Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment

A STUDY OF PRISONERS AND GUARDS IN A SIMULATED PRISON

Craig Haney, Curtis Banks and Phillip Zimbardo

Stanford University.

What was the general topic addressed in the article?

The general topic addressed in this article is the experiment of the study of prisoners and Guards in a simulated prison at Stanford University.

What was the purpose of the research?

The purpose of the research described in the experiment is to investigate life experienced in prison by both prisoners and guards, the psychological effect it has on both groups. To understand, “basic psychological mechanisms underlying human aggression,”(Zimbardo et al., 1973, p.1).

What is the Author(s) hypothesis/hypothesis?

There were two hypothetical argument in this research.

Haney and Mr. Banks are graduate assistants. The 22 college students who were selected out of the 75 respondents who answered a newspaper ad asking for male volunteers to participate in a psychological study of a ‘prison life’ in return for payment of $15 per day. The college students who were randomly assigned to act as “guards” (with all attendant powers) and half were assigned to the role of “prisoner” (under the complete subjugation of the

All the above contributed to the success of the experiment.

Limitations of the experiment.

The research could have constructed more than one site to carry out the experiment then compare the results to see whether they got the same findings.

The participants in this experiment were not the real guards and prisoner hence this does not give a real picture of what is happening on the ground as they were just doing it for the sake of money though they were negatively and emotionally affected.

The maximum ‘sentence’ two weeks that is too short to prove the ‘point’.

The conditions were too minimal to provide a meaningful analogue to the existing prisons.

Conclusion

This experiment was very educative and informative study which is a simulation of the prison life in most prisons in the world today, were the subjects have been made to understand that they have no human rights as they deserve such hostile treatments. I recall in my country we could witness prisoners being carried in a “caged” trucks transporting them to go and work on people’s private farms, and they pay money to the administrators of these institutions so called rehabilitation centers were prisoner are subjected under very hard conditions thinking they are shaping their behaviors positively .In line with this pattern of thought, it’s not enough to say that only prisoners are responsible for the undesirable conditions in the prison but also the administrators