Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 95

Most people have not experienced life in prison and find it hard to imagine how they would cope ‘inside’. How would you fare? What kind of prison officer would you be – a disciplinarian maybe? Or perhaps you would adopt a more humanitarian approach to your prisoners? In 1971, a research team led by Philip Zimbardo decided to try and find out what impact the prison environment would have on ‘ordinary people’.

In a study funded by the US Navy, Zimbardo set out to test the ‘dispositional hypothesis’, which dominated within the armed forces. This hypothesis suggested that constant conflicts between prisoners and guards were a result of the conflicting individual characters of the guards and inmates – their personal dispositions. Zimbardo thought this might be wrong and set up an experimental prison to find out.