4. THIS EXPERIMENT ILLUSTRATES
DEINDIVIDUATION …
WHAT IS DEINDIVIDUATION?
• Deindividuation is a concept in social psychology that is
generally thought of as the loss of self-awareness in groups
and feels lessened responsibility for one’s actions.
5. Zimbardo proposed that two processes can explain the
prisoner's 'final submission'. Deindividuation may
explain the behavior of the participants; especially the
guards.
Now that we know what is Deindividuation; we will
talk more about the experiment.
6. • The Stanford experiment was
conducted at Stanford University.
• Done by team of researchers led by
psychology professor Philip
Zimbardo on August 14–20, 1971
using college students as the subjects
of his experiment.
• This experiment was funded by the
U.S. Office of Naval Research.
7. • The aim of this experiment was to
investigate how people would comply
with rules and laws of guard and
prisoner in prison life.
• Zimbardo made an ad in the Palo Alto
city newspaper: “wanted, college
students for a psychological study of
prison life for two weeks; paid $15 per
day.
• He got more than 75 people applying.
He and his team gave people a battery
of psychological tests and interviews.
8. • Then they picked two dozen of the
most normal, healthiest young men
they could find.
• Those were kids from all over the
United States who were in the Stanford
area finishing summer school.
9. Then he and his team did what's basic to
every research: they randomly assigned
half to be guards and half to be prisoners.
They were going to play those roles in a
fairly realistic prison-like setting in the
basement of the psychology department.
The prisoners were going to live there
24 hours a day, and the guards were
going to work eight-hour shifts.
10. • The hypothesis was that prisoners and
guards behave in a non-aggressive
manner.
• The situational explanation was if they
behaved the same way as real prisoners
and guards would in a prison.
• They even found that within hours guards
started to harass prisoners, other guards
even started to join them, other prisoners
were tormented.
• Prisoners soon started to adopt their new
roles, even snitching on each other to gain
the guards trust.
• Things started to get out of control and
were basically dehumanizing.
11. • The “prison” environment was an important factor in
creating the guards’ brutal behavior (none of the
participants who acted as guards showed sadistic
tendencies before the study).
• Christina Maslach, a recent Stanford Ph.D. strongly
objected when she saw the prisoners being abused by
the guards. She said, "It's terrible what you are doing
to these boys!" she was the only one who ever
questioned its morality
• Zimbardo (1973) had intended that the experiment
should run for a fortnight, but on the sixth day it was
terminated.
12. • It was concluded that people would conform to the social
role that’s expected of them.
• Most of the time if the social roles were of stereo typical
identity like the prisoner and guard role.
• Therefore, the findings support the situational explanation
of behavior rather than the dispositional one.
13. • ‘Most of the participants said they had felt
involved and committed. The research had
felt "real" to them.
• After the prison experiment was terminated
Zimbardo interviewed the
• participants. Here’s an excerpt:
• One guard said, "I was surprised at myself. I
made them call each other names and clean
the toilets out with their bare hands.
• 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.
He grabbed me by the throat and although he
was laughing I was pretty scared.
• Another guard said "Acting authoritatively
can be fun. Power can be a great pleasure."
14. CONCLUSION
• To conclude, Zimbardo finally proved his
experiment after investigating how people
would comply with rules and regulations in
prison life. Therefore, as mentioned the
results support the situational of behavior
rather than the dispositional one.