Stanford Prison Experiment

12 Key excerpts on "Stanford Prison Experiment"

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  Psychology Experiments and Case Studies

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • The English Press

    (Publisher)

  However, as mentioned above, today's ethical guidelines would not permit this study to be carried out or replicated. A common belief about the experiment is that it was performed without knowledge or consent by Albert's mother. Recent investigation has shown the falsity of this belief (Beck et al. (2009)). Had it been true, however, it would have been a further source of questionable ethics. Today, researchers today are required to obtain fully informed consent from participants or in the case of infants/children, from their parents/guardians before any study can begin. ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Stanford Prison Experiment The Stanford Prison Experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted from Aug. 14-20, 1971 by a team of researchers led by Psychology professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Twenty-four students were selected out of 75 to play the prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Roles were assigned randomly. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond what even Zimbardo himself expected, leading the guards to display authoritarian measures and ultimately to subject some of the prisoners to torture. In turn, many of the prisoners developed passive attitudes and accepted physical abuse, and, at the request of the guards, readily inflicted punishment on other prisoners who attempted to stop it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his capacity as Prison Superintendent, lost sight of his role as psychologist and permitted the abuse to continue as though it were a real prison. Five of the prisoners were upset enough by the process to quit the experiment early, and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. The experimental process and the results remain controversial.

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  Classic Case Studies in Psychology

  Fourth Edition

  • Geoff Rolls(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1 and his colleagues (Haney et al., 1973) began a study that drew on the previous ‘obedience’ research by Stanley Milgram (1963). The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) as it is now known would become almost as well known a social psychology study as Milgram’s did ten years previously. The research would question the nature of ‘evil’. Was evil behaviour due to a person’s personality or was it dependent on the situation or particular circumstances that someone faced? The basic premise was to test the ‘dispositional’ hypothesis, that the conditions experienced within prisons come about as a result of the ‘nature’ and personality of the people who populate it, be they guards or prisoners. It follows that it is these people’s personalities rather than the conditions in the prison that affect their behaviour. If it is the personality that is imported into the prison that affects behaviour then changing the conditions in the prison will not affect behaviour, whereas if there is a situational influence then changing conditions in the prison would have some positive effects. To test this ‘dispositional’ versus ‘situational’ hypothesis it would need a new prison to be set up comparable to existing prisons, but with inmates and guards who were ‘normal’ or average members of the population without any anti-social tendencies. The study’s findings would have socially sensitive consequences for all of us and lead us to question how we might act in a given situation. Interestingly, many of the research conclusions drawn by Zimbardo have been questioned and the actual findings have not been replicated but despite this, it’s true to say that the research remains a seminal study in social psychology and continues to influence both psychological and legal argument to this day.

  On 14 August 1971, 24 male college students at Stanford University were recruited to take part in a simulated prison study in the basement at the university. These students were chosen specifically because they had been assessed as being well-adjusted individuals without any deviant or aggressive tendencies. The student volunteers were randomly assigned to the role of either a ‘guard’ or ‘prisoner’ with 12 students in each group. The mock prison was set up with Philip Zimbardo himself acting as the prison superintendent. The participants were told that the aim of the study was to investigate the psychological effects of being a prisoner or prison guard and to see how the power of roles, deindividuation, depersonalisation and disorientation could affect the volunteers.

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  Obedience to Authority

  Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm

  • Thomas Blass(Author)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  For me, the important legacy of the prison experiment is what I learned from my personal experience and how that helped to shape my own subsequent professional contributions to psychology. What I learned about most directly was the psychology of dehumanization—how basically good people can come to perceive and treat others in such bad ways; how easy it is for people to treat others who rely on their help or good will as less than human, as animals, inferior, unworthy of respect or equality. That experience in the SPE led me to do the pioneering research on burnout—the psychological hazards of emotionally demanding human service work that can lead initially dedicated and caring individuals to dehumanize and mistreat the very people they are supposed to serve. My research has tried to elucidate the causes and consequences of burnout in a variety of occupational settings; it has also tried to apply these findings to practical solutions (e.g., Maslach, 1976, 1982; Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996; Maslach & Leiter, 1997; Schaufeli, Maslach, & Marek, 1993). I also encourage analysis and change of the situational determinants of burnout rather than focusing on individual personalities of the human caregivers. So my own story in the Stanford Prison Experiment is not simply whatever role I played in ending the study earlier than planned but my role in beginning a new research program that was inspired by my personal experience with that unique study.

  THE SPE AND THE ANALYSIS OF INSTITUTIONS

  Craig Haney

  The SPE, Milgram, and the Spirit of the Times

  For me, the Stanford Prison Experiment was a formative, career-altering experience. I had just finished my second year as a psychology graduate student at Stanford when Phil Zimbardo, Curtis Banks, and I began to plan this research. My interests in applying social psychology to questions of crime and punishment had just begun to crystallize, with Phil Zimbardo’s blessing and support. But the study also represented the intersection of several preexisting interests and experiences. Like many undergraduates, I’m sure, I was drawn to social psychology in part because of the dramatic lessons that Stanley Milgram’s (1963; 1965) research taught us about human nature and his brilliance in adapting the methods of psychological research to demonstrate enduring truths about the power of the social world to shape and transform us.

  In fact, I was in the audience at the University of Pennsylvania when Milgram debated the formidable Martin Orne (Orne, 1973) about the role of “demand characteristics” in the Milgram studies. Even then it seemed apparent to me that in most of the real-world social contexts in which analogues to the Milgram paradigm might be found—primarily in institutional settings—the demand characteristics, although different in nature, would be at least as powerful as those that attached to the laboratory. Indeed, as a college senior I had taken a graduate anthropology seminar with Erving Goffman and was much influenced by his perspective on “asylums,” the social psychological characteristics of total institutional environments, and the tremendous power of socially defined roles to shape not only attitudes and behavior but also individual identities (Goffman, 1961). I had come to Stanford because Phil Zimbardo’s (1970) extraordinary paper on deindividuation had excited me about the possibility of doing social psychological research that combined the rigor of Milgram’s obedience paradigm and the richness of Goffman’s ethnography.

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  The Prevention of Torture

  An Ecological Approach

  • Danielle Celermajer(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  43 The Stanford Prison Experiment again poignantly demonstrated the extent to which situational factors can affect, or perhaps more accurately shape, individuals’ behaviors. It powerfully illustrated the difficulty that individuals can have in stepping out of, or challenging, the roles that they are assigned, especially when others around them are conforming to the expectations of those roles. For example, subsequent research indicated that when some guards behaved sadistically even the “good” guards felt helpless to intervene. Indeed, even in the face of explicit and extreme abuse of the prisoners, not a single guard quit, despite their private misgivings about what was happening. Zimbardo and his colleagues concluded that several factors were at work in the dissolution of the guards’ sense of ethical responsibility. Building on the conclusion I noted concerning the effect of an apparently rule-governed, or quasi-legalistic situation, they also noted that where those rules that were provided were vague, they could be used arbitrarily and impersonally to justify compliance, particularly (and ironically) because “rules are rules” and must 43 See Christina Maslach’s reflections in Zimbardo, Maslach, and Haney, “Reflections on the Stanford Prison Experiment”, 216–20. 128 The Situational Conditions of Institutional Violence be followed. Again, where an authority figure conveyed that he or she would take responsibility for anything that might happen, this led to a diffusion of responsibility and more latitude in abusive behavior. Where the harsh treat- ment was justified by an ideology, people were more likely to comply, and they were less likely to walk away if they perceived the exit costs as being high. The researchers also again observed that the abuse began with small, see- mingly insignificant first steps and gradually increased toward more extreme levels.

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  Conversations About Social Psychology

  • Howard Burton(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Ideas Roadshow

    (Publisher)

  Critical Situations A conversation with Philip Zimbardo Passage contains an image

  Introduction

  Should Have Knowns

  When you first start delving into Philip Zimbardo’s infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, two words immediately pop to the surface.

  The first is “classic”. Nearly half a century after those six intense days in August when 24 summer students had rapidly metamorphosed into sadistic guards and riotous prisoners, the study has long established itself as one of the most famous experiments in the history of social psychology, standing firmly alongside Stanley Milgram’s work a decade earlier as a formidable demonstration of the powerful effects of situational forces on human behaviour.

  The second word, though, is “controversial”. Ever since the results of the study were announced, there were strong voices raised against it on ethical, statistical and procedural grounds. Some said that the numbers involved were too small to prove anything, while others maintained that circumstances were so artificial as to naturally encourage the study’s participants to role-play in the way they thought was expected by them. Meanwhile, several levelled serious criticism at Zimbardo’s own role in the study, accusing him of sinking to an almost similarly depraved state as the “guards” by allowing such emotionally-damaging experiences to continue in the name of a scientific study.

  What many might not appreciate, however, is that few can be harder on the renowned Stanford University social psychologist than he is himself, consistently recognizing his own profoundly unethical behaviour, together with the vital role his then-girlfriend, Christina Maslach, played in convincing him to shut the study down 8 days earlier than planned.

  “She began to tear up. I asked her what the matter was and she got really upset. She said, ‘I can’t look at that! ’ I started telling her about the dynamics of human nature and all that, and she just ran out.

  “At that point, I was stressed to my limit. I was not sleeping regularly. We ran out in front of Jordan Hall—it’s now 10:30 at night—and I was yelling at her, saying, ‘Don’t you understand that there are dynamics here that have never been seen or studied before? Most experiments only last one hour, but these people are living and becoming prisoners and guards!

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  Globalization and Sustainable Development

  A Changing Perspective for Business

  • Martin Oyevaar, Diego Vazquez-Brust, Harrie W.M. Van Bommel(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  The guards partially blamed themselves for being too lenient during the uprising and soon began a tougher regime. One prisoner in particular lost control when he was told his smoking rights were to be curtailed. The guards made his life miserable, knowing that the man wanted to smoke when he felt like it. Further prisoner protests followed when the guards limited use of the toilets and placed buckets by the beds but some of the men became lifeless followers of the guards’ orders. To stop things from getting out of hand and for security reasons, the experiment came to a halt after six days. The level of tension and escalation had increased to such an extent that the experiment was never repeated again. Several films, videos and YouTube clips about the experiment exist, all of which make a strong impression on the viewer. Important lessons can be learned from the Stanford Prison Experiment. For a society that wishes to contain aggression it is important to bear the following themes in mind: ● Surroundings and aggression. ● Aggression and the escalation of violence. 72 Part I: Foundations of Economics, Governance and Society The Lucifer Effect and aggression Philip Zimbardo, who conducted the Stanford Experiment, analysed his findings in a book entitled ‘The Lucifer Effect.’ 20 One of the most important conclusions was that good people can become aggressive in specific surroundings. He felt that in questions of guilt, the justice system is inadequate in only dealing with the accused. Because the behaviour of the accused is caused by the system, society can benefit in the end, as the system itself becomes vulnerable to criticism and suggestions for improvement can be directed at those in charge; both the system and the authorities come under scrutiny. Aggression and spiralling violence The Stanford Prison Experiment shows us how closely action and reaction are related and how things can rise to a boiling point in a tense situation when rules are poorly conceived.

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  Theatre in Prison

  Theory and Practice

  • Michael Balfour(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Intellect Books

    (Publisher)

  A Study of Prisoners and Guards in a Simulated Prison

  Craig Haney, Curtis Banks and Philip Zimbardo

  The research reported in this chapter [originally published in 1973] was part of a larger project sponsored by the Office of Naval Research which was designed to develop a better understanding of the basic psychological mechanisms underlying human aggression. In this study, Dr. Zimbardo fabricated a simulation of the essential characteristics of a prison environment. From a highly selected group of college students, Dr. Zimbardo randomly assigned half as ‘guards’ (with all attendant powers) and half as ‘prisoners’ (under the complete subjugation of the ‘guards’). Essentially then, a group of intelligent, ‘normal’ young men were put into a situation which demanded close contact over a period of several days. There was a well-defined authority/subordinate relationship between ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners.’ The ‘prison’ environment was further manipulated to promote anonymity, depersonalization, and dehumanization among the subjects. The study demonstrates how these variables combine to increase the incidence of aggressive behaviour on the part of the ‘guards’ and submissive and docile conformity on the part of the ‘prisoners.’

  Studies such as this one help to identify and isolate the various processes which motivate aggressive/submissive behaviour within a ‘total institution’ such as a prison. The Navy and Marine Corps have a direct interest in the conclusions drawn from this study in as much as parallels can be made between the forces which operated within Dr. Zimbardo’s ‘prison’ and those which spawn disruptive interpersonal conflict in Naval prisons. More importantly, however, this study identifies some of the conditions which are likely to promote unrest when men are placed in situations which demand close contact for protracted periods of time. Such research increases the Navy’s capability to develop effective training designs to eliminate conditions which elicit counter-productive conflict.

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  The Person in Social Psychology

  • Vivien Burr(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  et al. (1973), was carried out in 1971, at a time when there was considerable unrest in US prisons. The controversy and publicity that surrounded the outcome of the study gave Zimbardo a platform on which to speak out against the inhumane conditions in many prisons (e.g. Zimbardo, 1975).

  The aim of the study was to have ordinary people carry out the role of prisoner or guard in a realistic prison setting. The basement of a university building was specially converted for the purpose, and the research team advertised for paid volunteers in a local newspaper. The chosen participants were 21 middle-class male college students, all of whom had completed a number of personality tests and were deemed emotionally stable, and who were randomly assigned to their respective roles. To make the situation as realistic as possible, the researchers enlisted the aid of the local police who ‘arrested’ the prisoners at their homes and subjected them to the normal police arrest procedures at the local station. They were then blindfolded and taken to the university ‘prison’, where they were stripped, deloused, given a uniform and number, and put into a cell with two other ‘prisoners’. The ‘guards’ were issued with uniforms and told that they were not to use violence and that their job was to maintain control of the prison.

  It was intended to run the experiment for two weeks, but it was in fact stopped after five days. The ‘guards’ quickly became abusive and coercive, and engaged in behaviour calculated to humiliate and dehumanise the ‘prisoners’. The ‘prisoners’ by contrast became depressed and servile. Three of them had to be released during the first four days as they showed extreme traumatic reactions, including hysterical crying and confused thinking. Members of the research team who had experience with real prisons were shocked at the similarity between the behaviour and experience of real prisoners and that of the volunteers. The behaviour of the ‘guards’ was, if anything, more inhumane than that found in real prisons. Zimbardo (1975) comments ‘The majority had indeed become prisoners or guards, no longer able to clearly differentiate between role-playing and self’ (p. 268). Drawing on his earlier work on deindividuation, he concluded that ordinary people could be readily induced to perform abusive and anti-social acts if they are put in a situation where they can feel relatively anonymous and where such behaviour is expected of them. He sees the study as confirming the fragility of our individual agency and morality:

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  Encyclopedia of Social Psychology

  • Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs, Roy Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Zimbardo and colleagues argued that this view dis-counts the powerful influence of the social situation in which guards are pitted against prisoners under a vari-ety of social and political influences. Methodology To test their hypothesis, Zimbardo and colleagues created a realistic mock prison in the basement of Stanford University. The participants included 21 male college students, specifically chosen for their normal responses on a battery of background questionnaires. The participants were randomly assigned to be either a guard or a prisoner, with an undergraduate research assistant acting as warden and Zimbardo himself taking on the role of superintendent. The prisoners stayed in the prison 24 hours per day, while the guards worked 8-hour shifts. Aside from a restriction on phys-ical violence, guards were given great latitude in how they could deal with prisoners, including the rules they could establish and punishments they could dole out. The experimenters went to great lengths to estab-lish realism. Prisoners were unexpectedly “arrested” at their houses by the local police department, were taken to the police station to be charged their “crime” and brought to the prison at Stanford. Prisoners were assigned a number and wore only a smock, which was designed to deindividuate the prisoners. Guards were fitted with a uniform, nightstick, and reflective sun-glasses to establish power. The prison cells consisted of a 6- by 9-foot space furnished with only a cot. To further increase realism, a catholic priest and attorney were brought in and a parole board was established. Once the participants had arrived at the prison, the situation escalated at a surprising rate. On the second day, a prisoner rebellion was quickly quelled by the guards, who punished the prisoners through means conceived without guidance from the experimenters.

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  Double Exposure

  How Social Psychology Fell in Love with the Movies

  • Kathryn Millard(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Rutgers University Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 7 Restaging the Psychology Experiment

  If psychology fell in love with the movies, can it also be said that film and television fell in love with the psychology experiment? In recent decades, key experiments have proved fertile ground for film and program makers—none more so than Milgram’s “Obedience to Authority” and Zimbardo’s “Stanford Prison Experiment.” Both involved ordinary citizens placed under enormous stress, and both dramatized complex questions about how we negotiate issues of obedience and authority and make decisions to resist or accede to social pressure. People would not believe what had occurred unless they saw it with their own eyes. In both cases, footage filmed via hidden cameras provided evidence, and those visual records were critical in attracting media interest.

  Compared with “Obedience to Authority” and the “Stanford Prison Experiment,” other social psychology experiments of the postwar era lacked an underlying dramatic scenario that could be adapted and repurposed. This was often the case despite the fact that the social issues under investigation remained only too pertinent. Solomon Asch’s series of experiments on conformity and independence, for example, arguably offered a more nuanced account of social behavior than Milgram’s “Obedience to Authority.” But they lacked human drama. After all, which of the following scenarios would you prefer to watch: young men choosing the longest line on a piece of paper or people facing pressure to inflict an electric shock on an innocent person? Milgram had worked with Asch as a research assistant. “I was trying to think of a way to make Asch’s conformity experiments more humanly significant. I was dissatisfied that the test of conformity was a judgement about lines,” said Milgram.1

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  International Handbook of Penology and Criminal Justice

  • Shlomo Giora Shoham, Ori Beck, Martin Kett(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  All participants were paid fifteen dollars a day. The experiment had to be terminated after six days instead of the intended fourteen, because four “prisoners” suffered extreme emotional depression, crying, rage, and acute anxiety (and another from a psychoso-matic condition). Some of the “guards,” on the other hand, were disappointed Prisons and Jails 41 that the experiment had to be ended, because, according to the experiment-ers, “they now enjoyed the extreme control and power which they exercised and were reluctant to give it up.” This experiment is widely known and is often quoted with reference to the formation of authoritarian personali-ties—the authors suggesting that their “guards” developed pathological reac-tions because of the power of the social forces operating in the situation to which they were exposed. In this, it stands in a direct line with the experi-ments of Stanley Milgram (1965) a decade earlier, in which he encouraged subjects to administer what they thought were painful electric shocks despite their belief that the recipients were crying in agony. But it is also quoted as though it reflected the inevitable social forces and consequences that flow from the very existence of the prison as an institution and has been under-stood in that way by generations of students since. Craig Haney has gone on to become one of the most distinguished and respected commentators on the psychological consequences of confinement, based on interviews with and clinical assessment of real prisoners, but the Stanford experiment has been strongly criticized on ethical grounds, and in my view rightly so.

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  The As If Principle

  The Radically New Approach to Changing Your Life

  • Richard Wiseman(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Free Press

    (Publisher)

  Prior to starting the study, he converted the basement rooms of Stanford’s Psychology Department into a mock jail. Several of the smaller rooms were turned into cells by replacing their doors with steel bars. Other areas were converted into guards’ living quarters and a prison “yard.” The mock prison also contained several two-way mirrors and hidden cameras that allowed the experimenters to observe and record the participants’ behavior.

  Zimbardo then placed an advertisement in a local newspaper appealing for men to take part in a two-week study examining prison life. All applicants were sent an extensive questionnaire about their background, psychological health, and any prior history of criminal activity. Zimbardo carefully examined the replies and invited the twenty-four applicants who showed the highest levels of psychological stability and lowest levels of previous antisocial activity to take part. He randomly assigned half of them to play the role of the “prisoners” and the other half to be the “guards.” Zimbardo himself decided to adopt the role of the prison superintendent (a move that he later described as “a serious error in judgment”).

  Just prior to the study, there had been violent clashes between police officers and antiwar protesters on the Stanford campus, and Zimbardo found out that the city police chief was eager to improve his relationship with the university. He asked the chief whether he might be able to assign some officers to help with the initial part of the study and the chief agreed. On the first morning of the experiment, nine of the “prisoners” were unexpectedly arrested in their homes by the Palo Alto City Police Department. All of them were charged with suspicion of burglary or armed robbery, handcuffed, and driven to their local police station. The officers then searched and fingerprinted the prisoners, blindfolded them, and drove them to Zimbardo’s mock prison.

  Meanwhile, the volunteers playing the role of the guards were dressed in khaki uniforms and given a whistle, mirror sunglasses, and a wooden baton. They were asked to look after the prison by working in three-man shifts, with each shift lasting eight hours.

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