Stanford Prison experiment was to examine the psychological and sociological effects of incarceration. In particular, researchers set out to examine how prisoners reacted to being bereft of power. Ultimately the experiment illustrated not just how prisoners reacted to being powerless, but also how simulated guards reacted to being bestowed with nearly unlimited power over others. The experiment was therefore exploratory in nature. Shuttleworth (2008) claims that the researcher Zimbardo "wanted show the dehumanization and loosening of social and moral values that can happen to guards immersed in such a situation." The object of the experiment was "to create an experiment that looked at the impact of becoming a prisoner or prison guard," (Cherry, n.d.). The research had a focus, but its focus was relatively open-ended in terms of specific hypothesized relationships between dependent and independent variables. Zimbardo (2012) reflects on the experiment and claims it was a "dramatic demonstration of...
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