Читать книгу Mapping the Social Landscape - Группа авторов - Страница 49

The 22 subjects who participated in the experiment were selected from an initial pool of 75 respondents who answered a newspaper ad asking for male volunteers to participate in a psychological study of “prison life,” in return for payment of $15 per day. Those who responded to the notice completed an extensive questionnaire concerning their family background, physical and mental health history, prior experience, and attitudinal propensities with respect to any possible sources of psychopathology (including their involvements in crime). Each respondent who completed the background questionnaire was interviewed by one of two experimenters. Finally, the 24 subjects who were judged to be most stable (physically and mentally) were selected to participate in the study. On a random basis, half of the subjects were assigned the role of “guard,” half were assigned to the role of “prisoner.”

The subjects were normal, healthy males attending colleges throughout the United States who were in the Stanford [University] area during the summer. They were largely of middle-class background and Caucasians (with the exception of one Asian subject). Initially they were strangers to each other, a selection precaution taken to avoid the disruption of any preexisting friendship patterns and to mitigate against any transfer of previously established relationships or patterns of behavior into the experimental situation.