Essay On Zimbardo

One of the studies that we covered in class during the Social Psychology unit was the Stanford prison experiment run by Philip Zimbardo. This study has the broad design of an experiment. It is an experiment because Zimbardo set out to see the effects of prison and social roles. The idea is that he was experimenting with a group of people to see how their social roles would change once put into the controlled environment of the mock prison space. It is more specifically known as a Quasi Experimental method which is known as the before and after design (Fuller,2005). “The researchers could not use controls in the experiment because they would have no way to compare them to the prison guards and the prisoners” (Fuller, 2005).

The independent variable was the condition the participant was put into at random: either prisoner or guard. This is the independent because it was what caused the effect of the dependent variable. It was the role the participant was given that controlled by the experimenter since it was given to them randomly. The dependent variable is the way in which the participant behaved in the role, because the behavior was caused by the role the participant was given. The resulting behavior is how the researchers were able to measure the impact the …show more content…
In the study the participants just did as they were told, the guards used their power to control the prisoners. This was taken to extremes making all the prisoners wanting to leave the study and resulting in psychological damage. If the prisoners had not been so submissive the guards would not have believed they had so much power over them. Average people have to make sure they do not give people in positions of power too much power, and when what those people in power do does not make sense they must questions them. Without that sort of questioning people in roles of power will take their power to the