The stanford prison experiment was conducted in

What did the stanford prison experiment attempt to study

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book. Philip Zimbardo is an influential psychologist best-known for his Stanford Prison Experiment. Many psychology students may also be familiar with his introductory psychology textbooks and Discovering Psychology video series, which are often used in high school and psychology classrooms.

He is also known for his research on shyness. Zimbardo has also conducted important research on the psychology of heroism and is the founder of the Heroic Imagination Project , a non-profit organization aimed at understanding and promoting everyday heroism.

A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison

He attended Brooklyn College where he earned a BA in , triple majoring in psychology, sociology, and anthropology. He taught briefly at Yale before becoming a psychology professor at New York University, where he taught until After a year of teaching at Columbia University, he became a faculty member at Stanford University in , where he worked until his retirement in He delivered his final lecture at Stanford in Zimbardo's career has spanned decades and covered a wide variety of subjects, from social conformity to shyness to military socialization.

Philip Zimbardo is perhaps best known for the Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted in the basement of the Stanford University psychology department in The participants in the study were 24 male college students who were randomly assigned to act either as "guards" or "prisoners" in the mock prison. The study was initially slated to last two weeks but had to be terminated after just six days because of the extreme reactions and behaviors of the participants.

The guards began displaying cruel and sadistic behavior toward the prisoners, while the prisoners became depressed and hopeless. While the study is a staple of psychology textbooks and its events portrayed in a feature film, recent findings indicate that the experiment lacked credibility and authenticity.