Question

The psychologist Phillip Zimbardo conducted a famous prison study at Stanford University in the 1960’s. Describe this experiment and the phenomenon it was supposed to study as well as what it ended up truly revealing about people and institutions.

Answer 1

Stanford Prison experiment is one of the most important experiments in the history of psychology. Philip Zimbardo wanted to find out whether the brutality of the American prison guards are due their personality or because of the environment. He chose 24 male college students from the pool of 75 applicants after a formal advertisement. They were given 15 dollars a day. The participants were divided into two groups, prisoners and guards. When the experiment started, people acted as if they were real people. Volunteers who assumed the role of prison guards started to torture the volunteers who acted as prisoners. The brutality got to an extent where Zimbardo had to stop the experiment before its proposed end date. The findings confirmed that people act according to the situation they are in and roles that they are playing although they don’t actually act in that way in their real lives.