Zimbardo Et Al Study (1974) - Stanford Prison Study

• Male psychology students volunteered to be participants in the study at Stanford University.
• They randomly allocated into two seperate groups - prisoners and prison guards.
• Prisoners: Spend two weeks locked in cells in a wing of the university
• Prison Guards: To look after the prisoners and keep them under control
• Prisoners arrested at home unexpectantly and taken to the university, stripped, deloused and given prison uniforms + numbers
• Prisoners to spend 23 hours locked in their cells a day
• Prison guards given uniforms with sticks and sunglasses
• Prison guards worked shifts and went home after shifts

• Called off after 6 days
• Guards became brutal
• Two prisoners had some form of mental breakdown
• One prisoner developed a nervous rash
• One prisoner went on a hunger strike
• Guards gave orders and prisoners became apathetic - did as they were told, though it caused them distress

• Conformed to social roles expected of them - prison guards and prisoners
• Deindividualisation - Immersed in the norms of the group, lose sense of identity

Pro's:

• Maintained a degree of control and ecological validity
• Zimbardo collected data efficiently

Con's:

• Unrepresentative Sample - 24 healthy, male students, middle-class and white
• Lacks ecological validity - Couldn't be complete validity

• Deception - Didn't expect to get arrested at home
• Experiment was abandoned after 6 days
• Approval for the study was given by the Office of Naval Research
• No suitable alternative methodologies
• Extensive group + individual debriefing sessions were held
• Benefits gained about understanding human behaviour