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Was the Stanford Prison Experiment a Sham? (nypost.com)
Frosty Piss writes: The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in 1971 by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo using college students to investigate the psychological effects of perceived power by focusing on the struggle between prisoners and prison officers. In the study, volunteers were randomly assigned to be either "guards" or "prisoners" in a mock prison, with Zimbardo serving as the superintendent. The results seemed to show that the students quickly embraced their assigned roles, with some guards enforcing authoritarian measures and ultimately subjecting some prisoners to psychological torture, while many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, by the officers' request, actively harassed other prisoners who tried to stop it. After Berkeley graduate Douglas Korpi appeared to have a nervous breakdown while playing the role of an inmate, the experiment was shut down. There's just one problem: Korpi's breakdown was a sham. Dr. Ben Blum took to Medium to publish his claims. "Blum's expose -- based on previously unpublished recordings of Zimbardo, a Stanford psychology professor, and interviews with the participants -- offers evidence that the 'guards' were coached to be cruel," reports New York Post. "One of the men who acted as an inmate told Blum he enjoyed the experiment because he knew the guards couldn't actually hurt him."
"There were no repercussions. We knew [the guards] couldn't hurt us, they couldn't hit us. They were white college kids just like us, so it was a very safe situation," said Douglas Korpi, who was 22-years-old when he acted as an inmate in the study. The Berkeley grad now admits the whole thing was fake. Zimbardo also "admitted that he was an active participant in the study, meaning he had influence over the results," reports New York Post. According to an audio recording from the Stanford archive, you can hear Zimbardo encouraging the guards to act "tough."
"There were no repercussions. We knew [the guards] couldn't hurt us, they couldn't hit us. They were white college kids just like us, so it was a very safe situation," said Douglas Korpi, who was 22-years-old when he acted as an inmate in the study. The Berkeley grad now admits the whole thing was fake. Zimbardo also "admitted that he was an active participant in the study, meaning he had influence over the results," reports New York Post. According to an audio recording from the Stanford archive, you can hear Zimbardo encouraging the guards to act "tough."
the participants know it's not real. the inmates know they will be released and when. they know they are safe from the "guards" and each other.
Has the study been replicated? Have the conclusions been replicated? Looks like a small British study about 15 years ago did; it brought the Stanford experiment results into question, perhaps.
Can someone with more background than mine explain what larges implications this could have for psychology, other than the fact that people are supposed to be corrupted by power and have a bias toward tyranny/oppression, and that prisoners begin to "like" the guards (I believe that was this study)?
Thanks!
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There is a difference between saying it is a sham vs. saying the results weren't true. We can look at Nazi Germany and say with a fair amount of confidence that it was saying something that was true but using results that were falsified to get the result expected. What people will interpret this as saying is that the results themselves were false. Unfortunately (or fortunately) any actual study that could provide a realistic set of evidence on this topic would be considered immoral at this point, so there will be no further data to show that the results could actually be true. Given today's worldwide political climate, I think we need all the reinforcement we can get that good people will do bad things in the right situations and given the right reinforcement. Having this exposed as a fraud now will not help this.
They were white college kids just like us, so it was a very safe situation
Ouch, implied racism... times change I guess.
The participants acted towards expected behaviors to reinforce the study's foregone conclusion at the coaching of Zimbardo.
It wasn't a scientific study.
You can read about it here. https://www.psychologytoday.co...
One thing I've come to realize is that all of the following should be eliminated from the human race:
* Psychologists
* Religious Leaders
* Lawyers
* Managers
* Executives
* Politicians
* (anyone who claims to have the "Magic Formula" for controlling/leading people)
Excuse me, how much for the rights to all the irony in your post?
We were not there. People's memories fade over time. It's been 49 years. If there is any doubt, the experiment should be repeated. No repeat to the experiment does not invalidate the experiment on 49 year old testimony from recordings that were previously hidden. It simply casts some doubt but we see enough of this behvaior in every day life to know that it has some basis in truth. To carry on otherwise, it blind ourselves to the cruelty we bring on each other.
Think about how much people don't want to believe bad things and how some will go amazing extents... cognitive dissonance is strong stuff.
Nitpicking a past study which nobody has the guts to attempt to properly recreate (or improve upon.) Many real actual atrocities which rhyme with the experiment is all we need to realize that environmental conditions GREATLY influence human behavior.
There is a mountain of science backing the whole concept and even if you debunk just 1 famous example you accomplish nothing except to give all the deniers something to cling onto to perpetuate similar conditions from which future atrocities are born.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Read "Lord of the Flies" That is what we are living today.
The planet is a prison yard. You take sides, or you die
Social experiments are difficult to perform with scientific rigor because they use people. It is generally either impossible or impractical to isolate people from outside influences and from unknown issues that bias the experiment. And thus it's difficult to prove anything. For this reason, physical scientists look down upon social science as "soft science".
Bruce Perens.
I'd say the idea of the experiment wasn't a sham but Dr Zimbardo chose wrong specimens as participants. To young, to be specific. People at college age are not yet fully developed emotionally. I am no expert, just a common man, but during my journey through the educational system I noticed that the younger a person, the more he or she is driven by primal instincts. That's why it's statistically more common for young males to pick up fights or bully one another due. Fighting for dominance, territory and position. Factors which become less important to us as we get older. In my opinion, what we saw in the Standord Prison Experiment is that some of participants, who were placed in an environment where they would suffer no consequences of their primitive behaviour, begun to display those harmful behaviours more prominently than others. Eventually, showing violence became a new measure of position in a group and then everything spiralled out of control. But again, this is only my personal opinion on the matter.
There were attempts to properly recreate the study (the article mentions one). The results avoided Zimbardo's biases and therefore reached a different conclusion:
Bad people tend to become cops or criminals (or DMV employees). The rest of us just try to survive with varying degrees of selfishness and empathy. Where I live now almost no one has empathy for anyone who isn't a family member and often not even then. After living in such an environment for a few years I have become used to it and I try my best to reduce my empathy for them as well. It depends a lot on the culture/country surprisingly. In some places people are really nice to each other. In others not so much. Of course if you have never left your home country except for short vacations you may not realize this.
Some people really enjoy hurting other people to a degree that is almost sexual (law enforcement particularly in the US). Others just don't care if they hurt other people. Some people, often female people, have very strong feelings of empathy toward others. Having seen mean but ultimately cowardly bullies grow up to be cops in the US I can sense those kinds of souls just by looking at them for a few minutes. It is just so clear that they are mean and stupid and sadistic and will never be anything else. It is written all over their pig-faces. Everything that they are is all about that: hurting and controlling and dominating others. I really think they were born that way and will die that way. That is why I never fully trusted the results of this experiment. It just didn't reflect what I have observed of human behavior over many years. Yes many humans are bad people but we are not interchangeable. Some people are born to be guards and torturers. Others can only ever be a prisoner and could not accept the other role at all.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
This is the 1960s, at the height of the 'counterculture'. The college kids as well as the researcher were all of the same activist persuasion, and the researcher did everything he could to stack the deck. Of course the 'result' was concluded that 'the system' itself is bad, and that violence is the result of social roles. There were always alternate better supported explanations for violence in general and from authorities in particular.
The only conclusion you can reasonably come to is that people will follow instructions on how to treat people regardless of how bad that behavior is given the no consequences for the behavior as a result. That people will easily forget their humanity and revel in their lack of compassion. How does this invalidate the study? It doesn't. It just shows how malleable people are in situations and how easily they can be convinced they should act out their instincts - e.g. batons given to them resulting in them being used to beat the prisoners.
Throw them in prison then
Worked for Trump 41 days.
All the issues were before the campaign.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
Should have patented it.
I keep forgetting that people still take the Stanford Prison Experiment seriously. It has been known for a long time that the actual events did not live up to the pop-culture image of them.
In 1971, official racism was mostly illegal, but yes, there was definitely racial tension. Kids very much tended to hang out with their own racial group. It shouldn't surprise anyone that people at that time were aware of race.
This was ten years before Barak Obama was in college and, according to his autobiography, carefully avoiding being seen with white friends. Instead he made sure to be seen with "the more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists."
Is that a threat ? Is that what Slashdot is now ?
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
You forgot economists
That's not a threat. That's a promise.
You need serious help
(anyone who claims to have the "Magic Formula" for controlling/leading people)
Huh... Sounds like the guy I'm replying to.
The pattern is that everything in your list involved treasonous collusion with Russia's attack on America.
Trump owns your brain.
And you clearly did not even read the list as your reply makes no sense.
Maga, baby, maga!
We all should know how bad science reporting is. This is the kind of thing that needs to prompt corrections quietly without the science reporters talking about it because they will greatly amplify the damage as now the masses who hear this dispel the whole topic as a fraud... further distorting the "science reporting."
Furthermore, the biases created in the study do undermine it's conclusions to a degree; some of the critique implies one would have to secretly study a real world situation where bad things actually happen for real --- and remove all the protections created to avoid such things. Almost nobody is going to ever do that and creating a simulated situation is already nearly impossible to be allowed for an experiment.
Finally, the bigger points that the study STILL makes is how it turned out -- bad behaviors still were produced and so what if a drama queen caused it to end early? The study always had to be taken with a grain of salt because it was a simulated environment and all the people knew it and no matter how good you make it, they will know it until they get fed up and are unable to quit early (which would be a legal problem if you didn't allow them to say the safe word.) If you poke up people to act badly and they do... remember Milgram's experiment? This wasn't that... but because it went more in that direction doesn't make it completely worthless. Welcome to politics... sometimes the famous example needs to be left alone; yes, for the greater good. No, that is not an absolutism sometimes it actually is good policy and other times it's just an excuse which is why politics is HARD. Psychologists need to know more; the ignorant public can remain ignorant on this one; no, not censorship just don't advertise it... the ignorant masses have many more things they need to learn that are more important than celebrity / reality TV gossip.
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psychology has fads and trends, it's a "soft science"...and all of it could be a sham
Don' forget all tbose telephone sanitizers.
As someone who runs a fairly large gaming group that has to manage the behaviors of others and uses hand chosen administrators to assist in doing so. I can say I've seen other communities devolve into this and while I avoid it as much as possible in my own, there is a very real danger of my administrators abusing their powers and creating a culture like the one described in the study. While the study itself might have been faked, the phenomenon they were attempting to study is very real. What they were investigating can best be described as human nature and it permeates all of our society from the workplace, schools, prison, online communities and even local communities.
There was no Control, in the experimental sense.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I wonder if there will ever be a time again that a thread would not turn into a Trump/politics bashing. I used to read here daily now find myself if lucky to come here every couple of weeks because I will know that any thread I may be interested in reading will be nothing but armchair politicians.
But the way the experiment was manipulated makes it inadvertently join a large body of evidence supporting a different hypothesis - that people can be manipulated by authority figures into doing things they normally would consider immoral.
Your claim is the equivalent of saying that a staged case of rape, despite being proven fake, "proves" that women are teasing sluts who cause rapes by dressing like sluts.
I.e. Disregarding proof that there's no scientific merit to the "experiment" and choosing instead to view it as a valid proof of a foregone conclusion based on personal bias.
Also, it's not about pleasing authority figures. Nor being manipulated by said figures. You'll find no valid studies supporting that.
It's about people being pushed and badgered. And not even by "authority figures".
It's just about people being pushed and badgered into doing something by a person doing the pushing.
That's why PEER pressure works.
In fact, given familiarity with the "authority figure", most people will start feeling superiority over said "authority figure", distrust towards it and will start to act out in rebellion when ordered to follow the rules.
Hint: Consider the general public opinion of bosses, politicians, police, doctors (those know-nothings), teachers they had in school, their own parents...
That's why soldiers have to be conditioned to follow orders. They don't just start obeying the uniform in the room.
They have to go through grueling, personality breaking, physical and psychological torture-course until it is drilled into them to conform to the group and obey orders - or face punishment.
That's why they all come out singing praises to their "band of brothers". They were conditioned through shared abuse into bonding with the group.
It's just that Zimbardo and Milgram were biased against exactly that kind of authority - so they decided to stage a costumed play with lab coats and prison uniforms to "prove" their point.
In both cases concentrating on supposed proof that manipulation by authority figures works, making people ignore their own moral beliefs.
While ignoring the necessary level of badgering and emotional breakdowns of those who were being pushed, in order to achieve that.
"The guards have to know that every guard is going to be what we call a tough guard," Jaffe told one such guard [skip to 8:35].
"[H]opefully what will come out of this study is some very serious recommendations for reform... so that we can get on the media and into the press with it, and say 'Now look at what this is really about....
[T]ry and react as you picture the pigs reacting."
Now there's just evidence that Zimbardo was doing MORE faking than it was previously known.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Listen, as long as Trump continues to inspect the cakes for razor blades, then he will be sent off to boarding school while Ivanka takes over.
Wasn't Abu Grahib a real-life demonstration of the "Lucifer Effect"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The problem it is that story is too ingrained in all these business books and mandatory training sessions.
I still have to go to bi-yearly sex assault from a SJW whose group volunteered or won the lowest bid. You still get the fake story from the New York Times about Kitty Genovese and this event.
If a conclusion was guards are naturally assholes, but it turns out that in the instructions, they were TOLD to be assholes, then I would say that the conclusion was invalid, since the researcher put not only his thumb, but his whole upper body weight and tipped the hell out of the scales. It begs the question, of course: what else was bullshit about that so-called study, or rather, massive fraud perpetrated upon the academic community and the world?
If a conclusion was guards are naturally assholes, but it turns out that in the instructions, they were TOLD to be assholes, then I would say that the conclusion was invalid, since the researcher put not only his thumb, but his whole upper body weight on, and tipped the hell out of, the scales. It begs the question, of course: what else was bullshit about that so-called study, or rather, massive fraud perpetrated upon the academic community and the world?
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
A mind is a terrible thing too loose.
The specific criticisms voiced there are quite known. I'm basing this on my psychology class and the book Zimbardo wrote about it. He freely admits in the appendix that one of the mistakes he made was to interfere with the experiment actively (he took the role of the "prison warden") instead of standing aside as a neutral observer.
And one of the findings of the experiment was precisely that despite "guards" were forbidden to physically assault "prisoners", they anyway found ways to torture them psychologically. And "prisoners", despite knowing about this rule, did not always feel safe.
Every experiment has critics, and that is a good thing. Don't treat science the same way you treat B-star gossip stories. Few experiments are perfect, and criticism is a good way to figure out better ways of doing them.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Don't worry... this has been replicated in an equally-scientific way:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1082807/
What another foundation of liberal politics is based on a false study....say it isn't so.
It is getting to the point that it is pretty safe to assume anything academia has produced in the last 50 years, in the realm of psychology and social sciences is pretty much horseshit.
**ALL** 'studies' using college kids as the base are a sham unless it's specifically designed to test things impacting college kids. Even then, as the kid said "There were no repercussions. We knew [the guards] couldn't hurt us, they couldn't hit us. They were white college kids just like us, so it was a very safe situation,"
It's not like they check out their brains at the door and forget it's a friggin' experiment (unless the focus is on Social Studies types).
What a friggin' pedantic SJW. The "human race" is a long-term and very well know phrase. Where you been all your life?
"If you had mentally broken so deep you did not you would probably have been removed and not seen again as the guard you mentioned."
No, no, no. Do you think there are monitors walking around with clip boards in SERE training? No there aren't. It is you and your unit and a bunch of murderous, torturous bastards who will do things to you and your unit that wouldn't be allowed anywhere else in the world outside of covert black sites. The whole point of SERE training is to break you and everyone breaks. That's the fundamental lesson of SERE training. The second or third time they take you out of the freezer you are going to spill whatever it is they want to know. And if the freezer doesn't work, then enjoy freezing with a broken toe or dislocated finger.
The only one who didn't talk was the one who didn't pay attention during the briefing and couldn't remember the 'secret'. But, hey, his big toe will heal and there are navy dentists for his cracked teeth.
You, as a soldier, only need to evade capture and avoid talking for 12 hours. Any secret that would aid the enemy after that time period is either not worth keeping or entirely the responsibility of your commanders.
The Navy runs a POW camp for training. Every aviator has to go through it in case they have an un-scheduled landing someplace. They can and they do hit you hard enough you see stars. Sleep deprivation, etc. They are all corps men and you'll be ok. Never the less, it's hell. Put a bunch of those college kids in there for a while. Sign their life away first of course so they can't sue. Then let's see what happens.
This story has been published in violation of Betteridge's Law.