Philip Zimbardo: The Stanford Prison Study

According to Kassin in our textbook on page 309 “A model of group behavior that explains deindividuation effects as the result of a shift from personal identity to social identity.” (Kassin, S. M., Fein, S., & Markus H. R. (2011). Depersonalization differs from deindividualization in the fact that it does not imply a loss of individual identity, but a change of the personal level in the social level of identity. Usually people's behavior varies when they are in a group, and in a way they experience the feeling of being in an environment where "anything goes". Being within a large group, the individual often loses his identity and incorporates the identity of the group, as well as its rules. Thus, it is very often that the conduct of human beings is different from being within
(n.d.). To test his theories, Zimbardo conducted a study, known as the Stanford Prison Study, which confirmed his theoretical development of deindividuation. Zimbardo postulates that the individual in a group is less likely to follow normal rules of behavior, partly because they become anonymous and the sense of responsibility fades. In addition, the individual's self-awareness is relaxed. Some examples from the prison study that we can see is that the anonymity is accentuated in situations in which the members of the group wear uniforms or bags to cover their faces. In the same, 24 participants incarcerated the roles of guards and prisoners in a prison replica prepared at Stanford University. 12 of the participants dressed as prison guards, wearing sunglasses and uniforms and the other 12 as prisoners wearing some type of long shirts almost like dresses. Zimbardo noticed that the participants in the role of guards behaved abusively and that the young people who took the role of prisoners, although at first rebelled, soon showed passive and even depressive behavior. The experiment, scheduled to last 2 weeks, was suspended at 6 days due to the extreme behaviors of