Summary Of Philip Zimbardo's Prison Experiment

Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment was also about cognitive dissonance; whether or not people would be obedient to authority. The Stanford Prison Experiment took place in 1971 and was to last 2 weeks; the study only lasted 6 days because some participants were experiencing severe anxiety or, like one participant, went on a hunger strike. Participants responded to an ad offering money if they signed up for a prison research experiment. Some participants were made guards, others were made prisoners. The prisoners were picked up at their home in a police car and taken to the police station, fingerprinted, and mug shots were taken. They were they transported to the fake prison at Stanford where they were strip searched and given prisoner numbers.
Afterwards, he observed that some guards were becoming very sadistic; almost enjoying inflicting emotional pain on the prisoners. One prisoner went on a hunger strike, another prisoner became hysterical after 36 hours and had to be terminated, another prisoner escaped saying he would return for the others but never returned. Zimbardo’s girlfriend was brought in to interview participants and found that conditions were subpar. In August 1971, Zimbardo stopped the experiment. He said that out of 50 people who observed the experiment, his girlfriend, a psychologist conducting the interviews was the only one to say anything. Zimbardo’s experiment concluded that because of the situation that the people were in, it created prisoners to act the way they did. The Stanford Prison experiment definitely lacked beneficence. Furthermore, I believe the Stanford Experiment did not seek out signed informed consent. However, in those days, I don’t believe that was a requirement. Another thing is that Zimbardo didn’t debrief his participants until months later. People need to be debriefed when coming out of a research project just like soldiers are debriefed when coming back from