Zimbardo's Level Of Conformity

The biggest surprise was the level of conformity that took place over such a small period of time. Zimbardo believed that the experiment showed how the individual personalities of people could be overwhelmed when given positions of authority.
The explanation for the behavior of the participants could be that they were taking on the social roles they believed were assigned to them and adopted the norms associated with those roles rather than referring to their own internal morals or beliefs to judge the situation. For example, guards should be authoritarian and abuse prisoners while prisoners should become submissive and take their punishment. The young men who were assigned to be guards joined the study thinking that it was the other young