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It was 1971 when the prisoner, emotionally drained, sleep deprived, chained, and dehumanized in his rough muslin smock was thrown into a tiny dark closet by the cruel guard nicknamed John Wayne, to endure solitary confinement without food or bathroom privileges. You might think this scene was from Hanoi in Vietnam, or at best a military prison in the United States. You'd be close. This brutal activity was funded by the United States Navy, which was interested in learning more about the psychological mechanisms in a prison environment. It took place at Stanford University in California, and the prisoner had done nothing wrong other than to volunteer for a research project. This was the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by professor of psychology Dr. Philip Zimbardo. Philip Zimbardo grew up in what he describes as a "South Bronx ghetto", and as a boy watched his close friends engage in acts of violence, abuse drugs, and wind up in jail. He grew fascinated by the question of why good people do bad things, and became convinced from a very young age that bad environments tend to poison the people placed into them. Put a good person into an evil situation, and that person will become evil. He later wrote:
From his body of work, it is easy to conclude that he was actively interested in justifying a preconceived notion: That good people will become evil if you put them into an evil environment. About a decade after getting his Ph.D. in psychology from Yale, Zimbardo went to Stanford University, where he got tenure and then set about planning the experiment that was to define his career. 24 students were recruited for a two-week experiment for which they would each receive $15 per day. They were randomly assigned to be either prison guards or inmates. The prisoners were surprised to be picked up unexpectedly at their homes by real Palo Alto police officers. They were roughly hustled to their new home, stripped, deloused, and put into rough muslin smocks with no underwear. Zimbardo described it:
The results have become legendary. Some of the guards seemed to relish their newfound authority a little too much, becoming sadistic, and working extra hours just for fun. The torment they put on the prisoners was real. Some began showing physical manifestations of stress and psychological trauma, to the point that one third of them had to be removed from the experiment early. In fact, it got so bad that Zimbardo decided to end the experiment after only six days, less than half the planned duration. Zimbardo's conclusion was clear. Good, ordinary college students willingly became sadistic tormentors, simply because they were given the permission, the means, and the expectation of doing so. The Stanford Prison Experiment, and this well-publicized result, became a permanent fixture in the popular conception of psychology. The problem is that a lot of the psychology community disagrees with his findings. Some found that any results were rendered meaningless by insufficient controls. Some have problems with his analysis of the results, reaching a different conclusion based on the same data. Some found the sample population invalidated by selection biases, or the size of the sample inadequate for statistically useful results. Some found methodological flaws that tainted the participants' behavior. Let's look at some of these criticisms in closer detail.
Dr. Zimbardo and the Stanford Experiment came into the news again in 2004, following the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq. American prison guards were accused of cruelty to Iraqi prisoners — the great Naked Human Pyramidgate scandal. A number of soldiers and senior officers were court martialed and imprisoned or demoted. The prosecutors claimed that "a few bad apples" were responsible. The defense disagreed, and called in Dr. Zimbardo as an expert witness to testify that it was the environment that was responsible, not the individuals. "You can't be a sweet cucumber in a vinegar barrel," he famously said. The court disagreed, finding (rightly, as many would say) that individuals must be held accountable for their own actions, and the few bad apples went to jail. Dr. Zimbardo then wrote the book The Lucifer Effect, drawing further parallels between his prison experiment and the Abu Ghraib scandal. Psychology is complicated, and there will probably never be a perfect theory explaining all human behavior; so people should never assign too much significance to the results of any given experiment like the Stanford Prison Experiment. And, when an experiment receives a large amount of scholarly criticism from mainstream science, as this one did, you have very good reason to look past its portrayal in the popular media and, instead, be skeptical.
References Discuss!5 most recent comments | Show all 26 comments Remember, you should always read with skepticism the comments of anyone too lame to put their real name & city. Ironic that you are asking individuals to be skeptical about a book/professor/experiment that is skeptical. Indeed all scientists go in with a particular bias when developing an experiment but that is primary due to the extensive backgrounds we carry in others research. For example, if I were to conduct an experiment on the decision centers in the brain I would look at all of the prior work done on this topic and then develop a hypothesis. Because he was acting much like a Freud of his era, there was not a plethora research to go upon so we have to use our other methods of informing oneself on a topic. Observations. Where you see bias and lack of control I see correlative evidence. In social psychology you rarely get causality. N Ring, South Bend "Most of the Stanford guards did not exhibit any cruel or unusual behavior, often being friendly and doing favors for the prisoners." Jon, USA Try your own experiment on it. Try to identify a personality that you don't like, then act out the personality. The personality would have to be something that is pretty different from the people around you so that they will dislike your nonconformity. See if you can act it out even though everyone dislikes you. Try to do something like let everyone around you think you are a pedophile. If you can even attempt at doing it, you will see how hard it can be to not conform. Adam, Vancouver, WA Congratulations for highlighting the weaknesses and flaws in the most over-rated experiment of all time. The Stanford Prison Experiment provides no useful insights, scientific advances, or revelations about people at all. David, Sydney Make a comment about this episode of Skeptoid (please try to keep it brief & to the point). Anyone can post: You can also discuss this episode in the Skeptoid Forum, hosted by the James Randi Educational Foundation. Join the Skeptalk email discussion list. |
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" First, the issue of selection bias. ....all applicants to the Stanford Prison Experiment were preselected for comfort with the idea of "prison life"."
But not for their preference for being either a guard of a prisoner. This was random. Since it was the role that appeared to result in the behaviour the original "bias", if it existed, did not appear to be significant.
It would have been interesting to see how the subjects reacted in reversed roles.
Rosemary Lyndall Wemm, Danville, CA, USA
July 04, 2008 1:03am