Stanford Prison Experiment Zimbardo

Conducted in August 1971 by Professor Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford Prison Experiment was an experimental study using students to evaluate how an individual’s behavior can be shaped when put in certain situations involving power. The students chosen to participate were assigned randomly as either a prison guard or a prisoner and were placed in the basement of the Psychology Department at Stanford University to conduct the experiment. Despite being planned to run for two weeks, the experiment only lasted six days due to it becoming too brutal and raising the chance of endangering the students involved mentally.
The students chosen to be the prison guards used a variety of methods to try to control the students that were acting as the prisoners. …show more content…
Zimbardo says that the experiment showed that power corrupts and that the victims of the abuse had a hard time standing up for themselves. Zimbardo himself experienced this since he was playing the roles of both himself and that of the prison’s superintendent which he states he wouldn’t do the again. He explains that he would have someone else be the prison’s superintendent while he supervised so that he wouldn’t lose himself in the role again. It wasn’t until a colleague of his saw the boys playing the roles of prisoners marching down the hall in chains with bags over their heads that Zimbardo saw just how far this experiment had gone and how into the role he himself had gotten. Even he fell into the conformity of his role even though he wasn’t one of the guards ordering around the prisoners or one of the prisoners having to be obedient to the guards. The guards, prisoners, and Zimbardo all felt that it wasn’t an experiment or study but rather a real jail that was run by Zimbardo rather than the government. They all fell victim to the power they were given and lost sight of it being an