Stanford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo

In August of 1971, the U.S. Office of Naval Research funded an experiment to study the psychological effects of the guard and prisoner roles. They were interested in understanding the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners. Led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo, and conducted at Stanford University, he used students to study the psychology of imprisonment. This experiment was known as the Stanford Prison Experiment.

The goals of this experiment were to test the hypothesis that a prisoner and guards personality traits were a main cause of abusive behavior in prison. Twenty-four participants were assigned either the role of a guard or prisoner and the experiment was to last 7 to 14 days. Conducted in the basement of Stanford’s psychology building, Zimbardo instructed the guards not

This experiment might not have gone the way Zimbardo had planned, and admitted that the guards and prisoners as well as himself, adapted to their roles more that he expected. Some of the guards were judged to have exhibited “genuine sadistic tendencies.” Conclusion". Stanford Prison Experiment. And only after he was confronted did he realize that he had been passively allowing unethical acts to happen in his role as ‘warden’. This experiment shows that seemingly normal individuals when put into a situation can exhibit behavior that is not what they would normally do. Perhaps these participants were more likely to do what they believed the researchers wanted them to do. One of the guards went as far as to create a more intense character for his own experiment. He found he was able to get the other guards to follow him in a more abusive role. The guards were basically told and allowed to be cruel. However, it was precisely there willingness to comply with the experiment's questionable practices that showed how easily human nature is