1. In what ways are prisons brutal places?
Are they like this because of the personalities in them? (the dispositional hypothesis)
Or because of the situation/environment itself….(the situational hypothesis)
How would you find the answer to this question as a psychologist?

2. Planning your research
Which methodology would you use?
Who would be your participants?
What would your location be?
What would your procedure be?
How could you ensure ecological validity?
How long would it last for?
What would your predictions be?

3. Philip Zimbardo (1973) Methodology: a simulation/role play
Sample: 24 students, screened for “normality”
Location: basement of Stanford University, converted to a prison by using “functional equivalents”
Procedure: random assignation of students to role of prisoner or guard.
Prisoners are “arrested” at their homes, then stripped and deloused at the “prison”
Guards help set up the prison and are given instructions that they need to maintain control but not use physical violence.
Simulation planned to last for 2 weeks.
Both prisoners and guards are given specific clothes to wear.

4. Note the guard’s clothes

5. What are the prisoners wearing?

6. How would this make the prisoners feel?
Zimbardo writes about emasculation
And deindividuation
Which of these refers to the guards as well?

7. What were the results?
You should access Zimbardo’s website and look under “prison experiment” for the full story.
Even better, read “The Lucifer Effect”
Prisoners attempt to rebel, but when this is quashed by the guards they fall into a state of learned helplessness, characterised by passivity, obedience, depression.
Those of you who have Banyard’s blue book can look up Seligman’s study about learned helplessness.
They suffer from the pathological prisoner syndrome.
Why does this happen? Can you imagine it would happen to YOU?

8. And as for the guards…..
They start to abuse their power and enjoy abusing it, displaying pathology of power.
They developed different ways of emotionally abusing the prisoners
They were sad when the study was over
Why..? Try to think of five reasons why they might behave in this extreme way. Think of the SITUATION as well as their personalities.
Would YOU behave like this?

9. After the video…
What evidence is there that the participants internalised their roles? (i.e. that the study was high in ………?)
The prisoners called each other by their numbers
90% of the prisoners’ conversation was about the prison.
They really felt that they were not allowed out!
They believed that the guards were physically bigger than them.
The level of distress they experienced: several subjects had to leave the study and one developed a psychosomatic rash.

10. Evaluation What problems can you see with this study?
Were people merely responding to ….
…….demand characteristics?
In what ways might Zimbardo be accused of inadvertently affecting the results?
His role as superintendent: this study used the technique of participant observation.
His abuse of the prisoners right to withdraw
His instructions to the guards in the first instance.
The guards thought only the prisoners were being observed.

11. Key terms Pathology of power Pathological prisoner syndrome
Learned helplessness
Arbitrary control
Deindividuation
Dehumanisation
Emasculation
Internalisation
Simulation
Participant observation
Subjectivity/Objectivity
Functional equivalents
Situational/dispositional hypothesis
Smocks
Self-selecting sample (volunteer sample)