This makeshift prison was intending to simulate prison life when obviously the simulation prison is physically nothing like a real prison. This was a problem that existed within the study but it could not have been solved because there was no other available suitable place for the simulated prison to be created.
The subjects were randomly assigned roles of either ‘prisoner’ or ‘guard’, they then signed contracts on that basis. This contract offered 15 per day and states that everyone would be guaranteed basic living needs, the prisoners were informed that some basic civil rights would e suspended (for example, privacy). The prisoners did not have ay idea of what they should expect and weren’t given any instructions on how to behave. The guards were instructed to ‘maintain a reasonable degree of order within the prison necessary for its effective functioning’, though they were explicitly prohibited from the use of physical aggression. This was a very vague description of what the subjects should do and of how they should act. This was to se how the behaviours would change and by how much when they were given minimal detail on how to behave. This allowed the subjects themselves to decide on how they should behave in their new roles as ‘prisoner’ and ‘guard’.
The prisoner subjects remained in the mock prison 24 hours a day for the duration of the experiment, nine were randomly assigned thre to each cell, and the remaining three were on standby at home. The ‘guard’ subjects worked eight hour thre man shifts and returned home after their shifts.
Both the guardsand prisoners were given uniform to promote feelings of anonymity. The guards uniform was a plain khaki shirt and trousers, a whistle and baton, and reflecting sunglasses, this was intended to express a military attitude and to give symbols of power. The reflecting sunglasses would have helped the guards act as they did because the prisoners would not be able to force eye contact with them because they were behind the reflecting glasses. The uniform that the prisoners were given was intended to be uncomfortable, humiliating and create symbols of subservience and reliance on the guards. This unfirm was a loose fitting smock, number on front and back, no underwear, light chain and lock around ankle, rubber sandles and a cap made from a nylon stocking. The purpose of the unifporms was to enhance the behaviour of the subjects , the guards would have felt more powerful with their unfirom which would have made them act in a more powerful way and because the prisoners would have felt humiliated and of a lower level to the guards they would have acted in a more dependant way and would have been more accepting of the guards attempts to control the prisoners.
Zimbardo himself was the prison warden, this was not a good idea because he was also the main researcher. As did the subjects that were being experimented, Zimbardo got over involved in the study and took his role as warden too far, he failed to see the full effect that the simulation was having on the participants which resulted in the experiment proceeding for longer than it ethically should. If Zimbardo had assigned someone else to be prison warden or someone else to be main researcher then the experiment may hav only lasted a few days and the participants may not have been as mentally harmed
Zimbardo suggested that the cause for the deterioration of the guards behaviour was due to the power that the yhad. The guards could exercise control over other human beings’ lives and no justification of their displays of power was necessary as would be in their daily lives. After the first ay the prisoners lives were redefined as privileges, and all privileges were cancelled.
Zimbardo describes the social deterioration of the prisoners as pathological prisoner syndrome. To start with the prisoners rebelled against the conditions that they were in, but every effort was by the guards, and social structure amongst the prisoners buckled. Half of the prisoners responded by becoming sick, and eventually released before the study was finally brought to a conclusion. For those who remained, the classical prisoner response that developed was obedience, dependence and flattened affect (emotions). Their were a number of processes that Zimbardo suggested that contributed to the deterioration of the prisoners;
The loss of personal identity which was created from the uniform that was given o them and that they were only referred to as their prisoner number.
The uninformed control applied by the guards. This made the prisoners lives’ erratic and their treatment became progressively more unfair.
Dependency and emasculation. The created a dependency in the prisoners which emasculated them to the extent that when the prisoners were debriefed they suggested that they had been assigned to be the prisoners in the experiment because they were smaller than the guards. In fact, there was no difference in average height between the prisoners and guards, the perceived difference was a response to their perceptions of themselves and their lack of power.
In conclusion this experiment was not what Zimbardo described it as ‘a simulation of prison life’. None of the prisoners had had any experience of actual prison life before the study, and their social perceptions of how prison life should be dictated the way in which they played their roles. The experiment was in fact a simulation of how we expect prison life to be. Nevertheless, the study does give a compelling revelation of the effect of social roles, and also the power of the social psychological experiment to make us behave in ways that we would not have thought possible