The
Stanford prison experiment was a study of the
psychologicalPsychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
effects of becoming a
prisonerA prisoner is someone incarcerated in a prison, jail or similar facility.Prisoner or The Prisoner may also refer to:* Prisoner of war, a soldier in wartime, held as by an enemy* Political prisoner, someone held in prison for their ideology...
or prison guard. The experiment was conducted from August 14th-20th, 1971, by a team of researchers led by psychology professor
Philip ZimbardoPhilip George Zimbardo is an American psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is president of the Heroic Imagination Project...
at
Stanford UniversityThe Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. It was funded by a grant from the
US Office of Naval ResearchThe Office of Naval Research , headquartered in Arlington, Virginia , is the office within the United States Department of the Navy that coordinates, executes, and promotes the science and technology programs of the U.S...
and was of interest to both the US Navy and Marine Corps in order to determine the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners.
Twelve students were selected out of 75 to play the prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Another twelve of the same 75 were selected to play the Guards. Roles were assigned randomly to the 24 men. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond what even Zimbardo himself expected, leading the "officers" to display authoritarian measures and ultimately to subject some of the prisoners to torture. In turn, many of the prisoners developed passive attitudes and accepted physical abuse, and, at the request of the guards, readily inflicted punishment on other prisoners who attempted to stop it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his capacity as "Prison Superintendent", lost sight of his role as psychologist and permitted the abuse to continue as though it were a real prison. Five of the prisoners were upset enough by the process to quit the experiment early, and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. The experimental process and the results remain controversial. The entire experiment was filmed, with excerpts made publicly available.
Goals and methods
Zimbardo and his team set out to test the idea that the inherent personality traits of prisoners and guards were summarily key to understanding abusive prison situations. Participants were recruited and told they would participate in a two-week prison simulation. Out of 75 respondents, Zimbardo and his team selected the 24 males whom they deemed to be the most psychologically stable and healthy. These participants were predominantly white and
middle-classThe middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
. The group was intentionally selected to weed out those with criminal background, psychological impairments, or medical problems. They were all signed up to participate in a 7 to 14 day period and receive $15 per day (equivalent to $80 in 2010).
The "prison" itself was in the basement of Stanford's Jordan Hall (the psychology building), which had been converted into a mock jail. An undergraduate
research assistantA research assistant is a researcher employed, often on a temporary contract, by a university or a research institute, for the purpose of assisting in academic research...
was the "warden" and Zimbardo the "superintendent". Zimbardo set up a number of specific conditions on the participants which he hoped would promote disorientation, depersonalisation and
deindividualisationDeindividualisation means treating other people according to preconceived qualities such as race, gender or creed. It differs from depersonalisation which is concerned with an individual's self-perception.not to be confused with deindividuation....
.
The researchers provided weapons—wooden
batonsA club is among the simplest of all weapons. A club is essentially a short staff, or stick, usually made of wood, and wielded as a weapon since prehistoric times....
which could not be used to punish the prisoners, meant only to establish their status—and clothing that simulated that of a prison guard—khaki shirt and pants from a local
military surplus storeA surplus store or disposals store sells items that are used, or purchased but unused, and no longer needed. The surplus is often military, government or industrial excess often called army-navy stores in America...
. They were also given mirrored sunglasses to prevent
eye contactEye contact is a meeting of the eyes between two individuals.In human beings, eye contact is a form of nonverbal communication and is thought to have a large influence on social behavior. Coined in the early to mid-1960s, the term has come in the West to often define the act as a meaningful and...
.
Prisoners wore ill-fitting smocks and stocking caps, rendering them constantly uncomfortable. Guards called prisoners by their assigned numbers, sewn on their uniforms, instead of by name. A chain around their ankles reminded them of their roles as prisoners.
The researchers held an orientation session for guards the day before the experiment, during which they were told that they could not physically harm the prisoners. In the video of the study Zimbardo is seen telling the guards, "You can create in the prisoners feelings of boredom, a sense of fear to some degree, you can create a notion of arbitrariness that their life is totally controlled by us, by the system, you, me, and they'll have no privacy... We're going to take away their individuality in various ways. In general what all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness. That is, in this situation we'll have all the power and they'll have none."
The participants chosen to play the part of prisoners were arrested at their homes and charged with armed robbery. The local Palo Alto police department assisted Zimbardo with the arrests and conducted full booking procedures on the prisoners, which included
fingerprintA fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human hand. A print from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges...
ing and taking
mug shotA mug shot, mugshot or booking photograph, is a photographic portrait taken after one is arrested. The purpose of the mug shot is to allow law enforcement to have a photographic record of the arrested individual to allow for identification by victims and investigators. Most mug shots are two-part,...
s. At the police station, they were transported to the mock prison where they were strip-searched and given their new identities.
Set up
The small mock prison cells were set up to hold three prisoners each. There was a small space for the prison yard, solitary confinement, and a bigger room across from the prisoners for the guards and warden. The prisoners were to stay in their cells all day and night until the end of the study. The guards worked in teams of three for eight-hour shifts. The guards did not have to stay on site after their shift.
Results
After a relatively uneventful first day, a riot broke out on the second day. The prisoners in cell 1 blockaded their cell door with their beds and took off their stocking caps. They refused to come out or do anything the guards told them to do. The guards realized they needed more of them to handle the riot. The guards from other shifts volunteered to work extra hours and worked together to break the prisoner revolt, attacking the prisoners with fire extinguishers without supervision from the research staff. The guards realized they could handle the 9 cell mates with 9 guards, but were unsure how they were to do so by use of only 3 guards per shift. One then suggested that they use psychological tactics to control them instead. They set up a "privilege cell" in which prisoners who were not involved in the riot were treated with special rewards such as a good meal instead of their normal bland portions. The "privilege cell" inmates chose not to eat the meal in order to stay uniform with their fellow prisoners.
After only 36 hours, one prisoner began to act "crazy", Zimbardo says; "#8612 then began to act crazy, to scream, to curse, to go into a rage that seemed out of control. It took quite a while before we became convinced that he was really suffering and that we had to release him."
Guards forced the prisoners to count off repeatedly as a way to learn their prison numbers, and to reinforce the idea that this was their new identity. Guards soon used these prisoner counts as another method to harass the prisoners, using physical punishment such as protracted exercise for errors in the prisoner count. Sanitary conditions declined rapidly, made worse by the guards refusing to allow some prisoners to urinate or defecate. As punishment, the guards would not let the prisoners empty the sanitation bucket. Mattresses were a valued item in the prison, so the guards would punish prisoners by removing their mattresses, leaving them to sleep on concrete. Some prisoners were forced to go nude as a method of degradation.
Zimbardo cited his own absorption in the experiment he guided, and in which he actively participated as Prison Superintendent. On the fourth day, some prisoners were talking about trying to escape. Zimbardo and the guards attempted to move the prisoners to the more secure local police station, but officials there said they could no longer participate in Zimbardo's experiment.
Several guards became increasingly cruel as the experiment continued. Experimenters said that approximately one-third of the guards exhibited genuine sadistic tendencies. Most of the guards were upset when the experiment concluded after only 6 days.
Zimbardo argued that the prisoner participants had
internalizedInternalization has different definitions depending on the field that the term is used in. Internalization is the opposite of externalization.- General :...
their roles, based on the fact that some had stated that they would accept parole even with the attached condition of forfeiting all of their experiment-participation pay. Yet, when their parole applications were all denied, none of the prisoner participants quit the experiment. Zimbardo argued they had no reason for continued participation in the experiment after having lost all monetary compensation, yet they did, because they had internalized the prisoner identity, they thought themselves prisoners, hence, they stayed.
Prisoner No. 416, a newly admitted stand-by prisoner, expressed concern over the treatment of the other prisoners. The guards responded with more abuse. When he refused to eat his sausages, saying he was on a hunger strike, guards confined him to a closet without a lightbulb and called it "
solitary confinementSolitary confinement is a special form of imprisonment in which a prisoner is isolated from any human contact, though often with the exception of members of prison staff. It is sometimes employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a prisoner, and has been cited as an additional...
; the guards then instructed the other prisoners to repeatedly punch on the door while shouting at 416." The guards used this incident to turn the other prisoners against No. 416, saying the only way he would be released from solitary confinement was if they gave up their blankets and slept on their bare mattresses, which all but one refused to do.
Zimbardo aborted the experiment early when
Christina MaslachChristina Maslach is an American social psychologist and Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, known for her research on occupational burnout....
, a graduate student he was then dating (and later married), objected to the appalling conditions of the prison after she was introduced to the experiment to conduct interviews. Zimbardo noted that of more than fifty outside persons who had seen the prison, Maslach was the only one who questioned its morality. After only six days of a planned two weeks' duration, the Stanford Prison experiment was shut down.
Conclusions
The experiment ended on August 20, 1971, only six days after it began, instead of the originally scheduled fourteen. That day, Zimbardo called both the guards and inmates to a meeting and announced that the 'prison' was closing down. The experiment's result has been argued to demonstrate the impressionability and obedience of people when provided with a legitimizing
ideologyAn ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
and social and institutional support. It is also used to illustrate
cognitive dissonance theoryCognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying,...
and the power of
authorityThe word Authority is derived mainly from the Latin word auctoritas, meaning invention, advice, opinion, influence, or command. In English, the word 'authority' can be used to mean power given by the state or by academic knowledge of an area .-Authority in Philosophy:In...
.
The results of the experiment are said to support situational attribution of behavior rather than
dispositional attributionDispositional attribution is the explanation of individual behavior as a result caused by internal characteristics that reside within the individual, as opposed to outside influences that stem from the environment or culture in which that individual is found...
. In other words, it seemed the situation caused the participants' behavior, rather than anything inherent in their individual
personalitiesPersonality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and individual differences. Its areas of focus include:* Constructing a coherent picture of the individual and his or her major psychological processes...
. In this way, it is compatible with the results of the also-famous
Milgram experimentThe Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of notable social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that...
, in which ordinary people fulfilled orders to administer what appeared to be agonizing and dangerous
electric shockElectric Shock of a body with any source of electricity that causes a sufficient current through the skin, muscles or hair. Typically, the expression is used to denote an unwanted exposure to electricity, hence the effects are considered undesirable....
s to a confederate of the experimenter.
Shortly after the study had been completed, there were bloody revolts at both the San Quentin and
AtticaThe Attica Prison riot occurred at the Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York, United States in 1971. The riot was based in part upon prisoners' demands for better living conditions...
prison facilities, and Zimbardo reported his findings on the experiment to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary.
Criticism
The guards and prisoners adapted to their roles more completely than expected, as Zimbardo himself also did, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine sadistic tendencies", while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized—five of them had to be removed from the experiment early. After being confronted by Christina Maslach, a graduate student in psychology whom he was dating, and realizing that he had been passively allowing unethical acts to be performed under his direct supervision, Zimbardo concluded that both prisoners and guards had become too grossly absorbed in their roles and terminated the experiment after six days. Ethical concerns surrounding the experiment often draw comparisons to the
Milgram experimentThe Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of notable social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that...
, which was conducted in 1961 at
Yale UniversityYale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
by
Stanley MilgramStanley Milgram was an American social psychologist most notable for his controversial study known as the Milgram Experiment. The study was conducted in the 1960s during Milgram's professorship at Yale...
, Zimbardo's former high school friend.
Tom PetersThomas J. "Tom" Peters is an American writer on business management practices, best-known for In Search of Excellence .-Life and career:Peters was born in Baltimore, Maryland...
and
Robert H. Waterman JrRobert H. Waterman Jr is a non-fiction author and expert on business management practices. He is best known as the co-author, with Tom Peters, of In Search of Excellence. He earned his MBA from Stanford University and his degree in geophysics from the Colorado School of Mines...
wrote in 1981 that the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment were frightening in their implications about the danger which lurks in the darker side of human nature.
Ethical
This study was cleared by the Ethics Code of the American Psychological Association, showing that experiments on paper can look very different from the way that they play out in reality. The experiment was criticized as being
unethicalEthics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
and
unscientificScientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
. Subsequently-adopted ethical standards of psychology would make it a breach of ethics to conduct such a study in more modern times. If carried out today, the study would violate the Ethics Code of the American Psychological Association, the Canadian Code of Conduct for Research Involving Humans, and the
Belmont ReportThe Belmont Report is a report created by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. Its full title is the Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research, Report of the National Commission...
.
Peer-review
Because it was a field experiment, Zimbardo found it impossible to keep traditional
scientific controlScientific control allows for comparisons of concepts. It is a part of the scientific method. Scientific control is often used in discussion of natural experiments. For instance, during drug testing, scientists will try to control two groups to keep them as identical and normal as possible, then...
s in place. He was unable to remain merely a
neutral observerObservation is either an activity of a living being, such as a human, consisting of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses, or the recording of data using scientific instruments. The term may also refer to any data collected during this activity...
, instead influencing the direction of the experiment as its "superintendent". Conclusions and observations drawn by the experimenters were largely
subjectiveSubjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires. In philosophy, the term is usually contrasted with objectivity.-Qualia:...
and
anecdotalThe expression anecdotal evidence refers to evidence from anecdotes. Because of the small sample, there is a larger chance that it may be true but unreliable due to cherry-picked or otherwise unrepresentative of typical cases....
, and the experiment would be difficult for other researchers to
reproduceReproducibility is the ability of an experiment or study to be accurately reproduced, or replicated, by someone else working independently...
.
Critics including
Erich FrommErich Seligmann Fromm was a Jewish German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.-Life:Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, at Frankfurt am...
challenged how readily the results of the experiment could be generalized. Fromm specifically wrote about how the personality of an individual does in fact affect behavior when imprisoned, using historical examples from the
Nazi concentration campsNazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
. This ran counter to the study's conclusion that the prison situation itself controls the individual's behavior. Fromm also argued that the amount of sadism in the "normal" subjects could not be determined with the methods employed to screen them.
Biases
Some of the experiment's critics argued that participants based their behavior on how they were expected to behave, or modelled it after
stereotypeA stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
s they already had about the behavior of prisoners and guards. In other words, the participants were merely engaging in
role-playingRole-playing refers to the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role...
. In response, Zimbardo claimed that even if there was role-playing initially, participants
internalizedInternalization has different definitions depending on the field that the term is used in. Internalization is the opposite of externalization.- General :...
these roles as the experiment continued.
More directly, though, it has been pointed out that, in contrast to Zimbardo's claim that participants were given no instructions about how to behave, his briefing of the guards gave them a clear sense that they should oppress the prisoners. In this sense the study was an exploration of the effects of tyrannical leadership. In line with this, certain guards, such as one known as "John Wayne", changed their behavior because of wanting to conform to the behavior that Zimbardo was trying to elicit.
Other criticisms
Additionally, the study has been criticized on the basis of
ecological validityEcological validity is a form of validity in a research study. For a research study to possess ecological validity, the methods, materials and setting of the study must approximate the real-life situation that is under investigation. Unlike internal and external validity, ecological validity is not...
. Many of the conditions imposed in the experiment were arbitrary and may not have correlated with actual prison conditions, including blindfolding incoming prisoners, not allowing them to wear underwear, not allowing them to look out of windows and not allowing them to use their names. Zimbardo argued that prison is a confusing and dehumanizing experience and that it was necessary to enact these procedures to put the prisoners in the proper frame of mind; however, it is difficult to know how similar the effects were to an actual prison, and the experiment's methods would be difficult to reproduce exactly so that others could test them.
Some said that the study was too
deterministicDeterminism is the general philosophical thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. There are many versions of this thesis. Each of them rests upon various alleged connections, and interdependencies of things and...
: reports described significant differences in the cruelty of the guards, the worst of whom came to be nicknamed John Wayne. (This guard alleges he started the escalation of events between guards and prisoners after he began to emulate a character from the
Paul NewmanPaul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...
film
Cool Hand LukeCool Hand Luke is a 1967 American prison drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Paul Newman. The screenplay was adapted by Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson from Pearce's 1965 novel of the same name. The film features George Kennedy, Strother Martin, J.D...
. He further intensified his actions because he was nicknamed "John Wayne", even though he was trying to mimic actor
Strother MartinStrother Martin was an American actor in numerous films and television programs. Martin is perhaps best known as the prison "captain" in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, where he uttered the line, "What we've got here is...failure to communicate."-Early life:Strother Martin Jr. was born in Kokomo,...
, who had played the role of the sadistic Captain in the movie.) Most of the other guards were kinder and often did favors for prisoners.
Also, it has been argued that
selection biasSelection bias is a statistical bias in which there is an error in choosing the individuals or groups to take part in a scientific study. It is sometimes referred to as the selection effect. The term "selection bias" most often refers to the distortion of a statistical analysis, resulting from the...
may have played a role in the results. Researchers from Western Kentucky University recruited students for a study using an advertisement similar to the one used in the Stanford Prison Experiment, with and without the words "prison life". It was found that students volunteering for a prison life study possessed
dispositionA disposition is a habit, a preparation, a state of readiness, or a tendency to act in a specified way.The terms dispositional belief and occurrent belief refer, in the former case, to a belief that is held in the mind but not currently being considered, and in the latter case, to a belief that is...
s toward abusive behavior.
Finally, the word "experiment" is generally reserved for studies designed with random assignment and manipulation of variables. As the study did not clearly manipulate or measure variables, it did not meet the criteria for an experiment.
Comparisons to Abu Ghraib
When the
Abu Ghraib military prisoner torture and abuse scandalBeginning in 2004, human rights violations in the form of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, rape, sodomy, and homicide of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to public attention...
was publicized in March 2004, many observers immediately were struck by its similarities to the Stanford Prison experiment—among them,
Philip ZimbardoPhilip George Zimbardo is an American psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is president of the Heroic Imagination Project...
, who paid close attention to the details of the story. He was dismayed by official military and government efforts shifting the blame for the torture and abuses in the
Abu GhraibThe Baghdad Central Prison, formerly known as Abu Ghraib prison is in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city 32 km west of Baghdad. It was built by British contractors in the 1950s....
American military prison on to "a few bad apples" rather than acknowledging it as possibly systemic problems of a formally established military incarceration system.
Eventually, Zimbardo became involved with the defense team of lawyers representing Abu Ghraib prison guard Staff Sergeant
Ivan "Chip" FrederickIvan Frederick II , called Chip Frederick, of Buckingham County, Virginia, is a former Staff Sergeant in the United States Army. He was the highest in rank of the seven U.S. military police personnel who have been charged with torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, all of whom were...
. He had full access to all investigation and background reports, testifying as an
expert witnessAn expert witness, professional witness or judicial expert is a witness, who by virtue of education, training, skill, or experience, is believed to have expertise and specialised knowledge in a particular subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may officially and legally...
in SSG Frederick's court martial, which resulted in an eight-year prison sentence for Frederick in October 2004.
Zimbardo drew on the knowledge he gained from participating in the Frederick case to write the book
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, which Random House published in 2007, dealing with the striking similarities between the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Abu Ghraib abuses.
BBC prison study
Alex HaslamS. Alexander Haslam is a Professor of Social Psychology in the School of Psychology at the University of Exeter. He was born in Horsforth , and educated at Felsted School....
and
Steve ReicherStephen D Reicher is Professor of Social Psychology and former Head of the School of Psychology at the University of St Andrews....
, psychologists from the
University of ExeterThe University of Exeter is a public university in South West England. It belongs to the 1994 Group, an association of 19 of the United Kingdom's smaller research-intensive universities....
and
University of St AndrewsThe University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...
, conducted the BBC Prison Study in 2002. This was a partial replication of the SPE conducted with the assistance of the
BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, who broadcast events in the study in a documentary series called
The ExperimentThe Experiment was a documentary series broadcast on BBC television in 2002. It presented the findings of what subsequently became known as The BBC Prison Study -Background:...
. Their results and conclusions differed from Zimbardo's and led to a number of publications on tyranny,
stressStress is a term in psychology and biology, borrowed from physics and engineering and first used in the biological context in the 1930s, which has in more recent decades become commonly used in popular parlance...
and leadership. Moreover, unlike results from the SPE, these were published in leading academic journals such as
British Journal of Social Psychology,
Journal of Applied Psychology, and
Social Psychology Quarterly. The BBC Prison Study is now taught as a core study on the UK A-level Psychology OCR syllabus.
While Haslam and Reicher's procedure was not a direct replication of Zimbardo's, their study does cast further doubt on the generality of his conclusions. Specifically, it questions the notion that people slip mindlessly into role and the idea that the dynamics of evil are in any way banal. Their research also points to the importance of leadership in the emergence of tyranny of the form displayed by Zimbardo when briefing guards in the Stanford experiment.
Experiments in the United States
The Third WaveThe Third Wave was an experiment to demonstrate that even democratic societies are not immune to the appeal of fascism. It was undertaken by history teacher Ron Jones with sophomore high school students attending his "Contemporary World" history class as part of a study of Nazi Germany...
was a 1967 recreation of Nazi Party dynamics by high school teacher
Ron JonesRon Jones is an American writer, and teacher in Palo Alto, California, and San Francisco, California. He started The Third Wave...
in
Palo AltoPalo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...
,
CaliforniaCalifornia is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. Although the veracity of Jones' accounts has been questioned by some, several participants in the study have gone on record to confirm the events.
In April 2007, it was reported that
high schoolHigh school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
students in
WaxahachieWaxahachie is a city in Ellis County, Texas, United States, and a southern suburb of Dallas. The population was 21,426 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Ellis County....
,
TexasTexas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, who were participating in a role-playing exercise fell into a similar abusive pattern of behavior as exhibited in the original Stanford experiment.
In multimedia
- In 1992, Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment, a documentary
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
about the experiment, was made available via the Stanford Prison Experiment website. The documentary was written by Zimbardo and directed and produced by Ken Musen.
- In 1977, Italian director Carlo Tuzii adapted the story of the experiment to an Italian environment, and Italian students and made a film out of his adaptation, called La Gabbia, or The Cage.
- The novel Black Box, written by Mario Giordano
- Life :Giordano studied psychology and philosophy at the German University of Düsseldorf. Today Giordano lives in Cologne. He writes novels, short stories, child and youth books, film scripts and radio plays...
and inspired by the experiment, was adapted for the screen in 2001 by German director Oliver HirschbiegelOliver Hirschbiegel is a German film director. His works include Das Experiment and the Oscar nominated Der Untergang.- Career :...
as Das ExperimentDas Experiment is a 2001 German film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, about a social experiment, based on Mario Giordano's novel Black Box, which resembles Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment of 1971.-Plot:...
.
- In 2001 the German film Das Experiment
Das Experiment is a 2001 German film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, about a social experiment, based on Mario Giordano's novel Black Box, which resembles Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment of 1971.-Plot:...
was released, telling the fictional story of an experiment of the same construction in Germany.
- In 2010, Inferno Distribution released film The Experiment, which is a remake of the 2001 film.
- In a October 2008 episode of the NBC television show Life, Detectives Crews and Reese investigated a murder that took place at a prison experiment loosely modeled on the Stanford Prison Experiment.
- In the third season of the television series Veronica Mars, the experiment is recreated as an activity for their psychology class. The experiment goes terribly wrong, very similar to that of the Stanford Prison Experiment.
See also
- Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
Beginning in 2004, human rights violations in the form of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, rape, sodomy, and homicide of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to public attention...
- Banality of Evil
Banality of evil is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt and incorporated in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. It describes the thesis that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or...
- Eichmann in Jerusalem
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is a book written by political theorist Hannah Arendt, originally published in 1963...
- Peer pressure
Peer pressure refers to the influence exerted by a peer group in encouraging a person to change his or her attitudes, values, or behavior in order to conform to group norms. Social groups affected include membership groups, when the individual is "formally" a member , or a social clique...
- The Milgram experiment
The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of notable social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that...
on obedience to authority
- The Third Wave
The Third Wave was an experiment to demonstrate that even democratic societies are not immune to the appeal of fascism. It was undertaken by history teacher Ron Jones with sophomore high school students attending his "Contemporary World" history class as part of a study of Nazi Germany...
, an experiment to demonstrate the appeal of fascism
- Trier Social Stress Test
The Trier Social Stress test is a psychological procedure that allows experimenters to induce stress under laboratory conditions. What is unique about the procedure is that it also allows experimenters to compare people's stress levels, despite individual differences The Trier Social Stress test...
(TSST)
- Unethical human experimentation in the United States
External links
Abu Ghraib and the experiment: