Question

Philip Zimbardo's prison experiment involved setting up a make-believe jail and randomly assigning male student volunteers to the roles of guards and prisoners. The researcher concluded that:

Answer 1

Behavior of the experiment participants is strongly influenced by the nature of the prison setting.

Step-by-step explanation:

Philip Zimbardo (b. March 23, 1933) conducted the famous Stanford prison experiment on August 14–20, 1971. It was investigating the effects of perceived power in the relationship between prison guards and prisoners. These roles were by a chance assigned to the volunteer participants of the experiment. It was reported that during the experiment, ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ quickly assumed their roles, and while the former started to behave sadistically, the letter passively accepted such treatment.

After the experiment, Zimbardo concluded that rather than their personality traits, the simulated prison situation and respective environment prompted participants to behave in a particular way.

The experiment became very famous, but it also have received criticism in the scientific community. For example, it was criticized for the demand characteristics phenomenon, when experiment participants behave in the way researchers expect them to behave, which undermines the validity of a research.