Reference
- STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENTThe Stanford Prison Experiment was designed to control for the individual personality variables that were often used at that time to explain behaviour in prison and other institutional settings. That is, the researchers neutralized the explanatory argument that pathological traits alone could account for extreme and abusive behaviour by 1) selecting a group of participants who were psychological healthy and who had scored in the normal range of the numerous personality variables they measured and selected for; and 2) by assigning participants to either the role of prisoner or guard on a completely random basis. The behaviour that resulted when these otherwise healthy, normal participants were placed in the extreme environment of a simulated prison would have to be explained largely, if not entirely, on the basis of the characteristics of the social setting or situation in which they had been placed.
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Streaming Media
- A Closer Look at the Stanford Prison ExperimentKhan Academy lecture on the Stanford Prison Experiment.
- Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison ExperimentGuaranteed to stimulate critical thinking and discussion, this program features archival footage of Dr. Philip Zimbardo's famed prison experiment conducted at Stanford University in 1971. It also includes flashbacks, post-experiment interviews with the prisoners and guards, and comparisons with real prisons. It vividly shows the pathology that developed among participants, forcing the two-week study to be terminated after only 6 days. This experiment was the classic study that highlighted how the power of the situation can influence behavior, where even Zimbardo was drawn into his role as the prison superintendent, and it illustrated the consequences of deindividuation.
Online Resources
- About the Stanford Prison ExperimentCarried out August 15-21, 1971 in the basement of Jordan Hall, the Stanford Prison Experiment set out to examine the psychological effects of authority and powerlessness in a prison environment. The study, led by psychology professor Philip G. Zimbardo, recruited Stanford students using a local newspaper ad. Twenty-four students were carefully screened and randomly assigned into groups of prisoners and guards. The experiment, which was scheduled to last 1-2 weeks, ultimately had to be terminated on only the 6th day as the experiment escalated out of hand when the prisoners were forced to endure cruel and dehumanizing abuse at the hands of their peers. The experiment showed, in Dr. Zimbardo’s words, how “ordinary college students could do terrible things.”
- Debunking the Stanford Prison ExperimentThe Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) is one of psychology's most famous studies. It has been criticized on many grounds, and yet a majority of textbook authors have ignored these criticisms in their discussions of the SPE, thereby misleading both students and the general public about the study's questionable scientific validity. Data collected from a thorough investigation of the SPE archives and interviews with 15 of the participants in the experiment further question the study's scientific merit. These data are not only supportive of previous criticisms of the SPE, such as the presence of demand characteristics, but provide new criticisms of the SPE based on heretofore unknown information.
- Revisiting the Stanford prison experiment, againThe day before the Stanford prison experiment began, the investigators held an orientation session for the guards in which they communicated expectations for hostile guard behavior, a flippant prisoner mindset, and the possibility of ending the study prematurely. While the study's principal investigator has minimized the influence of this orientation, critics have speculated that it provided a "script" for guard abuse.
- Stanford Prison ExperimentWelcome to the official Stanford Prison Experiment website, which features extensive information about a classic psychology experiment that inspired an award-winning movie, New York Times bestseller, and documentary DVD.