Zimbardo conducted an experiment dealing with obedience. The experiment was conducted within a prison-like setting and was set to last for two weeks. Zimbardo had to end the experiment in just six days because of the drastic outcome presented by the experiment. While many have accepted Zimbardo's conclusions about the effect an environment plays on the social behaviors of people, they cannot be firmly backed. This is because Zimbardo did not vary the variables, created an unrealistic prison setting, and only conducted the experiment once.
To begin, Zimbardo used twenty-one college aged volunteers. These were all male subjects, and were randomly selected to be in one of two groups, eleven as the guards and ten as the prisoners (Zimbardo, 374). Once assigned a role, the volunteers maintained that role. This did not allow for thorough results. The roles could have been switched, and the reversal of power recorded. Also, because the students were all college aged males, the abuse of power was bound to happen. The experiment may have given radically different results if done with various age groups of both male and female. Therefore, the Zimbardo experiment was inhibited by the single, unchanged variable.
While Zimbardo created a prison like setting, it was a flawed setting. This is due to a few factors. First, Zimbardo gave the participants psychological tests to assure their normality (Zimbardo, 347). However, in a real prison setting, not all prisoners are psychologically stable. Without the abnormal subjects, the experiment was subdued. Secondly, the guards and prisoners were close in their age. This is unlike a realistic prison setting. In prison, those imprisoned are not all in the same age group, neither amongst themselves nor amongst their guards. Lastly, the mock prison lacked the physically brutal aspects of a real prison. Thusly, Zimbardo did not record data in a realistic prison setting.
