MEMORANDUM

To: PS 585 (Intro. to Research Methods) Students
From: Instructor Ray Block, Jr.
Date: Fall, 2003
Re: Homework Assignment #2


Discussion Time

Psychologist Phillip Zimbardo (1972) conducted a classic but very controversial study.  The details of this study are in the video, Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiments.  I want you to watch this video and evaluate Zimbardo’s study in terms of research design and research implications.  To facilitate discussion, I listed some “talking points” below.  It should take you about a paragraph (roughly 3 or 4 sentences) to discuss each point.  For more information about the Zimbado study, please feel free to check out the official website: www.prisonexp.org.

With Respect to Research Design: Please respond to the following.
  1. What problem was this experiment investigating?
  2. What was the research question?
  3. Zimbardo set out to test 2 hypotheses: the situational and dispositional hypotheses.  Describe these hypotheses.
  4. How was the experiment set up?
  5. What were the major findings?

With Respect to Research Implications: Please respond to the following.
  1. What are some of the ethical problems of this study? Was it right to trade the suffering experienced by participants for the knowledge gained by the research?
  2. What are norms, and what did Zimbardo's prison study show about compliance with norms?
  3. Discuss the influence of roles on behavior using the Zimbardo prison study.
  4. What is “dehumanization”?  How did Zimbardo’s experiment dehumanize the prisoners and guards?
  5. Do you think you would have behaved any differently if you were a prisoner?  What about if you were a guard?  What about if you were an experimenter?

General Requirements:

All written assignments should be typed, double-spaced, using no larger than a 12-point font and no smaller than a 10-point font.  Papers should be no longer than 2 to 3 pages.  Typed pages should also have a one-inch margin on all sides (this is the default in most word processing programs).  Be sure that you number each page and staple your pages together.  I will not be responsible for any pages that are missing because you did not staple them.  I will accept papers in class, but you can also drop them off in my mailbox before they are due (Derby Hall #2140).  I will not accept papers that are e-mailed to me.  For additional assistance, please consult me or the Writing Center at the Younkin Success Center on Neil Avenue.  You can also consult the International Writing Center Association Writing Center Online web site at: http://iwca.syr.edu/IWCA/IWCAOWLS.html

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