Evaluating Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment

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Evaluating Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment

Advantages

  • High variable control - participants were screened for emotional stability and mental health issues, meaning that any behaviours during the experiment were as a result of social roles rather than extraneous variables.
  • Countering the lack of realism - prisoner participants acted as if the prison were real - e.g 90% of conversations were related to prison life and did not know when they would be released. This shows that the experiment did replicate the social roles of prisons which suggests high internal validity.

Disadvantages

  • Lack of realism - participants were acting rather than actually conforming to their social role. E.g one guard said he styled his guard on a film character; the prisoners only rioted as they thought that was what occurred in reality. This does not explain conformity to social roles in reality.
  • Exaggeration of power roles - only 1/3 of guards were brutal, so majority resisted social pressures to conform to the social roles. Minimised the impact of dispositions factors.
  • Zimbardo’s conclusions do not tell us why some guards failed to conform.

Evaluation

Overall, the SPE was extremely unethical and caused psychological harm to its participants. There is quite a balanced argument in regards to strengths and limitations, however, overall, I would argue that the disadvantages outweigh the positive factors. 

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