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Stanford prison experiment

The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was a psychological experiment conducted in August 1971. It was a two-week simulation of a prison environment that examined the effects of situational variables on participants' reactions and behaviors. Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo led the research team who administered the study.[1]

This article is about the psychology experiment. For the American punk rock band, see Stanford Prison Experiment (band). For the film, see The Stanford Prison Experiment (film).

Date

August 14–21, 1971 (1971-08-14 – 1971-08-21)

Single corridor in the basement of Stanford University's psychology building

SPE

Psychology experiment

Participants were recruited from the local community with an ad in the newspapers offering $15 per day ($113 in 2023) to male students who wanted to participate in a "psychological study of prison life". Volunteers were chosen after assessments of psychological stability and then randomly assigned to being prisoners or prison guards.[2] Critics have questioned the validity of these methods.[3]


Those volunteers selected to be "guards" were given uniforms specifically to de-individuate them, and they were instructed to prevent prisoners from escaping. The experiment officially started when "prisoners" were arrested by real Palo Alto police. Over the following five days, psychological abuse of the prisoners by the "guards" became increasingly brutal. After psychologist Christina Maslach visited to evaluate the conditions, she was upset to see how study participants were behaving and she confronted Zimbardo. He ended the experiment on the sixth day.[4]


SPE has been referenced and critiqued as an example of an unethical psychology experiment, and the harm inflicted on the participants in this and other experiments in the post-World War II era prompted American universities to improve their ethical requirements and institutional review for human subject experiments in order to prevent them from being similarly harmed. Other researchers have found it difficult to reproduce the study, especially given those constraints.[5]


Critics have described the study as unscientific and fraudulent.[6][7] In particular, Thibault Le Texier has established that the guards were directly asked to behave in certain ways in order to support Zimbardo's conclusions, which were largely written in advance of the experiment. However, Le Texier's article has been criticized by Zimbardo for focusing mostly on ad hominem attacks and ignoring available data that contradicts his counterarguments.

Publishing[edit]

Prior to publishing in American Psychologist and other peer-reviewed journals, the researchers reported the findings in Naval Research Reviews,[12] International Journal of Criminology and Penology (IJCP),[13] and the New York Times Magazine.[14] David Amodio, psychology instructor at both New York University and the University of Amsterdam, dismissed Zimbardo's study, stating that releasing the article to an "obscure journal" demonstrated that Zimbardo was unable to convince fellow psychologists of the validity and reliability of his study. This action taken by Zimbardo broke the tradition of scientific dissemination by publishing in other journals before publishing in a scientific peer-reviewed journal.[15]


Zimbardo has stated that the grant agreement with the Office of Naval Research included a requirement to publish data in their journal, Naval Research Reviews. He states that the International Journal of Criminology and Penology invited Zimbardo to write about his study in their journal, and he then wrote an article with the New York Times Magazine to share the findings with a broad audience. He states that the article still needed to pass through the very strict requirements of the American Psychologist, the official journal of the American Psychological Association, in order to be published. After publishing the article in the American Psychologist, the findings were also reported in other peer-reviewed journals and books.[16]

Events[edit]

Saturday, August 14: Set up[edit]

The small mock prison cells were set up, and the participants who had been assigned a guard role attended an orientation where they were briefed and given uniforms.[18]

Similar studies[edit]

In 1967, The Third Wave experiment involved the use of authoritarian dynamics similar to Nazi Party methods of mass control in a classroom setting by high school teacher Ron Jones in Palo Alto, California with the goal of vividly demonstrating to the class how the German public in World War II could have acted in the way it did.[60] Although the veracity of Jones' accounts has been questioned, several participants in the study have gone on record to confirm the events.[61]


In both experiments, participants found it difficult to leave the study due to the roles they were assigned. Both studies examine human nature and the effects of authority. Personalities of the subjects had little influence on both experiments despite the test before the prison experiment.[62]


Both the Milgram and Zimbardo studies clearly show that participants conform to social pressures. Conformity is strengthened by allowing some participants to feel more or less powerful than others.[63] In both experiments, the people's behavior are altered to match the group stereotypes and shows that we conform to others passively, even if the subject at hand is malevolent. It is clear that people's desire to be a good subject is much more prevalent than to be a subject that does good.


A 2007 study on prison-life examined the potential relationship between participant self-selection and the disposition toward aggressive behaviors. They found that when responding to an advertisement, participants "were significantly higher on measures of aggressiveness, authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and social dominance than those who responded to a parallel ad that omitted the words 'of prison life,' and they were significantly lower in dispositional empathy and altruism".[64]

Haney, C.; Banks, W. C.; Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). "A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison". Naval Research Review. 30: 4–17.

Haslam, S. A.; Reicher, S. D. (2003). "Beyond Stanford: questioning a role-based explanation of tyranny". Dialogue (Bulletin of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology). 18: 22–25.

Haslam, S. A.; Reicher, S. D. (2006). "Stressing the group: social identity and the unfolding dynamics of responses to stress". . 91 (5): 1037–1052. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.91.5.1037. PMID 16953766. S2CID 14058651.

Journal of Applied Psychology

Haslam, S. A.; Reicher, S. D. (2012). "When prisoners take over the prison: A social psychology of resistance". . 16 (2): 154–179. doi:10.1177/1088868311419864. PMID 21885855. S2CID 30021002.

Personality and Social Psychology Review

Musen, K. & Zimbardo, P. G. (1991). Quiet rage: The Stanford prison study. Video recording. Stanford, CA: Psychology Dept., Stanford University.

Reicher; Haslam, S. A. (2006). "Rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC Prison Study". . 45 (Pt 1): 1–40. doi:10.1348/014466605X48998. PMID 16573869.

British Journal of Social Psychology

Zimbardo, P. G. (1971). "The power and pathology of imprisonment", (Serial No. 15, 1971-10-25). Hearings before Subcommittee No. 3, of the United States House Committee on the Judiciary, Ninety-Second Congress, First Session on Corrections, Part II, Prisons, Prison Reform and Prisoner's Rights: California. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.

Congressional Record

Zimbardo, P. G. (2007). "." Interview transcript. Democracy Now!, March 30, 2007. Accessed January 17, 2015.

Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

Fernandez, Ismael; Triola, V. V. (2021). . Medium.

"Analysis of 'A Study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison'"

Haslam, A.; Reicher, S. (2008). . Bbcprisonstudy.org. The BBC Prison Study.

"Science and society: How has Zimbardo responded to our work?"

Zimbardo, P. G. (2004). . purl.stanford.edu. Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford Digital Repository.

"Quiet Rage"

– Vox article detailing how the study is a sham

[1]

a website with info on the experiment and its impact

Stanford Prison Experiment

Interviews with guards, prisoners, and researchers in July/August 2011 Stanford Magazine

Zimbardo, P. (2007). Archived December 10, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. In-Mind Magazine.

From Heavens to Hells to Heroes

The official website of the BBC Prison Study

"", The Stanford Daily (April 28, 2005), p. 4  – Criticism by Carlo Prescott, ex-con and consultant/assistant for the experiment

The Lie of the Stanford Prison Experiment

BBC news article – 40 years on, with video of Philip Zimbardo

Philip G. Zimbardo Papers (Stanford University Archives)

at cbsnews.com

Photographs

Abu Ghraib and the experiment: