Zimbardo’s Prison Study
Abstract
In 1971, a Stanford University psychology professor named Philip Zimbardo and a team of researchers conducted an unorthodox study involving 24 male college students who would later be convinced that they were prison inmates and prison guards in less than 24 hours. This study was voluntarily cut short after only six days due to the unexpected results which were found.
Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment of August 1971 quickly became a classic. Using realistic methods, Zimbardo and others were able to create a prison atmosphere that transformed its participants. The young men who played prisoners and guards revealed how many circumstances can distort individual personalities and how anyone, when given complete control over others, can act like a monster. (Zimbardo, 1973 p69)
Thirty years ago, a group of young men were rounded up by Palo Alto police, fingerprinted, blindfolded and dropped off at a new jail, in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department. Strip searched, sprayed for lice and locked up with chains around their ankles; the "prisoners" were part of an experiment to test people's reactions to power dynamics in social situations. Other college student volunteers, the "guards" were given authority to dictate 24-hour-a-day rules. They were soon humiliating the "prisoners" in an effort to break their will.
In a few days the role dominated the person, they became real guards and real prisoners. So disturbing was the transformation that Zimbardo ordered the experiment abruptly ended.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was a flawed study but it still gives us much to think about. These students all signed contracts to be paid $15/day while they were in the prison environment. They had pre-knowledge that this was going to happen. They knew that this was a study by the Stanford Department of Psychology. Along with their fore-knowledge and their contract, they did not think to make available
In 1971, a Stanford University psychology professor named Philip Zimbardo and a team of researchers conducted an unorthodox study involving 24 male college students who would later be convinced that they were prison inmates and prison guards in less than 24 hours. This study was voluntarily cut short after only six days due to the unexpected results which were found.
Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment of August 1971 quickly became a classic. Using realistic methods, Zimbardo and others were able to create a prison atmosphere that transformed its participants. The young men who played prisoners and guards revealed how many circumstances can distort individual personalities and how anyone, when given complete control over others, can act like a monster. (Zimbardo, 1973 p69)
Thirty years ago, a group of young men were rounded up by Palo Alto police, fingerprinted, blindfolded and dropped off at a new jail, in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department. Strip searched, sprayed for lice and locked up with chains around their ankles; the "prisoners" were part of an experiment to test people's reactions to power dynamics in social situations. Other college student volunteers, the "guards" were given authority to dictate 24-hour-a-day rules. They were soon humiliating the "prisoners" in an effort to break their will.
In a few days the role dominated the person, they became real guards and real prisoners. So disturbing was the transformation that Zimbardo ordered the experiment abruptly ended.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was a flawed study but it still gives us much to think about. These students all signed contracts to be paid $15/day while they were in the prison environment. They had pre-knowledge that this was going to happen. They knew that this was a study by the Stanford Department of Psychology. Along with their fore-knowledge and their contract, they did not think to make available
References: Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison. International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1, 69-97. Zimbardo, Philip. "A Situationist Perspective on the Psychology of Evil: Understanding How Good People Are Transformed into Perpetrators.", chapter in The Social Psychology of Good And Evil: Understanding our Capacity for Kindness and Cruelty, New York, 2004.