The purpose of the experiment was to understand how people conform to roles of prisoners and guards in prison life. Zimbardo experiment wanted to know if the brutality experienced by American prisons guards were because of the sadistic personality of the guards or due to the prison environment (Kraska & Neuman, 2012). Volunteers were used in the experiment conducted in the basement of the university facility. However, the study ended before the anticipated time because of complaints of brutal punishment from the guards while other participants backed out of the experiment. The experiment showed how people readily conformed to social roles in day-to-day life. The participants, in this case, were well informed of their responsibilities (Kraska & Neuman, 2012).
In 1974, the U.S. Government changed its policy in the way human research was conducted mainly due to the Tuskegee experiments. The law required participants to be informed before taking part in a study. It helped protect human subjects of Biomedical Research to develop measures to protect human experiments in medicine (Federman, Hannah, & Rodriquez,