The Stanford Prison Experiment Summary

The Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted in 1971 by psychologist Philip Zimbardo explored the moral impact of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. Zimbardo, a former classmate of Stanley Milgram who conducted his own obedience experiment (The Milgram Obedience Study), looked to expand upon Milgram's research. He sought to further investigate the impact of situational variables on human behavior. The main question the researchers asked was, how the participants would react when placed in a simulated prison environment. The participants that were chosen were undergraduate students who were physically healthy with no history of mental illness or a criminal record. They would be selected to fill either the role of prisoner or prison guard. The main question was “Would those good people,

put in that bad, evil place—would their goodness triumph?" Zimbardo explained in one interview. They set up a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University's psychology building, and then screened and selected 24 students from a larger group of 70 volunteers to play the roles of either prisoners or guards and would receive compensation of $15 a day. Researchers were able to observe the behavior of the prisoners and guards using hidden cameras and microphones. The Stanford Prison Experiment was originally scheduled to last 14 days. However, it had to be stopped after just six due to what was happening to some of the student participants. The guards had become abusive and the prisoners began to show signs of extreme stress and anxiety. Though there was no physical violence between the guards and prisoners, their interactions were generally hostile and dehumanizing. Due to the conditions in which they were subjected, five of the prisoners began to display such severe negative emotions such as crying and acute anxiety and were released from the study early.

Even the researchers themselves began to lose sight of the reality of the situation. Zimbardo, who acted as the prison warden, overlooked the abusive behavior of the prison guards until graduate student Christina Maslach voiced objections to the conditions in the simulated prison and the morality of continuing the experiment. "Only a few people were able to resist the situational temptations to yield to power and dominance while maintaining some semblance of morality and decency; obviously I was not among that noble class," Zimbardo later wrote in his book The Lucifer Effect (Zimbardo, 2007). According to Zimbardo and his colleagues, the Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrates the powerful role that the situation can play in human behavior. Because the guards were placed in a position of power, they began to behave in ways they would not normally act in their everyday lives or in other situations. The prisoners, placed in a situation where they had no real control, became passive and

depressed.