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The Stanford Prisoner Experiment - 40 Years On
cheros writes "It's now 40 years ago that the Stanford prisoner experiment went ugly so quickly it had to be aborted. Stanford has an interesting piece called The Menace Within that looks back on this momentous psychological experiment. From the article: 'What happened in the basement of the psych building 40 years ago shocked the world. How do the guards, prisoners and researchers in the Stanford Prison Experiment feel about it now?'"
Now imagine this same experiment being done for for several years instead of days and with no one to step in when things get out of hand.
Now imagine if the guards were told the prisoners were evil terrorists.
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Obviously you have no understanding of the nature of power and desire for it. It has been been well documented since ancient times. And the biggest "experiment" ever in 1920s-30s Germany has been written up in the most convincing manner by many psychologists.
It's too bad they say the experiment should never be performed again. Every student should be required to go through it, and maybe we can mitigate the revival of the savagery we are going through now. Simply reading up on it is not enough.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
The German movie Das Experiment is based on this experiment. Although they exaggerate quite a lot towards the end, first few days of the movie are real. Overall, an entertaining watch.
There's faked and then there's faked.
If you mean "they made the whole thing up like the moon landing," then no. There's no reason to believe that kind of conspiracy.
But based on contemporary accounts, even from Zimbardo himself, it's pretty clear that he stepped well past his role as an objective researcher and became an active instigator -- appointing himself warden and egging on the guards. But even with that acknowledged, the fact that he was able to succeed so easily is part of what makes it an important demonstration.
No not IT departments. But they did form a whole core fro it. The TSA. That is precisely why such petty bureaucrats are a menace to society.
Actually it is repeated every day. I am pretty sure that is what happens to people employed by the TSA.
The way they all got so pulled into the experiment is just crazy. Luckily, Zimbardo's grad student girlfriend came around.
This is one of the most fascinating insights: it's not crazy but typical. These were students who tested average on psychological exams (to the extent you can measure average), and still did these atrocious acts on people just like themselves. On fellow students whose only crime was the flip of a coin. Want further evidence? See the Milgram experiment, where 2/3rds of people were willing to kill another person because an authority figure told them to. Not bad apples, not racists, not evil doers, not terrorists, just people--you and me and our neighbors.
The experiments are no longer allowed in psychiatric studies, but are allowed in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Egypt (under Mubarak, not sure about now), Romania, Israel (where torture testimony is admissible), Afghanistan, and others. Where is Zimbardo's girlfriend now? You, me, our neighbors?
The simple conclusion demonstrated by this experiment is that, while sometimes people will live up to others' expectations for them, we we have an even stronger tendency to live down to what's expected of us. I think Richard Yacco (a "prisoner") made the most insightful comment in the article:
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Probably not. The shocking part about the Zimbardo experiment was not that guards are cruel; the shocking part is that there were no ground rules insisting that the "guards" be cruel. They could have chosen to play cards with the "prisoners" - given that they were mostly (all?) Stanford undergrads, they very likely knew some of them. Once you go to a real prison, the prisoners are just more scumbags you have to keep in line.
I don't think that the events of the experiment are in any way unexpected, with the exception of Zimbardo's girlfriend intervening.
I think quite highly of Zimbardo, so I don't believe it's his fault. It's because of all of our social conditioning.
We're never schooled in ethics. We're only occasionally *sometimes* told the difference between right and wrong, but overall we're just expected to know where these concepts are without a map. Breaking a promise is wrong, but when the principal wants to know something you promised to keep secret, see if he thinks ethics is a good excuse.
Schools teach compliance in a big way. Government and industry and pretty much everyone in charge will tell you that it's no use - there's nothing you can do. Be on the wrong side of a policeman, prosecutor, judge, politician, your boss, or the town council to see what I mean.
And even if anyone knows where the boundaries of ethics lie, there's no real chance to practice the decisions in the field. In any emotional situation your cognitive functions shut down and you rely completely on stored habits. That's a survival tactic - the stored programs can be executed very fast without spending any time to think - but it means that if you haven't set up any mental patterns to recognize injustice and speak out against it it won't happen during a situation where it's needed. Only after the fact.
People who practice role-playing in various forms (LARP, emergency training, EMT, police, navy seals) get around it by learning not to react emotionally and by making patterns which are useful because they've been thought out in advance.
So we have a big population which is schooled in compliance, where no formal ethical standards are taught and where ethical rules are often violated for any expedient reason. Drop some of these in a fearful situation and you're surprised that they don't react?
I'm surprised at the reaction of his girlfriend, and much more surprised that she *insisted* in the face of his resistance.