Experiment of Stanford

The experiment of Stanford is a study of experimental Psychologie carried out by Philip Zimbardo in 1971 on the effects of the prison situation. It was carried out with students who played of the roles of guards and prisoners. It aimed at studying the behavior of the ordinary people in such a context, with the assumption that the situation would induce the “guards” to adopt abusive conduits and the “prisoners” to accept humiliations. To show that it was the situation rather than the personality of the participants which was at the origin of these behaviors, the subjects had been selected for their stability and their maturity, and their respective roles guards or prisoners had been assigned to them by chance. Zimbardo also understood by this study to contribute to the improvement of the prison conditions in its country.

The prisoners and the guards quickly adapted to the roles which have had assigned to them, exceeding the limits of what had been envisaged and leading to really dangerous and psychologically detrimental situations. A third of the guards showed sadistic behaviors, while many prisoners were traumatized émotionellement, two of them having even being withdrawn from the experiment before the end.

In spite of the degradation of the conditions and the loss of control of the experiment, only one person among the fifty observers, Christina Maslach, former student of professor Zimbardo, opposed the experiment. It is thanks to it that professor Zimbardo became aware of the situation and made stop the experiment prematurely.

The ethical problems raised by this experiment bring it closer to the Expérience of Milgram, carried out in 1963 to the Université Yale by Stanley Milgram, a former classmate of Zimbardo to the college.

Goals and methods

The study, financed by the US Navy and the US Marine Body, aimed at including/understanding the reason of the conflicts in their prison system. Professor Zimbardo and his team wanted to test the assumption according to which the prison warders and the Prisonnier S spontaneously adapted by Autosélection a driving behavior to a degradation of the detention conditions. The participants, recruited by an advertisement in a newspaper, were paid 15 $ per day (what would account for 75 $ in 2007) to take part in a " simulation of prison" from one two weeks duration. Professor Zimbardo and his team selected among the 75 people having answered the advertisement the 24 candidates who their psychologically seemed most stable and were in the physical fine shape. These participants were mainly of young white belonging to the middle-class. They continued all of academic works.

The candidates were divided in a random way into two groups of equal size, the “prisoners” and the “guards”. A posteriori the prisoners declared that they thought that the guards had been selected for their higher size, but actually they had been selected with pile or face, and there was no objective difference in size between the two groups.

The prison was located in the basement of the building of psychology of the Université Stanford. An research assistant played the part of director and Zimbardo that of supervisor. Zimbardo forced conditions particular to the participants in the hope to increase the Désorientation, the Dépersonnalisation and the Désindividualisation.

One provides to the guards a bludgeon out of wood and a khaki uniform of military type bought in a store of surplus. They had also reflective sunglasses (like those of the American police officers and certain prison warders) to avoid any contact between the eyes of a prisoner and those of a guard. Contrary to the prisoners, the guards were supposed to work in rotation and to return on their premises when they were not service, although thereafter number of them were voluntary for additional work without pay rise.

The prisoners were to carry a kind of dress, not of underclothing, and carried rubber tongs, which, according to professor Zimbardo, was to force them to adopt unusual postures and to test a feeling of discomfort to push their confusion. They were called by numbers and not by their name. These numbers were registered on their uniforms and they were to carry nylon stocking on the top of the head to simulate a shaven cranium (as with the army). Moreover, they carried a chain to the ankles, to permanently impose to them the feeling of their imprisonment and their oppression.

The experiment day before, the guards attended a meeting of formation, but did not accept null formal instruction, if not that no physical violence was authorized. They were informed that the good performance of the prison was of their responsibility, and that they were to manage it in the manner which would be appropriate to them.

Zimbardo made this statement with the guards during the formation: You can create in the prisoners a feeling of trouble, of fear until a certain degree, you can create a concept of arbitrary by the fact that their life is completely controlled by us, by the system, you, me, and it will not have any intimacy… We will make disappear their individuality from various ways. In general, all this leads to a feeling of impotence. In this situation, we will have all the capacity and they will not have any of it

The designated participants as captive were simply warned to wait on their premises to be called when the experiment would start. In fact, they were stopped for armed robbery, without being prevented, by the police force of Palo Alto which coopérait with this part of the experiment.

The prisoners had to pass by a procedure of " fichage" supplements, including the catch of the digital fingerprints, the photographs and the reading of their rights. One then transported them in the factitious prison where it underwent an excavation supplements and where one indicated their new “identity to them”.

Results

The control of the experiment was quickly lost. The prisoners underwent - and accepted - a humiliating treatment and sometimes sadist on behalf of the guards, and at the end much of them suffered from a severe emotional disturbance.

After a first rather calm day, a riot occurred the second day. The guards went voluntary for overtime and collaborated to break the revolt, attacking the prisoners with extinguishers without being supervised by the research team. After that, the guards tried to divide the prisoners and to assemble them the ones against the others by creating a " bonne" cell and a " mauvaise" cell. That was to let think of the prisoners that there were " informateurs" in their rows. These efforts were largely rewarded, since there was not any more a great rebellion. According to the former prisoners engaged as consultants by professor Zimbardo, a similar technique had been used successfully in the true prisons in the United States.

The " counting of prisonniers" , which had been set up so that the prisoners familiarize themselves with their identification number, became tests where during several hours the guards tormented the prisoners and their imposed physical punishments, in particular of long periods of forced physical exercise. This prison became unhealthy and inhospitable; the right to use the bathroom became a privilege which could - and - was often refused. Certain prisoners were forced to clean the toilets with naked hands. The mattresses were withdrawn from the " mauvaise" cell and prisoners obliged to sleep with same the ground without any clothing. The deprivation of food was also often used as punishment. Moreover, the prisoners endured a nudity forced and even of the acts of sexual humiliation.

Professor Zimbardo itself was victim of his experiment. The fourth day, Zimbardo and the guards reacted to a rumor of escape while trying to move all the experiment in a cell not used of the local department of police force, because that was " more sûr". The Police force refused, calling upon problems of insurance, and professor Zimbardo remembers to be irritated and to have plague against the lack of cooperation of the police force.

The experiment advancing, of many guards became gradually more sadistic, in particular the night (thinking that the cameras were extinct and that the research team could not see them). The guinea-pigs declared that approximately a third of the guards presented true sadistic tendencies. It should be noted that the majority of the guards were irritated when the experiment stopped prematurely.

To support his theory according to which the participants had interiorized their role, professor Zimbardo advanced the fact that when one proposed to them a parole in exchange of the confiscation of the totality of their pay, the majority of the prisoners accepted. Then, when their parole nevertheless was refused, none left the experiment. Professor Zimbardo advances that there was no reason for them to continue to take part in the experiment if they were ready to give up their wages to leave it.

The prisoners started to present symptoms of acute emotional disturbances, and one of them developed a psychosomatic eczema on all the body when he learned that its request for parole was rejected (professor Zimbardo had refused it to him, thinking that he tried to leave the experiment by pretending the disease). Unverifiable tears and disordered thoughts had become common in the prisoners. Two of them suffered from disorders so important that they last being isolated of the experiment and replaced by other guinea-pigs.

One of the substitutes, prisoner 416, was horrified by the treatments inflicted by the guards and began an hunger strike to protest. He was isolated and locked up from force in a wall cupboard during three hours. During this time, the guards made him hold the sausages which he had refused to eat. The other prisoners regarded it as an agitator. To exploit this feeling, the guards offered a choice to the prisoners: if they did not give up their cover, prisoner 416 would be left in insulation all the night. The prisoners chose to keep their cover. Later, professor Zimbardo intervened and replaça 416 in his cell.

Professor Zimbardo decided to put at the end of the experiment earlier when Christina Maslach, a former graduate coed that he attended at the time (and which became later his wife) rose against the terrible conditions of the " prison" after it had penetrated there to interview the prisoners. The professor Zimbardo foot-note which it was only, among about fifty speakers having entered the " prison" , to question the morality of the experiment. After only six days over the two weeks envisaged, the experiment was stopped.

Conclusions

The experiment of Stanford finished on August 20th, 1971. The result of the experiment was used as argument to show the impressionability and the obedience of people in the presence of a legitimate ideology and an institutional and social support. It was also used to illustrate the cognitive theory of Dissonance and the capacity of the authority.

In psychology, the results of the experiment are supposed to support the thesis of a behavior function of the situations and not of the predispositions of the individuals. In other words, it seems that the situation causes the behavior of the participants more than no matter what is of inherent in their individual personality. In this direction, the results of the experiment corroborate those of famous the Expérience of Milgram, in which ordinary people managed, under the order of a professor, which was presented to them like dangerous electric shocks with an accomplice of the experimenters.

As coincidentally, shortly after that the study had been finished, of bloody revolts burst at the same time in the Prison of State de San Quentin and Attica (Émeutes of the prison of Attica), and Zimbardo submitted its results to the American commission on justice.

Critical of the experiment

The experiment was largely décriée as being contrary with ethics and was based on a doubtful methodology. Criticisms, and in particular that of Erich Fromm, called in question the possibility of generalization of the results of the experiment. Fromm wrote in particular on the way in which the personality of an individual affects his behavior when he is imprisoned (by using historical examples like the concentration camps Nazis). Its studies go against the conclusions of the experiment which affirm that it is the prison itself which controls the behavior of the individuals. Fromm affirms moreover than the level of sadism at the subjects " normaux" could not be given with the methods employed.

Owing to the fact that this experiment was in vivo , it was impossible to use the control methods scientific. Professor Zimbardo was not a neutral observer, since it was implied in the experiment as a supervisor of the prison. The conclusions and observations drawn by the observers were largely subjective and anecdotic, and the experiment would be difficult to reproduce by other scientists.

Some of criticisms formulated advanced that the participants based their behavior on what one awaited from them, or modelled it starting from stereotypes which they previously had on the behavior of guards or prisoners. In other words, the participants were simply engaged in a roleplay. Professor Zimbardo retorted that even if it were about a roleplay at the beginning, the participants interiorized their role as the experiment advanced.

Who more is, the experiment was criticized on the basis of ecological validity. Many the conditions imposed by the experiment were arbitrary and did not correspond to the real conditions of the prisons of the time (in particular the fact that the prisoners arrived the eyes bandaged, that one prevented them from wearing underclothing, to look by the window or to use their names). Professor Zimbardo claimed that the prison was an experiment confused and dehumanizing and that it was necessary to establish these procedures so that the " prisonniers" are in the corresponding frame of mind; however, it is difficult to know at which point the effects were the same ones as in a real prison of the time, and the methods of the experiment would be difficult to reproduce accurately so that others can test them.

Some declared that the study was too deterministic: one reported significant differences in cruelty among the guards, whose worst was called " John Wayne" (it pled to have started the climbing of events between the guards and the prisoners after having started to play the part of a character of Luke the cold hand , and to have even intensified its actions thereafter owing to the fact that it was called John Wayne whereas it imitated the actor Strother Martin in the role of the sadistic character of the Capitaine ). However, the other guards were nicer and rendered services to the prisoners. Professor Zimbardo did not try to find an explanation to these differences in behavior.

To finish, the sample of participants was very reduced, since they were not that 24, and this for one very limited duration.

Haslam and Reicher

Haslam and Reicher (2003), two psychologists of the university of Exeter and St Andrews, directed a reproduction partial of the experiment of professor Zimbardo with the assistance of the British Broadcasting Corporation, which diffused scenes of the study as a program of TV-reality called " The Experiment". Their results and conclusions were quite different from those of professor Zimbardo. Even if their procedure were not exactly that of Zimbardo, their study threw additional doubts on the general information of its conclusions. In particular, they call in question the fact that the people " glissent" without opposition in their role and the idea that the dynamics of the evil is in any banal way. Their research also shows the importance of the " leadership" in the emergence of a tyranny (of a form such as that exposed by Zimbardo during the training of the guards in the experiment of Stanford).

Epilog: Abu Ghraib

When the business of the abuses in the prison of Abu Ghraib burst in March 2004, of many observers were immediately surprised by the similarities with the experiment of the prison of Stanford. The first of them was professor Zimbardo, who was interested of close with the hidden details of the business. It was dismayed by the efforts made to make rather wear the hat to some bad elements than to recognize that they were problems due to an official system of military imprisonment.

Professor Zimbardo ends even up collaborating with the team of lawyers of the one of the guards of Abu Ghraib, Ivan " Chip" Frederick. It had access to all the reports/ratios of investigation and testified as an expert with the lawsuit in martial court to Frederick, which was to be balanced for this last by a eight years of prison sorrow, marked in October 2004.

Professor Zimbardo was based on the knowledge acquired at the time of this lawsuit to write a new entitled book the Lucifer effect: To include/understand how good people become bad (Random House, 2007), which studies the many bonds between the experiment of the prison of Stanford and the abuses Abu Ghraib.

Similar incidents

In April 2007, it was announced that pupils of a college of Waxahachie, who took part in a roleplay, fell into abuses similar to those highlighted by the original experiment.

Popular culture

new allemande of 1999 written by Mario Giordano entitled Black box was inspired by the experiment of Stanford.
In 2001, the BBC created documentary a " The Experiment" , which recreated this experiment with volunteers. It was stopped for the wellbeing of the participants.
Das Experiment , a German film made in 2001 and based on the news Black Box watch which skids could have taken place during this experiment.
In 2002, an episode of the American Televised series Experts: Miami , entitled a horrible spirit , compared a simulation of lynching with these experiments.
a play, The Black Box , adapted film Das Experiment was directed by Dr. Anthony S. Beukas and was played by Yeshiva College Dramatics Society at the university of Yeshiva in December 2005.
In 2006, a documentary heading The Human Behavior Experiments (experiments of human behavior) , realized by Alex Gibney was diffused on the chains " CourTv" and " Sundance Channel"
the history of the experiment will be adapted soon to the cinema by Christopher McQuarrie (which gained a Oscar for Usual Suspects ), on the basis of script written in collaboration with Tim Talbott.
In 2006, the episode My Big Fat Greek Rush Week (become Roleplay in French) of the series Veronica Mars refers to the experiment when many main characters take part in a reconstitution of this experiment. In particular, two characters present similarities with the " prisoner 416" and " John Wayne".
In the seventh season of the Big brother English , the joint tenants were divided into " Prisonniers" and " Gardes" in a way similar to the experiment of Stanford.
Mood Pictures Inc., a German film SM company produced a film entitled " Stanford Experiment" Prison; , which recreated the experiment with the difference close all the subjects were of female sex.

See too

External bonds

Account of the experiment
Presentation by Zimbardo
Official Site
homepage off Philip Zimbardo
Summary off the experiment
Fromm' S criticism off the experiment
The Experiment (IMDB) — German movie (Das Experiment) from 2001 inspired by the Stanford Experiment
The Binds off the Stanford Prison Experiment — Criticism from Carlo Prescott, ex-idiot and consultant/assistant for the experiment
The Artificial Prison off the Human Mind Article with Comments.
Philip Zimbardo one Democracy Now! March 30 2007
Philip Zimbardo one The Daily Show, March, 2007

Abu Ghraib and the experiment:

BBC News: Does Is it in anyone to misuse has captive?
BBC News: Why everyone' S not has to torture
Ronald Hilton: US soldiers' bad behavior and Stanford Prison Experiment
Slate.com: Situationist Ethics: The Stanford Prison Experiment doesn' T explain Abu Ghraib, by William Saletan
IMDB: Untitled Stanford Prison Experiment Project
: Video Youtube for Stanford Prison Experiment

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