The Stanford Prison Experiment By : Mike Carpenter, Karl Hancock, Michael Dickerson, Mat Harr, and Chris Phillips

A Quick Rundown The Stanford Prison Experiment was a social psychological experiment that tested to see how “normal” people would react to drastic changes in their life.

The Hypothesis Researcher Philip Zimbardo theorized that the situation people are placed in would determine the way that they behaved.

The Experiment 24 undergraduates for Stanford University were gathered for this experiment. 12 were given the role of prisoners, and 12 were given the role of prison guards. The prisoners were placed in cells, while the guards kept watch over the prisoners for the next 14 days.

Rebellion On the second day of the experiment, one of the “prisoners” started a riot. The “guards” quickly, and viciously struck down the rebellion, and placed the instigator into solitary.

Lost Identities After the riot was ended, the prisoners started to act with blind obedience towards the guards. While the guards would taunt them, and abused them. It was as though the subjects had forgotten their old identities, and replaced them with their new rolls as “Prisoner” or “Guard”. Even Philip Zimbardo, the lead researcher claimed that he had started to think of himself as the Superintendent opposed to thinking of himself as a researcher.

An Early End Because of the constant abuse from the guards, the experiment was cut short. Instead of lasting for 14 days, the experiment lasted for only 6 days. However, before the research was terminated, 5 of the 12 prisoners had already left because of emotional breakdowns.

Results The Stanford Prison Experiment was a successful failure. The experiment did show that when the subjects were placed in certain roles, they would act accordingly. However, the subject group was too small to make any accurate conclusions, and the results that they did acquire carried little ecological valdity.