Zimbardo - Prison Study
Storyboard Text
- In 1973 Phillip Zimbardo conducted the "Stanford prison experiment" to see if one's role could influence their behaviour.Zimbardo was interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was dispositional (due to the guards having sadistic personalities) or situational ( the guards being influenced by the environment of a prison).
- Zimbardo and his team interviewed 70 applicants at Stanford who were willing to take part in his experiment which was initially planned to last 14 days and the participants would be paid $15 a day. The 24 most bright and mentally stable applicants were picked to take part in the experiment. the roles of the participants were assigned by flipping a coin, 12 would be prisoners, 12 would be guards.
- The researchers then took a basement at Stanford and turned it into a real-life prison. The researchers wanted to make the experiment feel as real as it could the prisoners were arrested in public, booked, fingerprinted and strip-searched.
- When the prisoners arrived at the prison they were stripped naked, had all their personal possessions removed and locked away. They were given a uniform and a number.The use of ID numbers was a way to make prisoners feel anonymous. Each prisoner had to be called only by his ID number and could only refer to himself and the other prisoners by number.
- The guards were given free rein on how they could treat the prisoners and only had to follow two rules.1. They could not hit the prisoners2. They could not keep prisoners in solitary confinement for more than an hour.Zimbardo himself played the role of prison super intendant, his graduate students and research partners also played roles as members of the parole board and prison wardens.
- It did not take long for the guards to start abusing their power, the physical and psychological abuse included things such as taking away their beds as punishment, sleep deprivation and placing bags on the prisoner's heads. It did not take long for the prisoners to spiral out of control.
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