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 "Blum's expose -- based on previously unpublished recordings of Zimbardo, a Stanford psychology professor, and interviews with the participants -- offers evidence that the 'guards' were coached to be cruel,"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."

Comments

Science: Is it replicable?

[Dripdry]

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!

Re:Science: Is it replicable?

[ebrandsberg]

Any study that actually removed the barriers between the guards and the inmates would be inherently immoral. No study that is done "properly" would be allowed. by any respectable institution.

Re:Science: Is it replicable?

[symes]

Sadly, in psychology, it goes further than poorly designed studies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Science: Is it replicable?

[Anonymous Coward]

This so called "study" is BS! You want to see the real deal? Check out the USAF Survival School at Fairchild AFB WA, and talk to anyone that has been through it. There were ~30 others in the group when I attended, and at the end of the POW course there was not a dry eye among us when they raised the American Flag signifying the end of the POW experience. Every single one of us was convinced we were in a real POW camp and would never see home again. It lasted less than 48 hours, and was the most intense experience of my life.

Here's the site: http://www.fairchild.af.mil/About/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/238992/us-air-force-survival-school/

And this is how they currently describe it : "Finally, students are returned to Fairchild and receive Code of Conduct training in evasion and conduct after capture".

A subtle way to describe an experience that drove me to attempt to kill the guards, and others to collaborate with the enemy. One guy was even guarding the rest of the prisoners with a (unloaded) gun, he had a massive breakdown at the end of the camp when he realized what he had done. I never saw him again. Talk to any alumnus, don't take my word.

Re:Science: Is it replicable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has the study been replicated? Have the conclusions been replicated?

An alarming percentage of studies in psychology can not be replicated:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_psychology

Re:Science: Is it replicable?

[drnb]

I have no doubt there were sincere tears at the flag raising, however I have heard from another graduate of SERE training (Navy/Marine, 5 day course?, non-aircrew, high risk ground combat roles) that knowing the time limit helped him endure the physical and psychological pain. In particular being "boxed" (12hr? 24hr? not sure, I don't accurately recall). Bent at the knees and waist so as to be in a compact fetal like position and then sealed in a wooden box barely large enough to fit into. Locked into that position, unable to move, having to endure cramps but the psychological fear being even worse. He was not sure how he could have endured being "boxed" without knowing and counting down in his mind to the time limit.

SERE training is mentally and physically painful, none of us civilians can understand it as graduates do. However everyone there knows it is training, at least subconsciously if their mind gets muddled and they get deep into the role playing. Its invaluable training. But as civilians cannot truly understand SERE training, SERE school graduates cannot truly understand being actually captured and actually tortured. SERE is not the real thing, physically nor mentally, and everyone knows it down deep, even if temporarily muddled. SERE gives you the tools to work from should you one day really become a real captive, not unlike infantry training gives you the tools to work from should you one day really find yourself in combat. But training is only training and everyone knows it down deep.

I appreciate your 2 day SERE training perspective. However as a teenager I read Everett Alvarez Jr's book on his 8+ year POW experience. LTJG Alvarez was literally shot down at the very start of the war, at the Gulf of Tonkin. He and his peers could end up in single torture sessions that lasted most of or longer than your entire SERE course and they had the full and complete knowledge that it was real and no time limit existed. I'm sorry, but your training lacked the latter, even if your conscious became befuddled, down deep you knew it. 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. If you did temporarily loose it and genuinely try to kill a guard they must have mistaken it for a "normal" assault, if your attempt had been recognized as such its hard to imagine you not failing the course.

I am sorry but even SERE training, like the university imprisonment studies, is "unrealistic" in the sense that participants know its not "real". And again I am basing this on a SERE graduate who was "boxed" for 12-24 (?) hours during a 5 (?) day course. And again, I fully recognize that despite not being "real" SERE training is realistic in its limited sense (abuse levels and time) and that the physical and mental pain and stress is quite real and that graduates of SERE training deserve to be highly regarded.

Re:Science: Is it replicable?

[El Cubano]

Any study that actually removed the barriers between the guards and the inmates would be inherently immoral.

Which raises some interesting questions about advancing certain areas of medicine and science.

Vaccines are one example that immediately springs to mind. There are anti-vaxxers who are against the combined MMR vaccine. Supposing that someone wanted to go about studying that in a clinical trial, how would it be done morally? A typical medical clinical trial would involve a control group and one or more experimental groups. To preserve the integrity of the study, the recipients cannot feasibly know to which group they belong. Additionally, MMR is a childhood vaccine, so the parents would have to make the decision to participate on behalf of the child. Would our society tolerate a study where the parents voluntarily subject their children to a possibility of unknowingly what is essentially a required vaccine (required for the health of the individual child as well as the public health in general).

Another area might be studies of pain tolerance. It might be a bit different because that would be one where the participant makes a decision for himself or herself, but it would still be questionable.

Yet another is designer drugs which seem to be gaining popularity. I do not recall the specifics, but there was a recent case of a BioTech company founder that injected himself with some untested drug or some such that he had developed. As I recall, he died not long after. However, would his results have been considered valid if he had succeeded? I believe it is considered highly questionable from a medical ethics standpoint to experiment on yourself or someone to whom you are closely related.

There is a reason why experiments carried out at Nazi concentration camps advanced medical knowledge in ways that are simply not possible when morality and life are respected in a manner to which we in modern society have become accustomed.

Honestly a bad time to reveal this

[ebrandsberg]

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.

Re:Honestly a bad time to reveal this

[VeryFluffyBunny]

While I agree that people need to be aware of how easily they can be manipulated and coerced, at least in the short-term, into doing things in the not-too-distant-future that are against their values now, bad science is bad science and should be exposed and retracted as soon as possible.

There are other, more subtle studies that show how people can be influenced by grooming, contextual cues, peer-influence, etc.. The CIA spent decades trying to "deprogram", AKA "brainwash", people without success (Their experiments were not ethical or legal). Additionally, there's a lot of research on the influence of mass media on public values and sentiments; effects can be strong but are usually short-lived and need intensive reinforcement. How values emerge and change in societies is still a complex subject and it's difficult to manipulate in targeted ways.

Re:Honestly a bad time to reveal this

[Solandri]

The part about a prison environment per se turning guards into monsters is a sham.

The part about people willing to do questionable and immoral things to please an authority figure, things that they normally would never even consider doing on their own, is real and has been replicated in many different experiments (many of which are banned today for being unethical).

So this experiment is discredited in its support of the hypothesis it was trying to prove. 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.

Re:Honestly a bad time to reveal this

[dgatwood]

While I agree that people need to be aware of how easily they can be manipulated and coerced, at least in the short-term, into doing things in the not-too-distant-future that are against their values now, bad science is bad science and should be exposed and retracted as soon as possible.

Except this really isn't bad science. Just some of the details of the experimental environment were omitted. There's no difference between what they're saying the professor did and what they did in the Milgram experiment, or any other similar experiment that showed a good percentage of people willingly engaging in horrible acts because of social pressure.

However, because of the omission, it doesn't quite show what is often claimed — that power inherently corrupts — but rather that people who are not used to power, who are given power, and who are then encouraged to abuse it, tend to do so. It's a subtle distinction, though, and largely empty when you really think about it, because in practice, there will always be someone or something encouraging people with power to abuse it. Expecting otherwise borders on pure fantasy.

More to the point, we've essentially seen this experiment reproduced in actual prisons without an experimenting professor encouraging the guards to be abusive. The results have still often been appalling.

So the burden of proof falls on the people making the accusation here to prove that the interference resulted in an invalid experiment from which nothing can be learned. I'm not convinced that this is the case. I'm also not convinced that it would be ethical to attempt to replicate the results, unfortunately, which makes it nontrivial to prove or disprove any such argument either way. Perhaps a similar experiment could be devised that involves an environment less extreme than prison. *shrugs*

Yes - It was a Sham

[Notabadguy]

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...

Re: Psychology is a Sham!

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Then so was the holocaust!

[bussdriver]

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.

Re:Then so was the holocaust!

[Notabadguy]

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.

Um...let me try different words. The reason nobody has the "guts" to recreate this experiment, or use it as a foundation are as follows:
https://www.psychologytoday.co...

1. The study was fake.
2. The control group was fake.
3. The students were paid actors.
4. They were COACHED on expected behavior during the study.
5. The paid actors then:
          -Psychologically abused the inmates as they were coached and encouraged to do.
          -Rebelled / Rioted as the news told them prisoners do.

After 6 days, the "game" wasn't fun for the prisoners anymore, they were tired of the psychological abuse, and Zimbardo ended the study, claiming to have proven something.

All he proved is that 18-22 year old psychology students getting paid $15 a day in 1970 will do what they're told to do. At least for 6 days.

Re:Then so was the holocaust!

[sfcat]

After 6 days, the "game" wasn't fun for the prisoners anymore, they were tired of the psychological abuse, and Zimbardo ended the study, claiming to have proven something.

All he proved is that 18-22 year old psychology students getting paid $15 a day in 1970 will do what they're told to do. At least for 6 days.

Seems to me that you are being deliberately obtuse about busdriver's point. The exact minutia of what levers you can use to get normal "good" people to do horrific things are still debated (which is good). But the basic point that most lay folks derive from the story of the experiment is that "good" people (ie people like them) can be manipulated into doing pretty nasty things. The reason people thought it was so important to make this point was obviously the events in Germany and Japan during WWII.

You are nitpicking about the exact nature of the levers when the lesson that most people will take from this is that "good" people can't be manipulated into doing acts against their current values. That is inherently dangerous, especially right now. Not to mention that even the reproduction you linked to doesn't really invalidate Zimbardo, it says that he was (very very) sloppy about controlling for which levers he was pulling.

"I am startled by the ease with which I could turn off my sensitivity and concern for others for ‘a good cause." seems to say that the basic thing that Zimbardo was trying to prove was true. That is that good people can be manipulated into doing things against their values. Another experiment that shows this basic point is the Milgram experiment. The only differences is what the exact levels you need to pull to get the desired bad behavior. That Zimbardo's work does little to tell us exactly what those levers are doesn't invalidate the basic point that most people take from the story.

Re:Then so was the holocaust!

[haruchai]

"All he proved is that 18-22 year old psychology students getting paid $15 a day in 1970 will do what they're told to do. At least for 6 days"

The multiple strip search phone call scams proved that it's not hard to find people who'll do very questionable things when told by an authority figure *EVEN ONE THEY DON'T KNOW AND CAN'T SEE"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"On November 30, 2000, a female McDonald's manager in Leitchfield, Kentucky, undressed herself in the presence of a customer. The caller had convinced her that the customer was a "suspected sex offender" and that the manager, serving as bait, would enable undercover police officers to arrest him"

"On January 26, 2003, an Applebee's assistant manager subjected a waitress to a 90-minute strip search after receiving a collect call from someone who purported to be a regional manager for Applebee's"

"In February 2003, a call was made to a McDonald's in Hinesville, Georgia. The female manager (who believed she was speaking to a police officer who was with the director of operations for the restaurant's upper management) took a female employee into the women's bathroom and strip-searched her. She also brought in a male employee, who conducted a body cavity search of the woman to "uncover hidden drugs."

The Mount Washington strip search scam, April 2004, is left as an exercise to the reader.

Social experiments with scientific rigor?

[Bruce Perens]

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".

Re:Social experiments with scientific rigor?

[Notabadguy]

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".

Social experiments are difficult to perform with scientific rigor because they are rarely conducted by scientists, let alone scientists using the scientific method.

Take the landmark Zimbardo study here. This study came about because of the ongoing prison riots - He coached the guards on how to behave and mistreat the prisoners before the experiment started, "reinforcing" the expected behavior. The "prisoners" behaved as they thought they were expected to behave, based on what they saw on the news: Prison riots.

Imagine if Zimbardo had coached the guards differently: We're testing to see if prison guards can treat prisoners gently and humanely.

That study would have ended reinforcing his message. All of these were 18-22 year old kids, doing as they were told, behaving in accordance with the expectations laid out for them in this fake science.

Re:This does not invalidate the results

[hey!]

There have been doubts about the validity of the Stanford Prison Experiment since the very beginning, and the weight has probably been on the side of the doubters for years now. The same for the famous MIlgram experiment. Those early experiments are famous because everybody learns about them in Psych 101, but they are so far from meeting modern standards of research quality anyone citing them today, except to question the results, would face serious peer review backlash.

I once saw a tape of Zimbardo telling an anecdote of one of his colleagues dropping by the experiment. Zimbardo showed him around and told him what was going on, but the colleague seemed confused. "What is your null hypothesis?" the colleague asked. The crowd Zimbardo was regaling laughed at that as if it were a silly, obtuse question. Actually it was a very good question, and it points to the reason that the Stanford Prison Experiment will likely never be replicated in its original form. Without a null hypothesis, you have no basis for systematically eliminating experimenter bias.

In a modern experiment -- presuming you could get ethical clearance -- your null hypothesis would be that guards do *not* spontaneously exhibit cruel and dehumanizing behavior; you would then carefully remove any hint of encouragement for them to do so. By just throwing them into a situation and seeing what happens, you don't know whether or not what you are seeing is a result of something you unconsciously made them do.

Re:Moscow Donald's Campaign Manager is IN PRISON

[Tulsa_Time]

Is that a threat ? Is that what Slashdot is now ?

nothing new, what's the story?

[Tom]

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.