Who conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment, a landmark study illustrating the effects of assigned roles on behavior?

• A. Phil Zimbardo
• B. Stanley Milgram
• C. Solomon Asch
• D. B. F. Skinner

Answer: (A)

The key idea is how assigned roles and the surrounding situation can powerfully shape how people behave. The Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted in 1971 at Stanford University, explored this by randomly assigning participants to be prisoners or guards in a mock prison. The guards quickly adopted authoritarian behaviors and the prisoners showed signs of stress and submission, and the study was stopped early because of ethical concerns and escalating harm. The person behind this influential study is Phil Zimbardo, who designed and led the experiment, making him the correct answer. Milgram conducted obedience to authority studies with shocking obedience in a different setup, Asch looked at conformity in perceptual judgments, and Skinner focused on operant conditioning and reinforcement—none of these are the Stanford Prison Experiment.