Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment Summary

In 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo set up a simulated prison experiment in order to show that people tend to slip into their predefined roles regardless of their own judgements and morals. Zimbardo was interested in the power of given social situation and social roles.
To conduct the experiment, Zimbardo and his colleagues Hainey and Banks set up a fake prison facility in the basement of Stanford University. There was a small opening at the end of the hall and intercom system was placed for Zimbardo and his colleagues to observe and listen to the prisoners. An advertisement was placed on newspaper offering 15$ per day for participating in the study. Out of more than 70 responses they received, 24 male students were deemed mentally and emotionally stable enough to participate in the study after extensive interviews and personality tests to eliminate the ones who seemed to have mental and psychological problems as well as those who had prior drug and alcohol abuse problem. The subjects were randomly divided into 2 groups of 12 guards and 12 prisoners by a coin flip.
The participants who were selected to be the guards were given proper uniforms, fully equipped with batons and shades to prevent eye-contact with the prisoners and make them appear less human. At the meeting with the
At their arrival, they greeted the warden who stated the seriousness of their crime and their status as a new prisoner. Straight away the prisoners were searched, stripped naked and sprayed (to remove germs and lice) and given cheap smock with their id numbers and no underwear was allowed. They also wore woman’s nylon stocking to cover their hair and heavy chain around their ankles. You can imagine that straight away they would have felt degraded and dehumanized even knowing that it is just a