The Stanford Prison Experiment

In 1971 a group of researchers came together headed by a Stanford University psychologist named Philip Zimbardo performed an experiment called The Stanford Prison Experiment. Using a mock prison setting in the basement of one of the campus buildings at Stanford University, with young college students roleplaying as either a prisoner or guard to determine the psychological effects in a particular social situation. His hypothesis being that social roles can influence and change the behavior of those given that particular role.
To gather candidates to examine Philip Zimbardo posts an ad in the newspaper looking for young college students to volunteer and be paid fifteen dollars per hour to participate in a one to two-week psychological study on

In the end only twenty-four were accepted and were randomly assigned equally into two groups, prisoner or guard.
On August 14, 1971, the twelve men that were given the role as “prisoner” were arrested without warning and taken to the police station on charges of burglary and armed robbery in front of their family and friends. There they were processed, fingerprinted and photographed, by the police. Then were blindfolded as they were transferred to the mock prison that was built in one of the basement of a campus building. They were deloused, had their heads shaven, and given their uniform and ID number and then placed in a cell as they would in a real prison setting. The other twelve men were the “guards”, those men were given a guard’s uniform, sunglasses, and a baton. Their orders only being to do what they thought was necessary to keep order in the prison but not to use any kind of violence. Even though the first day was uneventful you could see within hours both groups began to settle into their roles very quickly. It wasn’t until the second day there was a situation when the prisoner started a rebellion, which made the guards further adopt their role and began using more mental

Just like any experiment there is always an independent and dependent variable; in this case the independent variable was the roles, prisoner or guard, that were randomly assigned, and the dependent variable was the behavior and reactions of the volunteers under their