After posting an ad in the newspaper, Philip Zimbardo gathered twenty-four college males who lived in the vicinity of Stanford to participant in an experiment, known as the Stanford prison experiment. The ad was misleading to the participants because they did not consent to being arrested at their residence.
The experimenter, Zimbardo, tainted his own research by posing as the superintendent of the fictional prison. Later, after the experiment ended abruptly, Zimbardo sat down with the individuals and explained the real aim for the study.
The male students were deceived by the real meaning of the study. The volunteers knew little about the study except it was to research the impact of human behavior in a prison environment. Zimbardo and his colleagues had already separated the participants by forming two groups and a coin decided their fate. One group had the role as prison guards and the others were prisoners.
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Prisoners become distraught after having their privileges taken away. They were humiliated in front of their neighbors and inside the prison. They were identified by a made up number instead of their names. The environment was depressing with limited outside contact. The prisoners could not distinguish the difference from reality and the fictional prison which led them to retaliate against the guards.
There was some confidentiality among the volunteers because they were given ID numbers and were not allowed to use their names and the guards were addressed as just that. The anonymity and confidentiality of the experiment didn't exist because the volunteers were arrested outside their homes and the researchers knew the selected men.
Zimbardo's experiment is quasi and observational with the means of discovering how social influence affects people in a prison like environment. Each participant was given a role and some adapted quickly and took it seriously especially when given the power of