It was a two-week simulation of a prison environment that examined the effects of situational variables on participants' reactions and behaviors. Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo managed the research team who administered the study. Participants were chosen after assessments of psychological stability and then assigned randomly to being prisoners or prison guards. Those volunteers selected to be "guards" were given uniforms designed specifically to de-individuate them, and they were instructed to prevent prisoners from escaping.
The experiment started officially when "prisoners" were arrested by real police of Palo Alto. During the next five days, psychological abuse of the prisoners by the "guards" became increasingly brutal.
After psychologist Christina Maslach visited to evaluate the conditions, she was troubled to see how study participants were behaving and she confronted Zimbardo. He ended the experiment on the sixth day. SPE has been referenced and critiqued as an example of an unethical psychology experiment, and the harm inflicted on the participants in this and other experiments during the post-World War II era prompted American universities to improve their ethical requirements and institutional review for human subject experiments in order to prevent them from being similarly harmed.
Other researchers have found it difficult to reproduce the study, especially given those constraints. Certain critics have described the study as unscientific and fraudulent. Zimbardo claimed that Le Texier's article was mostly ad hominem and ignoring available data that contradicts his counterarguments, but the original participants interviewed for the National Geographic documentary "The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth" have largely confirmed many of Le Texier's claims.
We wanted to see what the psychological effects were of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. To do this, we decided to set up a simulated prison and then carefully note the effects of this institution on the behavior of all those within its walls. A article from the Stanford News Service described the experiment goal in a more detailed way:. Zimbardo's primary reason for conducting the experiment was to focus on the power of roles, rules, symbols, group identity and situational validation of behavior that generally would repulse ordinary individuals.
