aims of the Stanford prison experiment?
To find out whether guards behave brutally because of their sadistic personalities or if there’s something about prison environment and social roles which causes this?
What was the procedure he followed?
-Zimbardo made a mock prison
-he tested the volunteers to make sure they were emotionally stable
-students were assigned as guards or prisoners randomly
-to increase realism they were arrested at their own houses
-they were taken to police station and strip searched , given uniform and numbers
-prisoners had certain routines
-guards were given sunglasses , handcuffs which emphasised authority
-guards had control
What were the findings of the prison experiment?
Guards became really abusive and evil
Guards put out rebellion using fire extinguishers , in which the prisoners became depressed and anxious
Why did the procedure at the Stanford prison experiment have ethical issues?
- they didn’t have the right to withdraw - when a participant asked to leave zimbardo responded as a superintendent and told him to stay
-didn’t have protection of harm- prisoners left early as they had reactions to the physical and mental torments. One prisoner had constant fits of crying because he was psychologically damaged. The guards also abused the prisoners
Questions the integrity of the study
Why was zimbardos experiment affected by demand characteristics?
This is because one of the guards admitted that he was pretending to be a guard from an action film. They were play acting rather than acting natural and maybe guessed the aims of the experiment and acted accordingly.
The experiment was shown to students and they guessed the aims successfully.
Why do zimbardos experiment lack internal validity?
The bbc recreated the study and seen that the prisoners took over the prison. This shows that his findings aren’t consistent and lack internal validity.
What is a strength of zimbardos prison experiment?
The Abu ghraib prison had similar results to the spe
Zimbardo believed that the guards who committed the abuses were the victims of situational factors that made abuse more likely.
It is a strength as it can give us an insight into conformity of social roles in modern day events.
