Stanford Prison Experiment
AN OVERVIEW OF THE EXPERIMENT
The experiment started when the police started picking up many students on Sunday morning. All suspects were charged with burglary, daylight robbery, or other small offences. They were suddenly pushed inside the car, driven to the police station, handcuffed, and locked up. But no one really knew what was at the end. Were they really guilty?
https://www.prisonexp.org/polish/setting-up
True guilt
They were only guilty of answering an advert to take part in a prison experiment. Participants could take one of two roles: a prisoner, or a prison guard. To do this, creators prepared a special environment in an old university building that looked and felt exactly like a real prison. They wanted to research people's behaviour in this extreme environment.
One interesting thing is that 70 students declared their desires to take part in this experiment. Researchers didn't want participants with any criminal past, so they checked all volunteers and finally chose 24 of them.
Preparation
To prepare the whole prison, they modified the old psychology department with special, heavy doors with cell numbers. When prisoners wanted to go to the bathroom, they were led there blindfolded. That prevented them from knowing where the exit from prison was.
https://www.prisonexp.org/polish/setting-up
Prisoners arrival
When prisoners arrived at the prison, they were searched and stripped naked. The reason was to humiliate them, like in the real prison, and to ensure that they do not have any germs.
Next, they were given a uniform which was a long dress, mostly like a nightdress, without any underwear. On this dress, everyone was given a unique number and from that point was named only by his number, the new prison name.
To simulate bald heads in real prisons, prisoners during this experiment had to put women’s stockings on their heads and wear them all the time.
https://www.prisonexp.org/polish/guards
Guards
One interesting thing about this experiment is that prison guards hadn’t got any special training on how to behave, or manage prisoners. They were allowed to make their own rules, command prisoners as they wanted. However, they were warned of serious consequences if they crossed the line.
Experiment starts
When the experiment started, in prison there were 9 prisoners, 3 in each cell. The remaining participants worked as guards 8 hours a day. Cells were prepared to fit three beds and absolutely nothing else. Everything was set to be as least comfortable as possible. The only furniture prisoners had in their cells were small couches that took all of their free space.
Too much power?
Once in a while guards took out all prisoners to count them. It was needed to familiarize prisoners with their numbers. Unfortunately, it was also a reason for guards to demonstrate their power. At first, none of them took “counts” seriously, and prisoners tried to show their independence. Guards also struggled with their role, didn’t know how to exactly behave, how to dominate prisoners. It was the start of the conflict between those two sides.
In order to put more pressure on prisoners, guards came up with punishments in form of exercises. For example, they forced prisoners to make push-ups. It sounds like a light punishment. However, guards would push prisoners backs to the ground with their feet during the exercise to make it much more humiliating.
That was the first day of an experiment.
https://www.prisonexp.org/polish/guards
Rebellion
As the first day went without bigger problems, the next day in the morning prisoners took off stockings from their heads, ripped their numbers, and barricaded themselves in their cells. Guards were left on their own, and they needed to manage prisoners on their own.
Guards called for others that weren’t working at that time, and finally together broke into prisoners cells by force. When that happened, prisoners were stripped, their couches were taken off, and those who initialized rebellion were set into isolation.
First released
The first important moment was after less than 36 hours of this experiment. At that moment the Prisoner number 8612 began suffering from emotional disturbance, disorganized thinking and crying. At first, the scientist thought that he was trying to fool them with this behavior, but they realized that he was really suffering.
This suffering came from the fact that this prisoner thought that he was in a real prison and that made him feel unstable emotionally. Because of this, he was the first person who was released.
https://www.prisonexp.org/polish/grievances
Mass escape rumor
The second important moment was when creators heard rumors about mass escape from the prison. At that moment, they stopped thinking about this situation like an experiment and they spent an entire day planning to foil the escape, they also made some shocking decisions, like to rebuild the prison, just not to let the prisoner escape. They also wanted to move the prisoners to the real prison, but fortunately, the Police Department didn’t let them do it – that day they didn’t even collect any data, so at some point, it stopped to be a scientific experiment.
This situation is important because it shows that even the creator of the experiment and his coworkers started to act like they were in the real prison.
The end of experiment
Final reasons that made creators end their experiments were:
First of all, on the 5th day of the experiment, some parents called a real lawyer to get their sons out of prison. – so even the family of the “prisoners” started to act like it was a real situation and this effect started to grow.
The second part of this decision of ending this experiment was because the creator realized that he created an overwhelmingly powerful situation – a situation in which prisoners were unstable emotionally and they acted in pathological ways, and in which some of the guards were behaving sadistically.
And the last part that made Zimbardo think that it’s time to end this experiment was the moment when a doctor from Stanford University questioned the morality of this experiment.
Introducing those three moments is crucial to understand the effects of this experiment.
The result of Zimbardo experiment is also very often called
The Lucifer Effect - describes the transformation of a person's character from good to bad only because of the environment in which the person is located.
https://www.prisonexp.org/polish/conclusion
Questions:
Which group would you prefer to belong to and why?
Do you agree with the statement that it’s not in human nature to act badly and the bad behaviour is the fault of the influence of the environment?
This experiment was made in 1971. Despite it being 50 years old, do you think it was moral to conduct it?
Source:
https://www.prisonexp.org/
Comments
1.Which group would you prefer to belong to and why?
Honestly, if I were among students who were asked to take part in such an experiment I would refuse because, in my opinion, it is too much. But if I need to choose, I would prefer to belong to the guards. The main reason is that even thought about being like a real prisoner in a cell terrifies me and makes me feel miserable. Also, as I have understood correctly, guards had to be in an experiment just 8 hours a day, not permanently.
2.Do you agree with the statement that it’s not in human nature to act badly and the bad behaviour is the fault of the influence of the environment?
Unfortunately, I do not think that bad behaviour is not in human nature. People generally are not kind. From the beginning of history, there were a lot of wars, even inside one group/tribe/country. Now there are such things as racism and xenophobia. We are also inclined to moral hypocrisy. People can rate the exact same behaviour as far less fair when perpetuated by others, than by themselves. Manipulation, gossiping and jealousy are also bad behaviour habits.
And I can badly imagine the environment where we all will be kind.
3.This experiment was made in 1971. Despite it being 50 years old, do you think it was moral to conduct it?
I rather consider this experiment as immoral. As for me, it was too much to simulate a prison and makes young people humiliate each other. Moreover, the fact that some of 'prisoners' began to feel real suffering is shocking.
1. Which group would you prefer to belong to and why?
Well, I don't think that anybody would like to be a prisoner if they knew about it. And generally, I wouldn't like to take part in this kind of experiment. It seems too real, and I'm sure that I would feel really bad if I had to do this.
2. Do you agree with the statement that it’s not in human nature to act badly and the bad behaviour is the fault of the influence of the environment?
I'm actually not sure, because I've read about some killers, that even as children from good families, they were acting immorally from a young age. For example, I've heard about a lot of cases where it started by killing small animals, then bigger ones, and then they've started killing people. So I wouldn't say that people have a good nature.
3. This experiment was made in 1971. Despite it being 50 years old, do you think it was moral to conduct it?
No, I don't think so. It was definitely too real because even the creator started to act like they were in a real prison. And the guards were acting in a really sadistic way, so it wasn't only psychological, but also physical damage on students health.
I think it’s a hard question. On one hand, we were predators and had to kill to survive, we had to hurt or get hurt. But right now, we’ve evolved over thousands of years and I think we are not in the need of killing when we’re born. At least not if we’re not in fatal danger or we don’t need to eat. I’ve met dozens of people who weren’t bad at the core, you could’ve reached their good nature sometimes, but the environment and people they had been raised among made them truly evil. They were cruel, intolerant and selfish. And I’m absolutely sure, their background and origins were responsible for that.
I think it was immoral in a way, but probably the scientists and academics had no idea it could end that bad. I think there were lots of more immoral experiments in the history of the twentieth century, and many of them were predicted to be cruel and destructive. It probably was conducted with good intentions, but brought shocking results. But that’s sadly how science works – sometimes you have to cross the border to find out what’s on the other side. Many absolutely inhuman experiments done by Nazi scientists led to some major breakthroughs in science. They were horrible, but somehow helped to discover things, that weren’t known before.
I would choose guards group, of that there is no doubt. I think it would be easier to survive working eight hours per day than spending whole days in the small prison cell. Of course I would have to deal the prisoners no matter on which side I would be, but I think I would feel more comfortable and safer. I would have weapons and protocols that are made to protect me from the criminals.
2. Do you agree with the statement that it’s not in human nature to act badly and the bad behaviour is the fault of the influence of the environment?
I am not sure. I think our environment has a huge impact on our living style, but there were many examples when kids from calm and good families went on a bad path and committed a crime. I remembered myself about a story. It is about a really good guy, father and husband. He had a great job. He has taking care about his kids and wife, but one day he falls in the work and broke his head. After this accident he lost his head and he murdered his wife. Everybody was asking the question why, they did not believe, because he was such a good man. All was about his injury. Something in his head has changed and he went crazy once too often.
3. This experiment was made in 1971. Despite it being 50 years old, do you think it was moral to conduct it?
All participants wanted to do this, so I think it was not that bad and immoral.
For starters, I don’t think I would ever even think about participating in this kind of experiment. It seems too unpredictable and a bit uncontrolled. Additionally, I suppose there is a high probability it would mess with my head to harshly, no matter the side I would choose. By being “prisoners”, these guys gambled with their mental health and feeling of safety. On the other hand, “guards” were supposedly discovering their dark, dangerous side which probably haunted them after the experiment was called off.
If I were forced to choose, I think I would rather be a guard, just because it feels safer in regards of health issues (lower chance of being tormented and mistreated during the experiment), but I don’t like that idea either.
Do you agree with the statement that it’s not in human nature to act badly and the bad behaviour is the fault of the influence of the environment?
Oh, I think it may be very much in our nature to act badly. I think that our survival instincts to this day are very strong, they are just well hidden under the layers of society, traditions, laws etc. Probably bad environment is more likely to trigger some kinds of dangerous, unpredictable behaviors, but I think that it mostly depends on the person itself.
Otherwise, why kids/adults from good, well behaved and properly educated environments would turn out to be serial killers or psychopaths. There must be something within us that we usually are able to control. But not all of us.
This experiment was made in 1971. Despite it being 50 years old, do you think it was moral to conduct it?
No, I don’t think so. I am aware, that these people were willing to do this and it was their decision to participate in this experiment, but considering the fact, that even the creators started to act oddly and lost the sense of reality I don’t think it was a moral experiment. Moreover, I think that it could end quite badly (with someone getting killed or mentally injured for life) if other authorities hadn’t stopped them.
2. Not completely. I believe it depends on the nature of man. Of course, the environment has a lot to do with it. If a person is naturally good and knows not to harm another person, even the worst environment will not break him. There are also people who grow up in a loving home who are psychopaths. It all depends on human nature, but the environment has a huge impact.
3. I think that for those times, yes. Now I rather doubt that it would be possible. You can see what its effects were. Many people may say that he was not humane and they are probably right. There were other times then.
2. I don't think that bad behavior comes from the influence of the environment. People like to be in power. And most of us will do things to gain power if it won't have consequences.
3. It was immoral from the beginning. But as with all other experiments, it delivered valuable information. Also, let's not forget that the vast majority of medical knowledge, unfortunately, comes from WW2 from inhumane experiments. Probably now it wouldn't be conducted.
Thank you for your opinion. I agree with you that nowadays racism is strong, but don’t you think that a bad environment can’t somehow force you to act badly? For example, when you only see bad behavior around you, it won't help you act well.
@Kinga Kwiatkowska
I’m glad that you’ve found my presentation interesting. I totally agree with you, that it wasn’t moral at all. They prepared a real environment and didn’t prepare any rules for guards, how they should behave. I think they were given too much power to guards, and just let them do anything.
@Katarzyna Stefanowska
I agree with you that giving too much power to guards was a mistake. But if there were strict rules, and guards couldn’t behave as they want, would you be more willing to take part in this experiment?
@Przemysław Baka
I agree with you that all participants wanted to take part, but do you think all of them knew exactly what it would look like? In my opinion, there was too little information and they couldn’t expect anything. So I think all of them were shocked when they realized what they took part in.
@Olga Przytula
It’s true that our survival instinct is very strong and a lot of people start acting badly because they can’t solve their problems. Do you think that a bad environment helps those people to become criminals?
@Michał Gawron
Taking part in this experiment as a guard is of course safer option, but what if you couldn’t get any choice and the creators will choose a role for you? Would you like to take part in this experiment then?
@Jędrzej Kowalczyk
Thank you for your opinion. Do you think that even when all participants were volunteers it was still immoral? They agreed what could happen to them, so even if the environment was extremely real, and for prisoners almost like hell, they still volunteered for that.
I would like to believe that my morals would allow me to be a guard and behave adequately. However, it is not certain how each of us would behave in such a situation. In this experiment, much more depends on the guard than on the prisoner, because he dictates the conditions. The prisoner only has to behave adequately to the instructions given. It takes a lot of training to get into a real prison as a guard. To end up in a real prison as a prisoner you just need to break the law. I have never trained to be a prison guard, so the choice is probably simple ;)
As a determinist, I see a human being as an (almost) blank sheet of paper that is filled with life experiences. Each of us today behaves through the prism of our past experiences. In a deterministic approach, human nature does not matter much. From other sources reporting on this experiment, I know that the guards entered roles that were only their imagination of this job. They acted as they thought they should, while real guards would have done it completely differently.
Over the years, I have heard many evaluations of the scientific method of this experiment, including the analysis of the moral aspect. Personally, I consider this not only an immoral but also an unscientific experiment. First of all, due to the lack of proper training and supervision of the group of guards.
The first I heard about the Zimbardo experiment in the context of the Holocaust, which makes a lot of sense.
I would love to take part in this kind of experiment. I think the role of prison guard could be tougher and morally challenging.
First of all, I believe that all humans are capable to do bad things. You can find evil human (but I would consider them disturbed or mentally ill) in a positive environment and good in a toxic one.
I don’t time changes anything in terms of morality. However, the results of this are quite useful even today.
I would like to recommend a Netflix TV show called “Inside the World's Toughest Prisons”. It’s not the best show but it shows different prisons around the world.
2. Actually when I watched the video about this experiment it was said that several scholars in different times tried to reproduce the same experiment and they didn't achieve the similar results. These people claimed that the whole thing was fabricated. But even if it wasn't staged, there still were good guards and bad guards. What pushed some guards to be so cruel? Nothing. They were evil for no reason.
3. Hard to say, they didn't really know to what they agreed. Prisoners could leave the prison if they really insisted on it. It only proves that it was fake. It's not immoral to participate in fake :).
1. I think I would not be in any of the groups because it is too hard and serious for me. I am very sensitive and emotional.
2. I think yes, I absolutely agree with that because human is a social being and of course our environment affect to our behavior. The good example I think it is a war, when everybody need to survive they can kill each other even eat each other.
3. I don't think it's immoral. As for me it is a way to learn a phycological part of our body and mind. I think in such difficult conditions the unconscious part of us wakes up.
Naturally, I would prefer to not be in any of these 2 groups. If I was invited to experiment like this, I wouldn't agree to take part in it. I'm really surprised so many students were willing to take part in it, but maybe it seemed like an innocent experiment before it started.
If I had to choose though, I would probably take on the role of the guard, I don't think I could stand humiliation of being the prisoner. Also, maybe I could convince other guards to act calmer and less harsh. Again, I don't know how the environment would change me, so I can only speculate on my actions.
2. Do you agree with the statement that it’s not in human nature to act badly and the bad behaviour is the fault of the influence of the environment?
I agree with it, but I think that some people may be evil in their nature. Most of us though, are under heavy influence of environment. I would say our parents have less influence on us, than school and friends that we usually spend more time with.
3. This experiment was made in 1971. Despite it being 50 years old, do you think it was moral to conduct it?
Honestly I have no idea who was so smart to think of experiment like this. Of course it's not morally okay to do it, it went too far to just call it pretending and it had a lot of bad influence on the minds of participants. I watched an interview about some guy that was imprisoned in Polish prison. He said literally every guard is corrupt and every prisoner goes out of prison not reformed. He might be exaggerating, but it just shows that both being guard and prisoner has bad influence on one's behaviour.