Zimbardo's Prison Experiment
Philip Zimbardo, born in 1933 in New York (USA) is a psychologist and investigator, who focus in social psychology. His best known work is the Stanford´s Prison experiment, searching for an explanation for the violence in the USA prisons. He wanted to know if this behaviour is due to the personalities of the guards (i.e. dispositional) or due to the prison environment and structure (i.e. situational). He later gave class in some of the best universities of the world; Yale, NYU and Columbia.
His also known for other two works:The Time Paradox and The Time Cure.
I´ll try to explain in the simplest way I can this experiment. Zimbardo used a basement of the Stanford university to recreate in a very realistic way a prison. He then took 70 volunteers
and chose 10 prisoners and 11 guards making sure that all of them were completely healthy and didn't have any tendece to sadistic behaviour.
They were put in prison, the guards were told to do whatever they thought was necessary to keep order and the prisoners were given the appropriate clothing and an identification number. Within little time the guards started to treat prisoners with superiority and begging to harass them. Prisoners took a little more time but started to dehumanised started acting submissive.
As time passed the prisoners became more and more dependent and the guards more sadistic. Zimbardo took to prison a priest to talk to the prisoners, and when they talked to him it was obvious that they started to see the prison as totally real. One prisoner refused to o to talk to them, but #819 was feeling sick and other people shouted "Prisoner #819 is a bad prisoner. Because of what Prisoner #819 did, my cell is a mess, Mr. Correctional Officer.” This shows how they were absolutely submerged in the experiment.
He concluded that people are willing to take a social role and behave in a group. Also he found that the environment is a fundamental part of this phenomena, the jail structure influenced guards strongly. To explain the behaviour of the prisoners he proposed two processes: deindividuation ( the structure of the group becomes stronger than the sense of self); helplessness, knowing that they could do nothing to improve the situation could result in submission. He interviewed the participants, some extracts will help to understand the conclusions:”Most of the participants said they had felt involved and committed. The research had felt "real" to them. One guard said, "I was surprised at myself. I made them call each other names and clean the toilets out with their bare hands. I practically considered the prisoners cattle and I kept thinking I had to watch out for them in case they tried something.”
This experiment shows that the situational explanation is closer to explain violence in jail. The environment, structure and social group can, in determined situations, superpose the individual self.This not only applies to exceptional cases but is also related to situations in the day-to-day life.
His also known for other two works:The Time Paradox and The Time Cure.
I´ll try to explain in the simplest way I can this experiment. Zimbardo used a basement of the Stanford university to recreate in a very realistic way a prison. He then took 70 volunteers
and chose 10 prisoners and 11 guards making sure that all of them were completely healthy and didn't have any tendece to sadistic behaviour.
They were put in prison, the guards were told to do whatever they thought was necessary to keep order and the prisoners were given the appropriate clothing and an identification number. Within little time the guards started to treat prisoners with superiority and begging to harass them. Prisoners took a little more time but started to dehumanised started acting submissive.
As time passed the prisoners became more and more dependent and the guards more sadistic. Zimbardo took to prison a priest to talk to the prisoners, and when they talked to him it was obvious that they started to see the prison as totally real. One prisoner refused to o to talk to them, but #819 was feeling sick and other people shouted "Prisoner #819 is a bad prisoner. Because of what Prisoner #819 did, my cell is a mess, Mr. Correctional Officer.” This shows how they were absolutely submerged in the experiment.
He concluded that people are willing to take a social role and behave in a group. Also he found that the environment is a fundamental part of this phenomena, the jail structure influenced guards strongly. To explain the behaviour of the prisoners he proposed two processes: deindividuation ( the structure of the group becomes stronger than the sense of self); helplessness, knowing that they could do nothing to improve the situation could result in submission. He interviewed the participants, some extracts will help to understand the conclusions:”Most of the participants said they had felt involved and committed. The research had felt "real" to them. One guard said, "I was surprised at myself. I made them call each other names and clean the toilets out with their bare hands. I practically considered the prisoners cattle and I kept thinking I had to watch out for them in case they tried something.”
This experiment shows that the situational explanation is closer to explain violence in jail. The environment, structure and social group can, in determined situations, superpose the individual self.This not only applies to exceptional cases but is also related to situations in the day-to-day life.