Stanford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in the year of 1871 by the psychologist and professor Philip Zimbardo. The aim of the experiment was to see if the roles as a prison guard or a prisoner would affect their behaviour towards their roles they were randomly given and their role in society.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a Social Experiment which refers to the participants of the experiment being randomly selected, as each of the 24 males who participated were either selected as a prisoner who sits in a cell and follow instructions that the prisoner guards give or being selected as a prison guard who is outside the cells giving the instructions and keeping the prisoners in line. This experiment also has many extraneous variables

Each male participant was randomly assigned a role as a prisoner or prisoner guard as the experiment required each participant to have a role in their prison life. The prisoners were arrested and taken to the prison that was used for this this experiment, while the experiment with the participants as prisoners and prison guards proceeded Philip Zimbardo and his team bugged the prison cells to see what the prisoners discussed amongst themselves which was private. They monitored the prisoners and prison guards, this experiment conducted showed that the participant’s behaviours changed due to the role they were selected as. The experiment only lasted 6 days as to the 2 weeks that it was meant to last, this was due to the prison guards becoming too abusive and the prisoners becoming traumatized over all the Stanford Prison Experiment planned had gotten way to out of control and real for all

The right to withdraw was a major issue in this experiment as they were not authorised to leave the experiment at any time throughout the procedure of the experiment. Thankfully 3 of the prisoner participants left the experiment early who were mentally and physically distressed this was due to the fact that Philip Zimbardo’s wife came to observe the prisoners and guards act in their roles and saw the trauma and behaviour from the roles given to each of the participants, all of the remanding 21 male participants that took part in The Sandford Prison Experiment were let out within 6 days of the experiment taking place rather than the two weeks the experiment was meant to last for. Though the experiment was voluntary participation the participants did not know parts of the experiment were going to take place; they didn’t know that each prisoner would get arrested on site and taken to the prison in a cop car this caused embarrassment, stress and fear in each prisoner role this ethical issue is conformed consent. Lastly Confidentiality was a big part of this experiment which Philip Zimbardo did not keep, intercom system allowed Zimbardo and his group observing the experiment to secretly bug the cells to monitor what the prisoners discussed which breaches the prisoners