In 1973, Zimbardo was interested in finding out whether the brutality that was being reported among the American guards who were experiencing sadistic personalities was associated with their exposure to the prison environment. Zimbardo conducted a lab experiment by changing the Stanford University building into a mock prison. In his experiment, he advertised the students to play the roles of prisoners and guards for a fortnight. In order to motivate the participants, Zimbardo offered to pay the volunteers $15 per day for taking part in the experiment. As a result, out of the 75 students who volunteered, 21 of them agreed to participate (McLeod, 2008).

The students were randomly assigned the role of either the prisoner or the guard in the prison environment in which, simulation was kept to appear as if it was “real life” situation. The prisoners were arrested from their home and taken to the police stations without any warning. Here, they were treated as criminals; they were fingerprinted, blindfolded when they were being taken to the prisons cells at the basement of the university. In addition, they were stripped naked, deloused, locked up and giver prison beddings and clothing. On the other hand, the prison guards wore khaki uniforms, had handcuffs and, dark glasses so that it would be impossible to make eye contact with the prisoners; although no physical violence was permitted. After a few days, the guards and the prisoners had started to adapt their prison life quickly. Zimbardo observed brutish among the guards and who seemed to enjoy it. Some of the prisoners had to be released because they were experiencing depression. Zimbardo concluded that people were ready to abide by the social roles that people expected them to take, same as in the case of the prisoners and the guard (McLeod, 2008).

Zimbardo experiment has widely been used in ensuring ethical standards in prisons. Most correctional facilities recognize the discrimination that is perpetrated by the prison warders and they have introduced ethic management systems for ensuring that they do not engage in unethical behaviors (Dischereit, 2013).

References

Dischereit, G. (2013). The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Psychological Experiment about the

Exploration of Human Behavior Under Imprisonment. New York, NY: GRIN Verlag

McLeod, S. (2008). Zimbardo – Stanford Prison Experiment. Simply Psychology. Retrieved from:

http://www.simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html

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