Stanford Prison
Content
The study subjects, middle-class college students, had answered a questionnaire about their
family backgrounds, physical- and mental-health histories, and social behavior, and had been
deemed “normal”; a coin flip divided them into prisoners and guards. According to the lore
that’s grown up around the experiment, the guards, with little to no instruction, began
humiliating and psychologically abusing the prisoners within twenty-four hours of the study’s
start. The prisoners, in turn, became submissive and depersonalized, taking the abuse and
saying little in protest. The behavior of all involved was so extreme that the experiment, which
was meant to last two weeks, was terminated after six days.
To many, the Stanford experiment underscored those findings, revealing the ease with which
regular people, if given too much power, could transform into ruthless oppressors. Today, more
than forty-five years later, many look to the study to make sense of events like the behavior of
the guards at Abu Ghraib and America’s epidemic of police brutality. The Stanford Prison
Experiment is cited as evidence of the atavistic impulses that lurk within us all; it’s said to show
that, with a little nudge, we could all become tyrants.
prison was a heavily manipulated environment, and the guards and prisoners acted in ways
that were largely predetermined by how their roles were presented.
Moreover, even within that self-selected sample, behavioral patterns were far from
homogeneous. Much of the study’s cachet depends on the idea that the students responded en
masse, giving up their individual identities to become submissive “prisoners” and tyrannical
“guards.” But, in fact, the participants responded to the prison environment in all sorts of ways.
While some guard shifts were especially cruel, others remained humane.
“majority” of participants found themselves “no longer able to clearly differentiate between
role-playing and self,” and that, in the six days the study took to unfold, “the experience of
imprisonment undid, although temporarily, a lifetime of learning; human values were
suspended, self-concepts were challenged, and the ugliest, most base, pathological side of
human nature surfaced.”
If the Stanford Prison Experiment had simulated a less brutal environment, would the prisoners
and guards have acted differently?
these two studies don’t suggest that we all have an innate capacity for tyranny or victimhood.
Instead, they suggest that our behavior largely conforms to our preconceived expectations. All
else being equal, we act as we think we’re expected to act—especially if that expectation
comes from above.
The Prison Experiment demonstrated, in a controlled and scientific manner, just how great an
effect the environment has on our individual behavior, capable of trumping what we would
otherwise consider our steadfast moral and behavioral guidelines. Individuality so easily melts
away as the social environment begins to define the individual.
n 1971, a team of psychologists designed and executed an unusual experiment that used a
mock prison setting, with college students role-playing prisoners and guards to test the power
of the social situation to determine behavior. The research, known as the Stanford Prison
Experiment, has become a classic demonstration of situational power to influence individual
attitudes, values and behavior. So extreme, swift and unexpected were the transformations of
character in many of the participants that this study -- planned to last two-weeks -- had to be
terminated by the sixth day.
A person-centered analysis of human behavior attributes most behavior change, in positive or
negative directions, to internal, dispositional features of individuals. The factors commonly
believed to direct behavior are to be found in the operation of genes, temperament, personality
traits, personal pathologies and virtues. A situation-centered approach, in contrast, focuses on
factors external to the person, to the behavioral context in which individuals are functioning.
Although human behavior is almost always a function of the interaction of person and situation,
social psychologists have called attention to the attributional biases in much of psychology and
among the general public that overestimates the importance of dispositional factors while
underestimating situational factors.
The major results of the study can be summarized as: many of the normal, healthy mock
prisoners suffered such intense emotional stress reactions that they had to be released in a
matter of days; most of the other prisoners acted like zombies totally obeying the demeaning
orders of the guards; the distress of the prisoners was caused by their sense of powerlessness
induced by the guards who began acting in cruel, dehumanizing and even sadistic ways. The
study was terminated prematurely because it was getting out of control in the extent of
degrading actions being perpetrated by the guards against the prisoners - all of whom had
been normal, healthy, ordinary young college students less than a week before.
Power tends to corrupt". We think that if we are given the power, we are in control of
everything. But the fact is, that power that actually controls us.
People will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles
are as strongly stereotyped as those of the prison guards. The “prison” environment was an
important factor in creating the guards’ brutal behavior (none of the participants who acted as
guards showed sadistic tendencies before the study). Therefore, the findings support the
situational explanation of behavior rather than the dispositional one.
Zimbardo was trying to show what happened when all of the individuality and dignity was
stripped away from a human, and their life was completely controlled.
He wanted show the dehumanization and loosening of social and moral values that can happen
to guards immersed in such a situation.
Zimbardo believed that the experiment showed how the individual personalities of people could
be swamped when they were given positions of authority. Social and ideological factors also
determined how both groups behaved, with individuals acting in a way that they thought was
required, rather than using their own judgment.
The experiment appeared to show how subjects reacted to the specific needs of the situation
rather than referring to their own internal morals or beliefs.
The results of the experiment have been used in many high profile court cases over the years,
to try and show that a prison must have clear instructions and guidelines from higher level
authorities, or prisoner abuse may occur.
Criticisms
The ethics of the Stanford Prison Experiment have long been called into question, and,
certainly, without stricter controls this experiment would not be sanctioned today; it could pose
a genuine risk to people disposed towards mental and emotional imbalances.
In fairness to Zimbardo, most of these discussions take place with a lot of hindsight, and he
could not have guessed the internalization and institutionalization that would occur during the
course of the study.
Other criticisms include the validity of the results. It was a field experiment, rather than a
scientific experiment, so there are only observational results and no scientific evaluation.
In addition, it would be very difficult for anybody to replicate the experiment conditions.
The selection of the subjects has been questioned extensively with the wording of the advert
stating ‘wanted for prison experiments', this may have caused people with more of a predisposition towards violence to apply.
In the aftermath of the study, many of the guards and prisoners indicated that they were only
acting out roles that they thought were expected of them, so there is no consensus on whether
the study really portrayed human nature or not.
Whether the Stanford Prison Experiment relates to real prisons is another matter. Although
maltreatment of prisoners undoubtedly takes place all across the world, in most facilities, the
guards are carefully screened and undergo a long and extensive training process. Zimbardo
screened both prisoners and guards for non-social tendencies in his experiment.
They also have rigid protocols to which they are supposed to stick. In addition, the study
studied only male subjects and most western prisons do have a mix of sexes on the guard staff.
Zimbardo also glossed over the fact that not all of the guards showed sadistic tendencies, with
some seeking to actively help the prisoners and show sympathy towards them.
Later studies have concluded that abuse in prisons often comes from the top down and that
when orders are given these can affect the results. If the guards had been given stricter
guidelines from Zimbardo at the beginning then there may have been fewer sadistic tendencies
shown by the guards selected for the Stanford Prison Experiment.
One thing that struck me as I read the piece was that, as much as the experiment changed how
academics and intellectuals approached the problem of evil, this discussion hasn't really filtered
down to the mainstream, to the day-to-day. We still throw around the term "evil" endlessly, as if
maliciousness were this distant, abstract, implacable force. And yet this experiment — not to
mention countless gruesome real-life versions of it perpetrated around the world by otherwise
"good" people throughout history — proves rather convincingly that what we consider evil can
arise far more easily than we'd like to think.
If we treated evil not as a force that can't be reckoned with, but as a thing that
simplyhappens when the circumstances are right — and which can often be explained by
psychology or neurology or whatever — we'd approach many of society's most pressing
problems in far more productive ways.
he experiment ended up not only proving that humans are quick to behave and act how they
are told they should behave and act but also the aggressive nature dormant in most people.
Yes, it's true that power fundamentally alters perception. As Adam Galinsky and colleagues put
it, “powerful people roam in a very different psychological space than those without power.”
Power increases confidence, optimism, risk-taking, sensitivity to internal thoughts and
feelings, goal-directed behavior and cognition, and creativity.
But these are not necessarily bad outcomes. Put to good use, power can have an incredibly
positive effect on people. There are so many compassionate teachers, bosses, politicians,
humanitarians, and others who wield power, who genuinely want to make the world a better
place.
I think a really important point here is that power amplifies the person. It gives already existing
personality dispositions and tendencies a louder voice, and increases the chances that these
tendencies will be given fuller expression. Thus, we must consider interactions between the
person and the situation. As Galinsky and colleagues point out, "the situation loses its
suffocating hold over the thoughts and behavior of the powerful... and they are left with their
own opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and personalities to drive their behavior."
This suggestion acknowledges the fact that no one is all good or all bad; all of us have many
sides. Even people who abuse power most certainly have other, more prosocial sides that may
be unexplored.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was a success as real-life situations were created in the prison.
It was found that the prison conditions were unbearable for any human being. It was also learnt
that the guards had an inexorable tendency to humiliate and torture all prisoners. The guards
were antithetical to the concept of a human being and treated all prisoners like animals.
At the same time, all prisoners were acutely depressed and despondent. They strongly believed
that they were in that Hell forever and that there was simply no escape. This was the sole
reason that they had started to sarcasm about prison break.
family backgrounds, physical- and mental-health histories, and social behavior, and had been
deemed “normal”; a coin flip divided them into prisoners and guards. According to the lore
that’s grown up around the experiment, the guards, with little to no instruction, began
humiliating and psychologically abusing the prisoners within twenty-four hours of the study’s
start. The prisoners, in turn, became submissive and depersonalized, taking the abuse and
saying little in protest. The behavior of all involved was so extreme that the experiment, which
was meant to last two weeks, was terminated after six days.
To many, the Stanford experiment underscored those findings, revealing the ease with which
regular people, if given too much power, could transform into ruthless oppressors. Today, more
than forty-five years later, many look to the study to make sense of events like the behavior of
the guards at Abu Ghraib and America’s epidemic of police brutality. The Stanford Prison
Experiment is cited as evidence of the atavistic impulses that lurk within us all; it’s said to show
that, with a little nudge, we could all become tyrants.
prison was a heavily manipulated environment, and the guards and prisoners acted in ways
that were largely predetermined by how their roles were presented.
Moreover, even within that self-selected sample, behavioral patterns were far from
homogeneous. Much of the study’s cachet depends on the idea that the students responded en
masse, giving up their individual identities to become submissive “prisoners” and tyrannical
“guards.” But, in fact, the participants responded to the prison environment in all sorts of ways.
While some guard shifts were especially cruel, others remained humane.
“majority” of participants found themselves “no longer able to clearly differentiate between
role-playing and self,” and that, in the six days the study took to unfold, “the experience of
imprisonment undid, although temporarily, a lifetime of learning; human values were
suspended, self-concepts were challenged, and the ugliest, most base, pathological side of
human nature surfaced.”
If the Stanford Prison Experiment had simulated a less brutal environment, would the prisoners
and guards have acted differently?
these two studies don’t suggest that we all have an innate capacity for tyranny or victimhood.
Instead, they suggest that our behavior largely conforms to our preconceived expectations. All
else being equal, we act as we think we’re expected to act—especially if that expectation
comes from above.
The Prison Experiment demonstrated, in a controlled and scientific manner, just how great an
effect the environment has on our individual behavior, capable of trumping what we would
otherwise consider our steadfast moral and behavioral guidelines. Individuality so easily melts
away as the social environment begins to define the individual.
n 1971, a team of psychologists designed and executed an unusual experiment that used a
mock prison setting, with college students role-playing prisoners and guards to test the power
of the social situation to determine behavior. The research, known as the Stanford Prison
Experiment, has become a classic demonstration of situational power to influence individual
attitudes, values and behavior. So extreme, swift and unexpected were the transformations of
character in many of the participants that this study -- planned to last two-weeks -- had to be
terminated by the sixth day.
A person-centered analysis of human behavior attributes most behavior change, in positive or
negative directions, to internal, dispositional features of individuals. The factors commonly
believed to direct behavior are to be found in the operation of genes, temperament, personality
traits, personal pathologies and virtues. A situation-centered approach, in contrast, focuses on
factors external to the person, to the behavioral context in which individuals are functioning.
Although human behavior is almost always a function of the interaction of person and situation,
social psychologists have called attention to the attributional biases in much of psychology and
among the general public that overestimates the importance of dispositional factors while
underestimating situational factors.
The major results of the study can be summarized as: many of the normal, healthy mock
prisoners suffered such intense emotional stress reactions that they had to be released in a
matter of days; most of the other prisoners acted like zombies totally obeying the demeaning
orders of the guards; the distress of the prisoners was caused by their sense of powerlessness
induced by the guards who began acting in cruel, dehumanizing and even sadistic ways. The
study was terminated prematurely because it was getting out of control in the extent of
degrading actions being perpetrated by the guards against the prisoners - all of whom had
been normal, healthy, ordinary young college students less than a week before.
Power tends to corrupt". We think that if we are given the power, we are in control of
everything. But the fact is, that power that actually controls us.
People will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles
are as strongly stereotyped as those of the prison guards. The “prison” environment was an
important factor in creating the guards’ brutal behavior (none of the participants who acted as
guards showed sadistic tendencies before the study). Therefore, the findings support the
situational explanation of behavior rather than the dispositional one.
Zimbardo was trying to show what happened when all of the individuality and dignity was
stripped away from a human, and their life was completely controlled.
He wanted show the dehumanization and loosening of social and moral values that can happen
to guards immersed in such a situation.
Zimbardo believed that the experiment showed how the individual personalities of people could
be swamped when they were given positions of authority. Social and ideological factors also
determined how both groups behaved, with individuals acting in a way that they thought was
required, rather than using their own judgment.
The experiment appeared to show how subjects reacted to the specific needs of the situation
rather than referring to their own internal morals or beliefs.
The results of the experiment have been used in many high profile court cases over the years,
to try and show that a prison must have clear instructions and guidelines from higher level
authorities, or prisoner abuse may occur.
Criticisms
The ethics of the Stanford Prison Experiment have long been called into question, and,
certainly, without stricter controls this experiment would not be sanctioned today; it could pose
a genuine risk to people disposed towards mental and emotional imbalances.
In fairness to Zimbardo, most of these discussions take place with a lot of hindsight, and he
could not have guessed the internalization and institutionalization that would occur during the
course of the study.
Other criticisms include the validity of the results. It was a field experiment, rather than a
scientific experiment, so there are only observational results and no scientific evaluation.
In addition, it would be very difficult for anybody to replicate the experiment conditions.
The selection of the subjects has been questioned extensively with the wording of the advert
stating ‘wanted for prison experiments', this may have caused people with more of a predisposition towards violence to apply.
In the aftermath of the study, many of the guards and prisoners indicated that they were only
acting out roles that they thought were expected of them, so there is no consensus on whether
the study really portrayed human nature or not.
Whether the Stanford Prison Experiment relates to real prisons is another matter. Although
maltreatment of prisoners undoubtedly takes place all across the world, in most facilities, the
guards are carefully screened and undergo a long and extensive training process. Zimbardo
screened both prisoners and guards for non-social tendencies in his experiment.
They also have rigid protocols to which they are supposed to stick. In addition, the study
studied only male subjects and most western prisons do have a mix of sexes on the guard staff.
Zimbardo also glossed over the fact that not all of the guards showed sadistic tendencies, with
some seeking to actively help the prisoners and show sympathy towards them.
Later studies have concluded that abuse in prisons often comes from the top down and that
when orders are given these can affect the results. If the guards had been given stricter
guidelines from Zimbardo at the beginning then there may have been fewer sadistic tendencies
shown by the guards selected for the Stanford Prison Experiment.
One thing that struck me as I read the piece was that, as much as the experiment changed how
academics and intellectuals approached the problem of evil, this discussion hasn't really filtered
down to the mainstream, to the day-to-day. We still throw around the term "evil" endlessly, as if
maliciousness were this distant, abstract, implacable force. And yet this experiment — not to
mention countless gruesome real-life versions of it perpetrated around the world by otherwise
"good" people throughout history — proves rather convincingly that what we consider evil can
arise far more easily than we'd like to think.
If we treated evil not as a force that can't be reckoned with, but as a thing that
simplyhappens when the circumstances are right — and which can often be explained by
psychology or neurology or whatever — we'd approach many of society's most pressing
problems in far more productive ways.
he experiment ended up not only proving that humans are quick to behave and act how they
are told they should behave and act but also the aggressive nature dormant in most people.
Yes, it's true that power fundamentally alters perception. As Adam Galinsky and colleagues put
it, “powerful people roam in a very different psychological space than those without power.”
Power increases confidence, optimism, risk-taking, sensitivity to internal thoughts and
feelings, goal-directed behavior and cognition, and creativity.
But these are not necessarily bad outcomes. Put to good use, power can have an incredibly
positive effect on people. There are so many compassionate teachers, bosses, politicians,
humanitarians, and others who wield power, who genuinely want to make the world a better
place.
I think a really important point here is that power amplifies the person. It gives already existing
personality dispositions and tendencies a louder voice, and increases the chances that these
tendencies will be given fuller expression. Thus, we must consider interactions between the
person and the situation. As Galinsky and colleagues point out, "the situation loses its
suffocating hold over the thoughts and behavior of the powerful... and they are left with their
own opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and personalities to drive their behavior."
This suggestion acknowledges the fact that no one is all good or all bad; all of us have many
sides. Even people who abuse power most certainly have other, more prosocial sides that may
be unexplored.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was a success as real-life situations were created in the prison.
It was found that the prison conditions were unbearable for any human being. It was also learnt
that the guards had an inexorable tendency to humiliate and torture all prisoners. The guards
were antithetical to the concept of a human being and treated all prisoners like animals.
At the same time, all prisoners were acutely depressed and despondent. They strongly believed
that they were in that Hell forever and that there was simply no escape. This was the sole
reason that they had started to sarcasm about prison break.
