The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was an attempt to investigate the psychological effects of perceived power, focusing on the struggle between prisoners and prison guards. It was conducted at Stanford University on August 14-20, 1971, by a research group led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo using college students. It was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research as an investigation into the causes of difficulties between guards and prisoners in the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps. The experiment is a topic covered in most introductory psychology textbooks.
Some participants developed their roles as the guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, by the guards' request, actively harassed other prisoners who tried to stop it. Zimbardo, in his role as the superintendent, allowed abuse to continue. Two of the prisoners left mid-experiment, and the whole exercise was abandoned after six days following the objections of graduate student Christina Maslach, whom Zimbardo was dating (and later married). Certain portions of the experiment were filmed, and excerpts of footage are publicly available.
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Goals and methods
Zimbardo and his team aimed to test the hypothesis that the inherent personality traits of prisoners and guards are the chief cause of abusive behavior in prison. Participants were recruited and told they would participate in a two-week prison simulation. The team selected the 24 males whom they deemed to be the most psychologically stable and healthy. These participants were predominantly white and of the middle class. The group was intentionally selected to exclude those with criminal backgrounds, psychological impairments, or medical problems. They all agreed to participate in a 7- to 14-day period and received $15 per day.
The experiment was conducted in the basement of Jordan Hall (Stanford's psychology building). 12 of the 24 participants were assigned the role of prisoner (9 plus 3 alternates), while the other 12 were assigned the role of guard (also 9 plus 3 alternates). Zimbardo took on the role of the superintendent, and an undergraduate research assistant the role of the warden. Zimbardo designed the experiment in order to induce disorientation, depersonalization, and deindividuation in the participants.
The researchers held an orientation session for guards the day before the experiment, during which guards were instructed not to physically harm the prisoners or withhold food or drink. In the footage of the study, Zimbardo can be seen talking to the guards: "You can create in the prisoners feelings of boredom, a sense of fear to some degree, you can create a notion of arbitrariness that their life is totally controlled by us, by the system, you, me, and they'll have no privacy ... We're going to take away their individuality in various ways. In general what all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness. That is, in this situation we'll have all the power and they'll have none."
The researchers provided the guards with wooden batons to establish their status, clothing similar to that of an actual prison guard (khaki shirt and pants from a local military surplus store), and mirrored sunglasses to prevent eye contact. Prisoners wore uncomfortable, ill-fitting smocks and stocking caps, as well as a chain around one ankle. Guards were instructed to call prisoners by their assigned numbers, sewn on their uniforms, instead of by name.
The prisoners were "arrested" at their homes and "charged" with armed robbery. The local Palo Alto police department assisted Zimbardo with the arrests and conducted full booking procedures on the prisoners, which included fingerprinting and taking mug shots. The prisoners were transported to the mock prison from the police station, where they were strip searched and given their new identities.
The small mock prison cells were set up to hold three prisoners each. There was a small corridor for the prison yard, a closet for solitary confinement, and a bigger room across from the prisoners for the guards and warden. The prisoners were to stay in their cells and the yard all day and night until the end of the study. The guards worked in teams of three for eight-hour shifts. The guards did not have to stay on site after their shift.
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Results
After a relatively uneventful first day, on the second day the prisoners in Cell 1 blockaded their cell door with their beds and took off their stocking caps, refusing to come out or follow the guards' instructions. Guards from other shifts volunteered to work extra hours, to assist in subduing the revolt, and subsequently attacked the prisoners with fire extinguishers without being supervised by the research staff. Finding that handling nine cell mates with only three guards per shift was challenging, one of the guards suggested they use psychological tactics to control them. They set up a "privilege cell" in which prisoners who were not involved in the riot were treated with special rewards, such as higher quality meals. The "privileged" inmates chose not to eat the meal in commiseration with their fellow prisoners.
After only 36 hours, one prisoner began to act "crazy", as Zimbardo described: "#8612 then began to act crazy, to scream, to curse, to go into a rage that seemed out of control. It took quite a while before we became convinced that he was really suffering and that we had to release him."
Guards forced the prisoners to repeat their assigned numbers to reinforce the idea that this was their new identity. Guards soon used these prisoner counts to harass the prisoners, using physical punishment such as protracted exercise for errors in the prisoner count. Sanitary conditions declined rapidly, exacerbated by the guards' refusal to allow some prisoners to urinate or defecate anywhere but in a bucket placed in their cell. As punishment, the guards would not let the prisoners empty the sanitation bucket. Mattresses were a valued item in the prison, so the guards would punish prisoners by removing their mattresses, leaving them to sleep on concrete. Some prisoners were forced to be naked as a method of degradation. Several guards became increasingly cruel as the experiment continued; experimenters reported that approximately one-third of the guards exhibited genuine sadistic tendencies. Most of the guards were upset when the experiment concluded after only six days.
Zimbardo mentions his own absorption in the experiment. On the fourth day, some of the guards stated they heard a rumor that the released prisoner was going to come back with his friends and free the remaining inmates. Zimbardo and the guards disassembled the prison and moved it onto a different floor of the building. Zimbardo himself waited in the basement, in case the released prisoner showed up, and planned to tell him that the experiment had been terminated. The released prisoner never returned, and the prison was rebuilt in the basement.
Zimbardo argued that the prisoners had internalized their roles, since some had stated they would accept "parole" even if it would mean forfeiting their pay, despite the fact that quitting would have achieved the same result without the delay involved in waiting for their parole requests to be granted or denied. Zimbardo argued they had no reason for continued participation in the experiment after having lost all monetary compensation, yet they did, because they had internalized the prisoner identity.
Prisoner No. 416, a newly admitted stand-by prisoner, expressed concern about the treatment of the other prisoners. The guards responded with more abuse. When he refused to eat his sausages, saying he was on a hunger strike, guards confined him to "solitary confinement", a dark closet: "the guards then instructed the other prisoners to repeatedly punch on the door while shouting at 416." The guards said he would be released from solitary confinement only if the prisoners gave up their blankets and slept on their bare mattresses, which all but one refused to do.
Zimbardo aborted the experiment early when Christina Maslach, a graduate student in psychology whom he was dating (and later married), objected to the conditions of the prison after she was introduced to the experiment to conduct interviews. Zimbardo noted that, of more than 50 people who had observed the experiment, Maslach was the only one who questioned its morality. After only six days of a planned two weeks' duration, the experiment was discontinued.
Conclusions
On August 20, 1971, Zimbardo announced the end of the experiment to the participants.
The experiment's results favor situational attribution of behavior over dispositional attribution (a result caused by internal characteristics). It seemed that the situation, rather than their individual personalities, caused the participants' behavior. Using this interpretation, the results are compatible with those of the Milgram experiment, where random participants complied with orders to administer seemingly dangerous and potentially lethal electric shocks to a shill.
The experiment has also been used to illustrate cognitive dissonance theory and the power of authority.
Shortly after the study was completed, there were bloody revolts at both the San Quentin and Attica prison facilities, and Zimbardo reported his findings on the experiment to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary.
Participants' behavior was modified due to the fact that they were watched as opposed to a lurking variable (Hawthorne effect). Even knowing they were being observed, guards and prisoners acted differently than normal. Some guards felt the need to show their dominance even when it was not necessary.
Zimbardo instructed the guards before the experiment to disrespect the prisoners in various ways. For example, they had to refer to prisoners by number rather than by name. This, according to Zimbardo, was intended to diminish the prisoners' individuality. With no control, prisoners learned they had little effect on what happened to them, ultimately causing them to stop responding, and give up. Quick to realize that the guards were the highest in the hierarchy, prisoners began to accept their roles as less important human beings.
The uniforms were given to all participants to erase individual identity, and participants were randomly chosen to be either a prisoner or guard to reduce individuality.
A strength of the study is that it has altered the way US prisons are run. For example, juveniles accused of federal crimes are no longer housed before trial with adult prisoners, due to the risk of violence against them.
Criticism
Some of the guards' behaviour led to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine sadistic tendencies", while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized; five of them had to be removed from the experiment early. After Maslach confronted Zimbardo and forced him to realize that he had been passively allowing unethical acts to be performed under his supervision, Zimbardo concluded that both prisoners and guards had become grossly absorbed in their roles and realized that he had likewise become as grossly absorbed in his own, and he terminated the experiment. Ethical concerns surrounding the experiment often draw comparisons to a similar experiment, conducted ten years earlier in 1961 at Yale University by Stanley Milgram.
Because of the nature and questionable ethics of the experiment, Zimbardo found it impossible to keep traditional scientific controls in place. He was unable to remain a neutral observer, since he influenced the direction of the experiment as the prison's superintendent. Conclusions and observations drawn by the experimenters were largely subjective and anecdotal, and the experiment is practically impossible for other researchers to accurately reproduce. Erich Fromm claimed to see generalizations in the experiment's results and argued that the personality of an individual does affect behavior when imprisoned. This ran counter to the study's conclusion that the prison situation itself controls the individual's behavior. Fromm also argued that the amount of sadism in the "normal" subjects could not be determined with the methods employed to screen them.
"John Wayne" (the real-life Dave Eshelman), one of the guards in the experiment, said the study placed undue emphasis on the cruelty of the guards, and that he caused the escalation of events between guards and prisoners after he began to emulate a character from the Paul Newman film Cool Hand Luke (1967). He further intensified his actions because he was nicknamed "John Wayne", even though he was trying to mimic actor Strother Martin, who had played the role of the sadistic Captain in the movie.
What came over me was not an accident. It was planned. I set out with a definite plan in mind, to try to force the action, force something to happen, so that the researchers would have something to work with. After all, what could they possibly learn from guys sitting around like it was a country club? So I consciously created this persona. I was in all kinds of drama productions in high school and college. It was something I was very familiar with: to take on another personality before you step out on the stage. I was kind of running my own experiment in there, by saying, "How far can I push these things and how much abuse will these people take before they say, 'knock it off?'" But the other guards didn't stop me. They seemed to join in. They were taking my lead. Not a single guard said, "I don't think we should do this." -David Eshelman
Also, researchers from Western Kentucky University argued that selection bias may have played a role in the results. The researchers recruited students for a study using an advertisement similar to the one used in the Stanford Prison Experiment, with some ads saying "a psychological study" (the control group), and some with the words "prison life" as originally worded in Dr. Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment. It was found that students who responded to the classified advertisement for the "prison study" were higher in traits such as social dominance, aggression, authoritarianism, etc. and were lower in traits related to empathy and altruism when statistically compared to the control group participants.
The study has been criticized for demand characteristics by psychologist Peter Gray. He argues that participants in psychological experiments are more likely to do what they believe the researchers want them to do. The guards were essentially told to be cruel. However, it could be argued that it was precisely this willingness to comply with the experiment's questionable practices that showed how little was needed for the students to engage in such practices.
Skeptical author Brian Dunning states:
Most of the Stanford guards did not exhibit any cruel or unusual behavior, often being friendly and doing favors for the prisoners...The statistical validity of the sample of participants, 24 male Stanford students of about the same age, has been called into question as being too small and restrictive to be generally applicable to the population at large...(and the fact that) Zimbardo has dedicated much of his career to the promotion of the idea that bad environments drive bad behavior.
Guards and prisoners were playing the role of their authority, which is subjective. They may have not acted the same in real life situations. In particular, the environment and authority roles they found themselves in changed their actions.
Critics contend that not only was the sample size too minimal for extrapolation, but also having all of the experimental subjects be US male students gravely undercut the experiment's validity. In other words, it's entirely conceivable that replicating the experiment using a diverse group of people (with different objectives and views in life) would have produced radically distinct results; that is, had the test subjects come from divergent socio-economic and psychological groups, different experimental results may well have resulted.
Comparisons to Abu Ghraib
When acts of prisoner torture and abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were publicized in March 2004, Zimbardo himself, who paid close attention to the details of the story, was struck by the similarity with his own experiment. He was dismayed by official military and government representatives' shifting the blame for the torture and abuses in the Abu Ghraib American military prison on to "a few bad apples" rather than acknowledging the possibly systemic problems of a formally established military incarceration system.
Eventually, Zimbardo became involved with the defense team of lawyers representing one of the Abu Ghraib prison guards, Staff Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick. He was granted full access to all investigation and background reports, and testified as an expert witness in SSG Frederick's court martial, which resulted in an eight-year prison sentence for Frederick in October 2004.
Zimbardo drew from his participation in the Frederick case to write the book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, published by Random House in 2007, which deals with the striking similarities between his own Stanford Prison Experiment and the Abu Ghraib abuses.
Ethical issues
The experiment presented several ethical issues, the most serious of which was that the experiment continued even when participants did not wish to continue. Despite the fact that participants were told they had the right to leave at any time, Zimbardo did not allow this during the experiment. Zimbardo was faced with the ethical dilemma that the experiment could possibly return outstanding results if continued, but it might also adversely affect the participants' well-being if not halted.
Currently, there are ethical guidelines to be followed. The Stanford Prison Experiment led to the implementation of rules to preclude any harmful treatment of participants. Before they are implemented, human studies must now undergo an extensive review by an institutional review board (US) or ethics committee (UK) in accordance with the ethical guidelines by the American Psychological Association. These guidelines review whether the potential benefit for science outweighs the possible risk for physical and psychological harm.
A post-experimental debriefing is now considered an important ethical consideration to ensure that participants are not harmed in any way by their experience in an experiment. Though Zimbardo did conduct debriefing sessions, they were several years after the Stanford Prison Experiment. By that time numerous details were forgotten; nonetheless, many participants reported that they experienced no lasting negative effects. However, the debriefing process should take place immediately after an experiment to assess what psychological harm, if any, may have been done and to rehabilitate participants, if necessary.
Similar studies
BBC prison study
Psychologists Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher conducted the BBC Prison Study in 2002 and was published in 2006. This was a partial replication of the Stanford prison experiment conducted with the assistance of the BBC, which broadcast events in the study in a documentary series called The Experiment. Their results and conclusions differed from Zimbardo's and led to a number of publications on tyranny, stress, and leadership. The results were published in leading academic journals such as British Journal of Social Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, Social Psychology Quarterly, and Personality and Social Psychology Review. The BBC Prison Study is now taught as a core study on the UK A-level Psychology OCR syllabus.
While Haslam and Reicher's procedure was not a direct replication of Zimbardo's, their study casts further doubt on the generality of his conclusions. Specifically, it questions the notion that people slip mindlessly into role and the idea that the dynamics of evil are in any way banal. Their research also points to the importance of leadership in the emergence of tyranny of the form displayed by Zimbardo when briefing guards in the Stanford experiment.
Experiments in the United States
The Stanford prison experiment was in part a response to the Milgram experiment at Yale beginning in 1961 and published in 1963.
The Third Wave experiment was the use of authoritarian dynamics aping Nazi Party methods of mass control in a classroom setting by high school teacher Ron Jones in Palo Alto, California in 1976 with the goal of demonstrating to the class in a vivid way how the German public in World War II could have acted in the way it did. Although the veracity of Jones' accounts has been questioned, several participants in the study have gone on record to confirm the events.
In both experiments, participants found it difficult to leave the study due to the roles they were assigned. Both studies examine human nature and the effects of authority. Personalities of the subjects had little influence on both experiments despite the test prior to the prison experiment.
In the Milgram and the Zimbardo studies, participants conform to social pressures. Conformity is strengthened by allowing some participants to feel more or less powerful than others. In both experiments, behavior is altered to match the group stereotype.
Physical aspects of the prison
The prison used for the experiment was a 35-foot (10.5 m) section of a basement at Stanford University. The prison had two fabricated walls, one at the entrance, and one at the cell wall to block observation. Each cell (6 x 9 feet, or 1.8 x 2.7 m), contained only a cot for the prisoners. In contrast, the guards lived in a very different environment, separated from the prisoners. They were given an area for relaxation and rest, plus other comforts.
In popular culture
- American science fiction writer Gene Wolfe published a story, When I was Ming the Merciless (1975), inspired by the Stanford Prison Experiment. In the story, college student volunteers are randomly assigned to factions (Blue, Green, and Yellow) and locked in a campus building. Violence ensues.
- In 1977, Italian director Carlo Tuzii adapted the experiment to an Italian environment. Italian students made a film based on it, La Gabbia (The Cage).
- Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment (1992), is a documentary about the experiment, made available via the Stanford Prison Experiment website. The documentary was written by Zimbardo and directed and produced by Ken Musen.
- The novel Black Box, written by Mario Giordano and inspired by the experiment, was adapted for the screen by German director Oliver Hirschbiegel as Das Experiment (2001).
- In the third season of the television series Veronica Mars (2006-2007), a variant of the experiment is recreated as an activity for a sociology class, the main difference being that the guards were expected to get information out of the prisoners.
- In an October 2008 episode of the NBC television show Life, Detectives Crews and Reese investigated a murder that took place at a prison experiment loosely modeled on the Stanford Prison Experiment.
- The 2010 film The Experiment is an English-language remake of the 2001 film Das Experiment.
- The Japanese serialized manga Prison School, first published in February 2011, heavily references the Stanford Prison Experiment as the inspiration for Kate's revenge plot.
- Broadening, a play in the 2012 Dublin Fringe Festival, was based on the Stanford experiment.
- The experiment was featured in a 2012 episode of Science's Dark Matters: Twisted But True in the documentary short "Creative Evil".
- In 2014, the Danish national television channel DR3 recreated the experiment in the television series Ond, ondere, ondest.
- The 2015 film The Stanford Prison Experiment is another film based on the experiment.
- "PhDead" episode 154 of the TV series Castle, season 8 (air date: October 5, 2015): Castle and Beckett investigate a murder and discover its relationship to a recreation of the Stanford Prison Experiment.
- In an October 2015 episode of the ITV television show Lewis, the second half mentions the Stanford prison experiment, and eventually the whole case revolves around it.
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