At a university campus in 1971, 23 male volunteers spent two weeks role playing prisoners and guards. The volunteers were upright ordinary good students. The exercise sought to explore the extent to which the external environment influences human behaviour and in particular our potential for evil. Early on in the experiment the guards started subjecting the prisoners to psychological and physical punishments. As the experiment proceeded the punishments got worse. Philip Zimbardo, the originator of the experiment, identified that conformity and anonymity were two of a number of factors that can bring about callous behaviour in otherwise caring people. Anonymity was important because it led the perpetrators to believe that they would not have to answer for their actions. Conformity was significant because it pressurized the more humane guards to adopt the behaviour of their less humane peers. Another of Zimbardos factors was boredom.
Question: It would be wrong to deduce from the passage that women volunteers in the same circumstances would not act callously.
Options:
A. true, B. false, C. uncertain
Answer: A