ABSTRACT

The document illustrates and summarizes the

Stanford prison study with a focus on its strengths
and weaknesses.

Microsoft account
STANFORD
PRISON STUDY
Summary and critical evaluation

NIMRA WAQAR ABBASI

04211913029
 I. Write down the summary of Stanford Prison experiment?
Stanford Prison Experiment, a highly controversial yet famous study of social psychology that
aimed to study the effect of role playing, labelling, and social expectations on behaviors. The
research was conducted by Philip. G Zimbardo and funded by US Office of Naval Research. An
advertisement ‘Psychological Study of Prison Life’ was circulated to which 70 college students
responded. 24 applicants were finalized to participate based on their ideal physical and
psychological health. They were paid subjects awarded 15$ per day for their participation.
Subjects were randomly divided into equal numbers of guards and prisoners. Prisoners were
arrested from their homes by the actual police and handed over to experimenters in the mock
prison in the basement of psychology department of Stanford University. Guards were issued
uniforms, sticks, and mirrored sunglasses in order to avoid any kind of eye contact with the
prisoners. An environment of oppression was created, prisoners were subjected to indignities as
in a real life prison. Each prisoner had to wear a uniform and assigned a prison number. They
were then called by their prison number instead of names. Prisoners carried a chain padlocked
around one ankle. All participants were observed and videotaped by the experimenter. Within
days guards started to employ extreme psychological tactics to humiliate and control prisoners.
The prisoners staged extreme rebellion on their second day. Guards became so violent and
tyrannical over the course of experiment and prisoners also began to show helpless behavior.
Guards used a system of punishment and rewards to manage the prisoners. Within the first four
days, three prisoners became so traumatized that they were released. Over a period of time, the
rest of the prisoners were also emotionally disturbed and became extremely depressed and
disoriented. The experiment was initially expected to run for two weeks but had to be brought to
an immediate closure when an external observer came and noticed the extreme emotional pain
that the participants were going through. The experiment concluded that mostly situational
factors i.e. social roles, uniforms predict our behavior rather than dispositional factors.
2. Write down the critical evaluation of Stanford Prison Experiment?
The Stanford Prison Experiment when gathered lots of criticism for its use of unethical practices
also sparked a lasting discovery to the field of Social Psychology in form of Social Conformity
and Adaptive Behavior. Here are few of its Strengths and Weaknesses:

Strengths:
I. Social Conformity:
The experiment studied how individuals change their behaviors when they are given various
social roles.
II. Rigorous Methodology:
Another strength of the experiment is its use of rigorous methodology for the selection of
participants. All the participants went through mental and physical state examination and then
based on their fitness only 24 out of 70 participants were selected to participate in the study. The
participants were then randomly assigned the roles of prisoners and guards so that there is no
biasness or error in the result.
III. Ethical Guidelines:
Before the Stanford Prison study there were no established Ethical Guidelines. It however
awakened the Psychological community to establish and ethical criterion for all the future
researches in this field

Weaknesses:

I. Unethical Practices:
The experiment is known as one of the most unethical research in the history of
Psychology with its use of violence, emotional trauma and other unethical practices.
II. Overestimating the power of situation:
2/3 of the guards acted fairly and ethically and only 1/3rd of them conformed to the roles and
acted sadistically. This shows that all the participants didn’t conform to the roles they were
assigned rather remained original. So, it is criticized that Zimbardo overestimated the role of
situation on human behaviors and mis-concluded the result.
III. Lack of Generalizability:
The experiment was conducted in America mostly on male college students so it is
criticized that the findings aren’t applicable to the people of other nations, females, and
other age groups.
IV. Lack of Realism:
Although the researchers did their best to recreate a real life prison setting, all the situational
and environmental factors of prison life couldn’t still be perfectly replicated. Because there
may have been factors related to the setting and situation that influenced how the participants
behaved, it may not really represent what might happen outside of the lab. So, the study is
criticized for its applicability in real life settings.

Final Evaluation:
In my opinion, every scientific discovery comes with a cost. Although the experiment
received massive criticism from both academia and world at large, it no doubt added a lot of
knowledge to the field of scientific discovery. The emotional and psychological pain that the
participants went through wasn’t big enough to last for a longer period of time as discovered
in the follow up sessions. But the knowledge and study of conformity continues till the day.
So, the cost benefit analysis of the experiment conclude that the benefits were way greater
than the costs of experiment.