The Stanford-Prison-Experiment

The Stanford-Prison-Experiment

This was a psychological experiment about the behaviour between the prisoners and the prison officers in a real prison. „The Stanford experiment„ was created by Professor Philip Zimbardo. This experiment was conducted 1971 in a real prison in Stanford. At the beginning volunteers were randomly assigned to be either a prisoner or a prison officer. The leader of this test was the superintendent of the prison. The beginning of the experiment was that real policemen publicly arrested the volunteers. After arresting the volunteers went into specially set up cells in the basement. The cells were very bad without any window. The cells had only a small hole for some light. Through an intercom the prison officers communicated with the prisoners.  

After six days the experiment was abandoned. The reason for that was the behaviour of the prison officers. They enforced their rules to much and some of the prisoners were part of psychological tortures. Some of the prisoners accepted that. Others of them tried to stop it. Some findings of this experiment have been called into question because of the unscientific methodology and possible fraud.