Zimbardo's prison study

Zimbardo's aim

To investigate how freely people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that re-created prison life.

Describe Zimbardo's procedure

- He set up a mock prison at Stanford university. They advertised for students willing to volunteer.

- The students were randomly assigned to the role of prisoner or guard.

- to enhance the realism of the study, the 'prisoner' were arrested in their homes. Once at the prison, they were blindfolded, strip-searched, deloused and issued a uniform and a number.

- The prisoner names were never used, only there numbers.

- The guards were they had complete control over the prisoners, even deciding when they go to the toilet.

Describe the findings of Zimbardo's prison study

- Guards grew increasingly tyrannical and abusive towards the prisoners.

- They forced them to clean toilets with their bare hands.

- Participants seemed to forget that they were merely acting.

- They conformed to their roles even when they were unaware of being watched.

- Five prisoners had to be released early because of extreme reactions.

- The study was terminated after just six days

- Both prisoners and guards conformed to their social roles.

Describe the conclusion of Zimbardo's study

The simulation revealed the power of the situation to influence people's behaviour. Guards and prisoners conformed to their social roles.

Zimbardo's Evaluation AO3

😊 A strength of Zimbardo's study is that he had control over variables, such as the selection of participants and the random allocation of them to roles. He therefore used emotionally stable individuals. This is a strength because it means the study has internal validity. We can therefore be more confident about drawing conclusions about behaviour.

☹️Some critics of the study have argued that the participants were merely play acting as they knew they were apart of a study. Their performances were based on their stereotypes of how prisoners and guards are supposed to behave. Therefore the study lacks realism

☹️There is a lack of research support. Reicher and Haslam study was broadcast on BBC TV. Their findings were very different to Zimbardo, as they found that it was the prisoners who took control of the mock prison and subjected the guards to a campaign of harassment and disobedience. According to Reicher and Haslam, the guards failed to develop a shared social identity as a cohesive group but the prisoners did.

☹️Fromm accused Zimbardo of exaggerating the power of the situation to influence behaviour and minimizing the role of personality factors. Zimbardo believed that the guards' drift into sadistic behaviour was an automatic consequence of them embracing their role. However, in the SPE, guard behaviour varied from being fully sadistic to, for a few, being good guards. These guards did not degrade or harass prisoners. Only a third of the guards behaved in a brutal manner.