Our Dark Hearts: The Stanford Prison Experiment
"The vilest deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison air" - Oscar Wilde.
The best psychological experiments ask timeless questions about human nature, like what makes a person evil? Can a good person commit evil acts? If so, what can make people cross the line? Is there some set-point which when crossed unleashes the evil? Or is it something about the situations in which people are placed that determines our behaviour?
This nomination for the best social psychology research - the famous 'Stanford Prison Experiment' - argues a strong case for the power of the situation (Zimbardo, 1971). Not only that but the experiment has also inspired a novel, two films, countless TV programs, re-enactments and even a band. More on that later, first the experiment.
Prisoners and guards
The idea was simple: to see how ordinary men, chosen to be the most healthy and 'normal' would respond to a radical change to their normal roles in life. Half were to become prison guards, the other half their prisoners. In this experiment there were no half-measures, for it to be effective it had to closely approximate the real experience of prisoners and guards. These participants were in for the ride of their lives.
'Prisoners' were 'arrested' by a police car with sirens wailing while they were out going about their everyday business. Then they were fingerprinted, blindfolded and put in a cell, then stripped naked, searched, deloused, heads shaved, given a uniform, a number and had a chain placed around one foot.
The other participants were made into guards who wore uniforms and were given clubs. A prison was mocked up in the basement of a Stanford University building.
And so the experiment began.
Rebellion crushed
All was quiet until the second day when the 'prisoners' rebelled against their incarceration. The guard's retaliation was swift and brutal. Guards stripped the prisoners naked, removed the beds from the prison, placed the rebellion's ringleader in solitary confinement and began harassing all the 'prisoners'.
Soon the 'prisoners' began behaving with blind obedience towards the prison guards. After only a few day's realistic role-playing participants reported it felt as though their old identities had been erased. They had become their numbers. So too had the 'guards' taken on their roles - taunting and abusing their prisoners.
Experimenters sucked into their own experiment
Even the lead researcher, Philip Zimbardo, admits he became submerged in his role as the 'prison superintendent'. In fact, Zimbardo believes the most powerful result of his experiment was his own transformation into a rigid institutional figure, more concerned with his prison's security than the welfare of his participants.
Other members of the experimental team became engrossed in their new role. Craig Haney, like Zimbardo, explained he became completely engaged in the day-to-day crises they were facing in running the 'prison' and forgot about the aim of their experiment.
Playing the roles
It was only when one of his colleagues intervened that the experiment was finally stopped. In total it only lasted six of the planned 14 days. Young men previously found to be pacifists were, in their roles as guards, humiliating and physically assaulting the 'prisoners' - some even reported enjoying it. The 'prisoners', meanwhile, quickly began to show classic signs of emotional breakdown. Five had to leave the 'prison' even before the experiment was prematurely terminated.
The psychological explanation for the participant's behaviour was that they were taking on the social roles assigned to them. This included adopting the implicit social norms associated with those roles: guards should be authoritarian and abuse prisoners while prisoners should become servile and take their punishment.
Inevitably the experiment has attracted criticism for being unethical, involving a small sample size, lack of ecological validity and so on. Despite this it's hard to deny that the experiment provides important insights in to human behaviour, perhaps helping to explain the abuses that occurred in situations like the Abu Ghraib Prison.
Rikers Island
Does this experiment mirror what occurs in real prisons? Probably. Writing in Inside Rikers: Stories from the World's Largest Penal Colony
Levels of violence against prisoners were so bad in one unit, called the 'Central Punitive Segregation Unit' of Rikers', that almost a dozen guards were officially charged with assaulting inmates in 1995. Eventually the inmates won $1.6 million dollars in compensation. This is just one example.
Popular culture and the Stanford Prison Experiment
The study is now so well-known it has crossed over into popular culture. It has inspired a novel, Das Experiment
Not only this, but the experiment has even inspired the name of a band. 'Stanford Prison Experiment' released their first eponymously titled album
Watch the experiment
Here's a short video of the experiment:
» Read more of the top 10 social psychology experiments.
The Stanford Prison Experiment website also has videos.
Reference
Zimbardo, P. G. (1972). The Stanford Prison Experiment a Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment. Philip G. Zimbardo, Inc.
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Great post!
Actually, though the experiment is claimed to be well known, I knew just nothing about it until now!
There are so many problems with this experiment. To start with, prisoners aren't people off the street incarcerated for no reason. Guards have justice training. I would suspect that the subjects had cues, both from the researchers and from their own experiences from movies, TV and books that moved them in those directions. Interesting, but doesn't even really hint at anything substantial.
I vehemently disagree with Anon (above). This is a classic study in the power of roles, and how we internalize them based upon the cues we get from our social and physical environment. When you listen to the post-experimental interviews, when these young men, repeatedly, describe their actions as if they were other people
(Interestingly, we see this with the Abu Ghraib (and not just that prison), where parents were saying "But that can't be right: My daughter is not like that. She would never do anything like that" (referring to England). We are left either concluding that situational forces have enormous power over us, or, somehow, a significant number of sociopaths made it through military screening and somehow all got posted to a few of these prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, all at the same time. Anyone want to calculate the odds on that last one? )
Back to my point with the original study: Why didn't parents question what was going on when they were told by their sons that what they (the son-prisoners) were experiencing was the worse thing that had ever happened to them. Why didn't district attorney who visited the "prison" not say "WTF, Zimbardo? The legal aspects of what you are doing are highly dubious. You can't go around and imprison people..."
When I teach this study in my class, I always have my students read the story from the perspective of the real (and unsung) hero of this experiment, Christina Maslach.
Here's the link:
http://news-service.stanford.edu/pr/97/970108prisonexp.html
Enjoy!
Think about the roles we are taking, to some degree, we are prisoners or guards.
Anonymous, remember that what you're saying about prisoners and guards may be true in your home, but in many places in the world is completely untrue. People are often incarcerated for no reason other than their beliefs or political standing. Guards are frequently chosen by oppressive states for their thuggery, which would make them even worse than randomly chosen people!
If you consider this experiment as a study of roles, rather than of the penal system, then I find your statement about cues confusing. Naturally one would have to have cues to be put into a role. The point is the relative ease with which individuals read and accept those cues, even when they run counter to the person's "personality."
Dr. G, thanks for that link.
As far as I can see this experiment demonstrated the complete lack of understanding of those who devised the scenario. To think that an experiment will reveal any substantial general principle regarding the nature of Man is just a joke.
The collective age of those involved must amount to a few hundred years and yet they have to 'make up' a situation to experience the behaviour of a creature with whom they have had continuous relationships!
General principles are the only way of understanding specific behaviour. Specific behaviour will never reveal general principles - although they may CONFIRM a previously UNDERSTOOD view.
As far as I an concerned the experiment was nothing but a waste of time. It only demonstrated the . . . . BLEEDIN' OBVIOUS !
Anon (just above), I can't agree with anything you say. I would list the reasons but I sense it would be futile.
Jeremy
How can I reply to your very brief comment?
Am I to presume, from your remark, that the experiment did achieve something very significent - something that couldn't have been assumed and presumed and predicted from all the written knowledge regarding Man's behaviour over the past 2,000 years? Were any general principles gleamed from this experiment?
Lou
Hello Lou,
My answers are: yes the experiment did achieve something significant, no the results couldn't necessarily have been predicted and a general principle was extracted from the research: the power of the situation.
Dr. Grumpus, certainly role perception partially explains the behavior of the guards at Abu Ghraib.
However, my experience leads me to beleve that the military police there- not being in the line of fire- wanted to show that they could "kick ass". For this reason they documented many abusive actions- to show the folks at home how they are "contributing" to the war effort.
Hi Jeremy
Unfortunately one person's opinion of 'something significant' can be seen as something ordinary and self-evident by others. Also, in like manner, I don't think you have the same understanding of the term 'general principle' as I do (eg as the Periodic Table and its explanation of the behaviour of atoms is to Chemistry).
One cannot discover general principles from a 'one-off' experiment - one must think and mentally search and explore. I find the use of disgraceful terms like 'evil' and 'the Lucifer effect' in connection with the behaviour of some of those involved in the experiment revealing as to the true low level of understanding of human nature by those who use those pathetic terms. That experiment (likewise the situation in Abu Ghraib) was neither surprising, revealing nor unique. Similar behaviour has been occurring for thousands of years for the very simple reason that human nature hasn't changed in tens of thousands of years.
For my part - I am just passing thru looking for a site with intelligent discussion - which I will continue looking for - elsewhere. (This is not being nasty - just truthful - sadly).
Lou
This was a pretty amazing event. I really never knew it happened until i learned about it in Psychology calss in college. Its amazing how the guards turned into what they were acting as when it became who they were. It really became a dictating role. Kinda like a little holocaust, which in my thoughts should never be reacted. Ok well i gotta go fishish writing a paper about The stanford prison experiment.
Rogue
Most institutionalised roles including military, prisons, police etc take people off the street and attract the competitive, power and control and soicopaths of the world. I undertook 20 years in the military as a female and saw the changes in people once they were in uniform. The most quiet, subservient men and women became the arrogant, chauvinistic ogres to their junior ranks. There was that perception that they needed to be a 'certain type of personality' to be respected and eventually promoted.
Hi, Jeremy answer if you will.
Now i was wondering (quite stupidly),
If the participants knew, pre and during the experiment that it was just an experiment, im sorry, because i know this would have been answered previously in the text but i missed it.
Also i was wondering at what rate the persionalities of the subjects changed, and the difference between that of a person who is say a prisinor guard for a living, to that of some one who is put into this with knowledge that it is not an indefinant role in there life.
Sorry for the incoherency above by the way.
I just wanted to thank the author for placing the video at the end of the article.
Way to go.