Final answer:
Phillip Zimbardo would explain the behavior of participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment using situational attributions, highlighting the role that environment and context play over dispositional factors in influencing behaviour.
Step-by-step explanation:
According to Phillip Zimbardo, the behaviour of participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment would primarily be explained by using situational attributions. This is based on the idea that behaviour is significantly influenced by the immediate environment and context in which a person finds themselves. In the case of the Stanford Prison Experiment, the participants behaved differently not because of their inherent traits (dispositional factors), but due to the powerful impact of the assigned roles and the simulated prison environment.
The experiment is a classical demonstration of the fundamental attribution error, where individuals tend to attribute others' actions to their personality traits, rather than the situation. This contrasts with how we explain our own behaviour; we often use situational explanations when we are aware of the external circumstances affecting our actions (actor-observer bias).
To summarize, in the context of Zimbardo's experiment, participants' behaviours would be attributed to the roles they were playing and the prison-like setting rather than to their personal dispositional traits. The intense reactions and interactions among the 'prisoners' and 'guards' demonstrated that the situation was the dominant factor influencing their behaviour.