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The Stanford Prison Experiment And The Milgram Obedience Experiment

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In this essay I will be analyzing many components of the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Obedience Experiment. The main findings of the Stanford Prison Experiment revealed that due to the power of their situational roles, participants had truly become the guards and prisoners that they impersonated. Moreover, the experiment showed how people will readily and innately conform to a social role that they are expected to play, even if it is unethical(Musen, 1988). However, there were concerns about the validity and generalizability of the experiment.
In the Stanford Prison Experiment, the use of a nonrandom, convenience sample impacts the validity of the experiment in a substantial way. The experiment cannot be claimed as valid because …show more content…

First of all, because Zimbardo was so heavily involved in the study, it would lead to experimental bias. Experimental bias is when a researcher, Zimbardo in this case, expectations of what will happen impact the interpretation of the results of the study(Buvinger, 2023). It was also confirmed by Zimbardo that his involvement in the study led to him telling the participants exactly how they should treat the prisoners. He even gave the participants an orientation over how they should behave towards the prisoners(Griggs, 2014). Since Zimbardo gave them direct commands on how to behave, he was most likely looking for the results correlated to how he told them to behave over the experiment. He may have been so focused on seeing how the guards treated their prisoners that he totally missed other big findings in the experiment. The participants who were guards also had their experiences impacted by Zimbardo. Since Zimbardo told them how to behave in the study, they felt like they had to comply and do what they were told. This is called demand characteristics, where participants may behave in ways they think are expected of them responding to Subtle or unintentional cues from experimenters(Buvinger, 2023). Because of demand characteristics, the participants did not truly act how they would which deems the results invalid. The subjectivity of the study would lead to extremely biased results in the experiment. Since Zimbardo had such a direct impact on the experiment it is fair to conclude that he would make sure the results fit his hypothesis. Furthermore, the subjectivity of the study may have contributed to the results, such as guard behavior, being padded or embellished to make him seem correct. Now I will transition to the Milgram Obedience

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