Purpose Of The Study: Haney, Banks, And Zambardo

The purpose of the study done by Craig Haney, Curtis Banks, and Phillip Zambardo at Stanford University was to investigate the cause of aggression and hostility found in prison environments. The state of the prison system has long been explained away by the idea that "the state of the social institution of prison is due to the "nature" of the people who administrate it, or the "nature" of the people who populate is, or both" (Haney, Banks and Zimbardo, 1973, p. 2). According to the study, there was no specific hypotheses to be tested aside from proving whether this common thought was true as well as the thought that assigning a person to either a "prisoner" or "guard" role would have a significant psychological effect on the person's emotional
They placed an ad in the local newspaper looking to people who were willing to participate in a study about prison life in exchange for $15 per day. Of the 75 people who answered the ad, they chose 22 men who were able to pass the necessary background checks, physicals, and psychological evaluations to ensure there was no history of criminal activity, evaluate maturity, and anti-social tendencies. They also ensured there was no prior relationships between any of the participants to prevent any bias. All participants were Caucasian except for one Oriental
The experimenters went to great lengths to create a prison-like environment and to ensure that the "prisoners" went through most every aspect from the arrest through processing and booking, to the prison environment. It seems like it would help to make the whole experience a little more realistic. However, I think that given the fact that an experimenter must ensure the safety and well-being of their test subjects greatly hinders the true outcome of the experiment. A large part of the issues we hear about in prisons are things that could not possibly be included in a psychological test such as this, such as rape, physical violence, and riots. Not having been through an experiment such as this it is hard to say what it would truly be like, but one would imagine that without a real threat or fear of harm, it's hard to imagine what inmates and prison guards truly feel or think. The only way that I could think of that would increase the effectiveness of this study would be to take actual prisoners and guards, within certain parameters, and have them isolated in either a separate facility or separate isolated part of a prison to observe the actual processes and