Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment Essay
Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment
Aim:
To test whether a person is predisposed to certain behaviour or whether the situation can affect their actions.
Method:
Zimbardo adapted the basement of Stanford University into a fake, but realistic prison, to replicate the psychological experience of imprisonment and deindividuation. Recruiting 25 emotionally stable, healthy, volunteers who were randomly assigned the role of prisoner or guard, expected to then act out their roles in a prison setting. With no warning those ‘prisoners’ were arrested at home by real police, taken, charged, booked and fingerprinted, then blindfolded and interned in the ‘fake’ prison. They were stripped, deloused, given a uniform and prison number. The ‘guards’ …show more content…
Due to the pathological reactions of the inmates the experiment was cut from two weeks to six days (Hill, 1998).
Findings:
Supported a situational hypothesis, blaming conditions not characteristics.
Prisoners reactions were associated with the loss of personal identity.
Guards were empowered through the legitimacy of their title (Griggs, 2014).
Reasoning:
Strengths:
Supports social psychological explanations of behaviour, useful within the penal system to understand the psychological impact of imprisonment.
High ecological value as the situation became real to the participants, conforming to social expectations of each role. Demonstrated how social situations can affect a person's behaviour (Gross and Rolls, 2008).
Limitations:
Although pre-approved ethically, ethics came into question as psychological harm and emotional stress was caused.
Excessive reactions question if the participants acted as they thought they should, not how prisoners and guards are realistically. This lack of realism, violence and duration limit generalisation and could give artificial results.
Qualitative therefore restrictive.
Zimbardo became too involved in his role and lost his objectivity (Cardwell and Flanagan, …show more content…
Reasoning:
A person can move between an autonomous state to an agentic state if they relinquish responsibility for their actions, in this case passing the responsibility to the experimenter.
Social influence can be motivated by fear and authority.
Conformity (compliance) - Indirect pressure from the desire to be accepted.
Conformity (internalisation) - A need to be right.
Strengths:
Participants never indicated post test that they thought it was fake, in their opinion their actions were real and not affected by external factors.
Identified obedience through situation not disposition and this was seen in the findings of all 18 similar experiments where different variables were put in place i.e different settings, identity,location and proximity of the parties. Results ranged from less than 10% (learner demanded shock) up to 91% (peer gave the shock) (Wu, 2003).
Limitations:
Orne and Holland (1968) said it lacked experimental realism/validity as the participants were responding to the demand characteristics through cues.
The findings cannot be generalised outside the laboratory as it was not in a natural setting.
Hofling Hospital
Aim:
To test whether a person is predisposed to certain behaviour or whether the situation can affect their actions.
Method:
Zimbardo adapted the basement of Stanford University into a fake, but realistic prison, to replicate the psychological experience of imprisonment and deindividuation. Recruiting 25 emotionally stable, healthy, volunteers who were randomly assigned the role of prisoner or guard, expected to then act out their roles in a prison setting. With no warning those ‘prisoners’ were arrested at home by real police, taken, charged, booked and fingerprinted, then blindfolded and interned in the ‘fake’ prison. They were stripped, deloused, given a uniform and prison number. The ‘guards’ …show more content…
Due to the pathological reactions of the inmates the experiment was cut from two weeks to six days (Hill, 1998).
Findings:
Supported a situational hypothesis, blaming conditions not characteristics.
Prisoners reactions were associated with the loss of personal identity.
Guards were empowered through the legitimacy of their title (Griggs, 2014).
Reasoning:
Strengths:
Supports social psychological explanations of behaviour, useful within the penal system to understand the psychological impact of imprisonment.
High ecological value as the situation became real to the participants, conforming to social expectations of each role. Demonstrated how social situations can affect a person's behaviour (Gross and Rolls, 2008).
Limitations:
Although pre-approved ethically, ethics came into question as psychological harm and emotional stress was caused.
Excessive reactions question if the participants acted as they thought they should, not how prisoners and guards are realistically. This lack of realism, violence and duration limit generalisation and could give artificial results.
Qualitative therefore restrictive.
Zimbardo became too involved in his role and lost his objectivity (Cardwell and Flanagan, …show more content…
Reasoning:
A person can move between an autonomous state to an agentic state if they relinquish responsibility for their actions, in this case passing the responsibility to the experimenter.
Social influence can be motivated by fear and authority.
Conformity (compliance) - Indirect pressure from the desire to be accepted.
Conformity (internalisation) - A need to be right.
Strengths:
Participants never indicated post test that they thought it was fake, in their opinion their actions were real and not affected by external factors.
Identified obedience through situation not disposition and this was seen in the findings of all 18 similar experiments where different variables were put in place i.e different settings, identity,location and proximity of the parties. Results ranged from less than 10% (learner demanded shock) up to 91% (peer gave the shock) (Wu, 2003).
Limitations:
Orne and Holland (1968) said it lacked experimental realism/validity as the participants were responding to the demand characteristics through cues.
The findings cannot be generalised outside the laboratory as it was not in a natural setting.
Hofling Hospital