Summary Philip George Zimbardo

Philip George Zimbardo is a psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University who investigated how readily people would comply to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life. Zimbardo was interested in finding out if guards were being reported for their brutality because of the dispositional hypothesis stating that the guards’ personalities and aggression is conflicting with disobeying prisoners or the situational explanation stating that prisoners and guards behavior is due to their environment. A basement at Stanford University was converted to mock a prison. Zimbardo gathered 2 male participants out of 75 volunteers by advertising it to students to be randomly assigned to play the roles …show more content…
The experiment was planned to go on for two weeks, but it was stopped after six days when a graduated Stanford Ph.D. entered the prison to interview the guards and prisons and witnessed prisoners being abused by the guards. Zimbardo stated, “ Out of 50 or more outsiders who had seen our prison, she was the only one who ever questioned its morality.” It was concluded that Zimbardo’s findings supported the situational explanation rather than the dispositional one. A benefit of this study is that after Zimbardo’s findings were reported it changed the way U.S prisons are run. Another benefit is that because of the harmful treatment to the participants in this experiment it led to ethical guidelines that experiments must now be approved my universities, hospitals, and government agencies. Some downsides include that just like the Milgram study, the sample just contained male students. Therefore the study’s findings can’t be applied for females. Another downside is that because the guards and prisoners were told to act in such a way to play a role their behavior may not have been the same way it would have been in real