Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment Summary

Philip George Zimbardo is an American contemporary social psychologist and was a professor of psychology at Stanford University. Zimbardo is best known for his Stanford Prison Experiment where he wanted to explore the idea of power of anonymity which enables the tendency of violent behaviours regardless of if, they are overall good people. Therefore, he held an experiment with 24 “good apples” (Zimbardo 52) in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life. He wanted to test how promptly a person is willing to uphold the roles of guards and prisoners. Moreover, in 1977 Zimbardo created a clinic called The Stanford Shyness Clinic where he wanted to help others overcome shyness. In addition, he is also known for the time paradox, the lucifer
For instance, he discusses how he felt that he “should have been with someone with authority above [him]” (54) thus, Zimbardo himself had somewhat been interjected into his role of the prison superintendent. Moreover, Zimbardo also, discusses the result of his experiments in which, he believes that people tend to have a fixation for violent behaviours being that, violence and power coincide with one another. That being said, this article is considered a narrative and not a research report because Zimbardo is retelling his experiment by giving a narrative of his work instead of, giving his professional report of his experiment. A research report example is “Musa Latrinals: Gender Differences in Restroom Graffiti” by Otta and Satana which is content analysis research report which is exactly what this text is not. In other words, this text does not have the same format as a research report, it also does not contain an abstract, and his diction throughout this article is more anecdotal than