Zimbardo Et Al (1974) Stanford Prison study

• Male psychology students at the prestigious Stanford university in California.
• Voluneered to be participants in the study.
• Randomly allocated into two groups - Prisoners and prison guards.
• Prisoners: To spend 2 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 and prison numbers.
• Prisoners to spend 23 hours a day locked in their cells.
• 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 nervous break down.
• One prisoner developed a nervous rash.
• One prisoner went on a hunger strike.
• Guards gave orders and prisoners became apethetic - Did as they were told, though it caused them distress.

• Conformed to social roles.
• Deindividualisation - Immersed in the norms of the group, lose sense of identity.

+ Maintained a degree of control and some ecological validity - As close to real life as possible (EG prisoners arrested from home).

+ Zimbardo collected data efficiently.

- Unrepresentative sample - 24 healthy, male college students. Middle class and white.

- Lacks ecological validity - Couldn't be completely realistic.

• Deception - Being unexpectedly arrested at home.
• Experiment was abandoned after the 6 days.
• Approval for the study was given by the Office of Naval research.
• No suitable alternative methodologies.
• Extensive group and individual debriefing sessions held.
• Benefits gained about understanding human behaviour.