Zimbardo Research Paper

Robyn-Lea Gentile

University of Pheonix

Zimbardo Research Paper

Philip Zimbardo is the researcher behind the Stanford Prison Experiment. An experiment that changed the research world of psychology for the better. The Stanford Prison Experiment was a study that consisted of males who wanted to participate in 197, “Ultimately, we were left with a sample of 24 college students from the U.S. and Canada who happened to be in the Stanford area and wanted to earn $15/day by participating in a study” (Zimbardo, 2016). After the males were selected, half of them were going to be a prisoner while the other half were going to be guards, “It is important to remember that at the beginning of our experiment there were no differences between boys assigned to be a prisoner and boys assigned to be a guard” (Zimbardo, 2016). When the prisoners were set to be in the prison environment that was setup then the guards acted as real prisoner guards and went through a booking process for the prisoners. Is is very important to know that, “As with real prisoners, our prisoners expected some harassment, to have their privacy and some of their other civil rights violated while they were in prison, and to get a minimally adequate diet – all part of their informed consent agreement when they volunteered” (Zimbardo, 2016). Although things had seemed to go fine the first day of the experiment, the second day is when everything turned for the worse! The prisoners did not respect their uniform or guards anymore. With this happening the guards felt as thought they needed to show they were the authority figures and so the guards had taken away any privileges that the prisoners did have. One can only imagine how this would make the prisoners much more upset. The guards really starting taking this study more serious against their prisoners, “The guards saw the prisoners