Jeffery David Whippo Assesses the Stanford Prison Study That Was Conducted By Philip Zimbardo In 1973

1. Jeffery David Whippo Assesses the Stanford Prison Study That Was Conducted By Philip Zimbardo In 1973 An expert in the field of Educational Psychology Jeffery David Whippo explains that the Stanford prison study conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1973 was to investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of both guard and prisoner during a role-playing exercise which simulated life in prison. From a psychological standpoint, Whippo believes that what Zimbardo wanted to study was disposition vs. situation. He says that Zimbardo thought that both the prisoners and the guards may have the sort of personalities that made conflict inevitable. He indicates that prisoners may display a lack of respect for the law, for order, and for the guards and conversely the guards may have had domineering and aggressive internal traits. Jeffery David Whippo further explains that the rigid power structure of the social environment of the prisons may have also been a contributor to the behaviors of both guards and prisoners. He suggests that the dispositional hypotheses would be confirmed if the prisoners and guards in the experiment behaved in a non-aggressive manner, conversely if the behavior of the guards & prisoners during the role-playing experiment was the same as in a real prison, the situational hypothesis would be confirmed. Jeffery D Whippo further describes that the concept of the “group norm” was present for both the guards and the prisoners. He says that the guards and prisoners quickly lost their true sense of personal identity as the uniforms they wore and the situations they were placed in manifested what was the social norm. He enthusiastically

2. talks about Zimbardo’s interviews with all of the participants at the end of the experiment. Given below is an excerpt: Most of the participants said they had felt involved and committed. The research had felt "real" to them. One guard said, "I was surprised at myself. I made them call each other names and clean the toilets out with their bare hands. I practically considered the prisoners cattle and I kept thinking I had to watch out for them in case they tried something." Another guard said "Acting authoritatively can be fun. Power can be a great pleasure." And another: "... during the inspection I went to Cell Two to mess up a bed which a prisoner had just made and he grabbed me, screaming that he had just made it and that he was not going to let me mess it up. He grabbed me by the throat and although he was laughing I was pretty scared. I lashed out with my stick and hit him on the chin although not very hard, and when I freed myself I became angry.”