Intro

It’s the summer of 1971 and several college students are being arrested at their homes by Palo Alto California police and charged" with armed robbery, and burglary, Penal Codes 211, and 459. Although none of these men had previously committed a crime, college students getting arrested is not a unique thing. Slightly out of the ordinary the men had a good idea this would be happening and stranger still the whole event is being filmed. All of this although odd could feasibly happen, but the whole pantomime has a strangely fake feeling about it, maybe the alleged criminals are more hardened that their records would suggest. No passers by would know this but all of the men are being paid to be arrested, but not by some organized crime group but instead by a university. What is actually happening is the beginning of one of the most controversial and well known psychological studies. The experiment's orchestrator would have to end the study short as the participants would take things beyond what he expected. Today we are looking at the Stanford prison experiment. I'm going to rate this one at the end of the video. Let's see if you’ll agree?

Background

Philip George Zimbardo was born on 23 March 1933 in New York, New York s, United States. In his early years he suffered discrimination due to his itialian ancestry, and was often carelessly mistaken for a multitude of other races. The young Zimbardo, like many other people covered in this series, used this all too common human behavior as a spark for his interest in psychology. In the early 1950s he attended Brooklyn college graduating with a B.A. boasting 3 majors, in psychology, sociology and anthropology. The next year he went on to earn a MA and by 1959 had also earned a PHD, both from Yale in psychology. Zimbardo Briefly stayed on at Yale to teach psychology from 1959 to 1960, whilst there he married Rose Abdelnour and had a son in 1962, but he left Yale when offered a job as a professor at new york university, where he would stay in the role until 1967. In 1967 he would move again to columbia university, which would be brief as he was offered a facility staff position at stanford university in 1968. Just 3 years later he was offered and accepted In 1971, a tenured position as a professor of psychology. The same year Zimbardo and Rose would deviorce, as a side note Rose was a very well accomplished academic in her own right, specialising in english literature.

Setting up The experiment

And this rather quickly brings us onto the experiment that would write zimbardo's name in history. Zimbardo was interested in how the US prison system had seemed to foster a pure hatred between prisoners and guards, was the explanation for this purely down to the nature of the people involved? For example, are the conditions bad because criminals are bad or because the administrators are likely to be harsh? In reality it is probably impossible to know and it feels like a chicken and egg situation, as if prisoners break the rules then the rules are made tougher leading to more prisoners breaking the rules. Naturally both sides of the bars would distrust one another, which can create a downward spiral. One thing that is true today as it was in the 1970s is such high recidivism rates, as rehabilitation is rare, purley by the nature of being a prisoner you become isolated from society. And this isn't unique to the US. We have very much the same situation here in the UK. But what if you can eliminate the deep rooted hatred between those in the cells and those with the keys. This is where Zimbardo comes in, as you can get rid of this hatred by using a randomly selected group of people who were neither guards or prisoners, by splitting these random people into the different roles, you've created the scene of a prison without the natural distrust between the administrators of the law and the breakers of the law. Zimbardo managed to secure financing for this experiment from the US Office of the Navy. The Navy wanted to understand antisocial behavior and by extension wanted to investigate conflict between military guards and prisoners. His experiment would involve university students playing the role of guards and prisoners, for a princely sum of $15 per day. Zimbardo would be the research team leader and would in 1997 in Stanford university news interview say: “I wondered, along with my research associates Craig Haney, Curtis Banks and Carlo Prescott, what would happen if we aggregated all of these processes, making some subjects feel deindividuated, others dehumanized within an anonymous environment in the same experimental setting, and where we could carefully document the process over time." To find his subjects Zimbardo put out this advert in the “help wanted" section of the Palo Alto Times, Male college students needed for psychological study of prison life. $15 per day for 1–2 weeks, beginning Aug. 14. For further information and applications, come to room 248 Jordan Hall, Stanford University. 75 men would answer the ad and after interviews and suitably screening which set out to exclude anyone with a criminal record, mental health condition or any other medical issues. 24 from this initial 75 would be selected; the group was predominantly white and middle-class and had no apparent health, aggression or legal issues in their life. In order to try and keep the results scientific each participant was randomly given one of two roles: prisoner or guard. In total 9 were in each group with 3 substitutes. The group labeled as prisoners were told that they would not experience physical abuse but would lose their civil liberties for between 1 and 2 weeks. Little else was given to them in terms of what would be expected of them, only that they would be contacted by telephone to be at their residence on a given Sunday for the experiment to begin. All signed a contract stating that medical care, housing, clothing and adequate food would be provided as well as the 15$ per day in payment for their time. The guards had a little more guidance before the experiment, as they would be issued uniforms and equipment on the day before commencement of the study. The equipment given to them consisted of a generic law enforcement inspired uniform, mirrored glasses to prevent the prisoners from making eye contact, as well as wooden batons. On the orientation day the guards were introduced to Zimbardo who would be acting as the superintendent, and an undergraduate research assistant who would play the role of the warden. They were told that their assigned task was to maintain a reasonable degree of order, to allow the prison to function properly, but weren't told how they could achieve this. They were also told to be prepared for any unexpected incident such as escape attempts, and that they would have to write a daily shift report, on guard and prisoner activities, as well as critical incident reports on any out of the ordinary event. During this time they were also told they would be responsible for the administration of meals, work and recreational activities of the prisoners. The guards believed that the experiment was solely to see how the prisoners would act, but actually Zimbardo's team was equally interested in their approach to the prison experience and as such they were given deliberately vague instructions on their conduct. And finally to help immerse the guards further, they assisted in the construction of the prison. Now the participants were chosen somewhere that had to be built for them to play out their new assigned roles. The university allowed Zimbardo's research team to use a part of the basement of the Stanford psychology department's Jordan hall. The 35ft long area seemed perfect for the role with little outside light and an essentially cut off from the outside world feel. There were 3 cells which were originally office rooms, that could accommodate 3 participants in each and measuring at 9x6 was pretty cramped. Each man had a cot with a pillow, blanket and mattress and that was it, no daylight and no clock, all of which were designed to make the prisoners lose track of time., and the subjects would be locked up here for nearly 24 hours a day. Each cell also had an intercom wire up so the experimenters could listen into conversations and to make public announcements. There was a closet that would be used as solitary confinement and measured in a coffin like 2x2x7 ft. The prison area, which was previously a corridor with the offices off of it, had 2 fabricated walls, one for the entrance and another for a small observation screen, the space between these walls and the prison cells was called the yard. To use the toilet prisoners were escorted blindfolded as to further disorientate them. The guards' accommodation was completely the opposite with areas to change clothes after their shifts, plenty of space to move around on down time and plenty of opportunities for rest and relaxation. And this brings us on to the beginning of the experiment, Sunday, August 15.

The experiment Begins

A Palo Alto Police car pulls up outside a residence, a young man is taken outside, searched, handcuffed, given their rights and put into the back of a vehicle, onlookers stop to see the unfolding drama, this same scene would play out for 8 more people. The 9 men are taken to the police station where they are fingerprinted, have their details taken down, have a police file opened on them and placed in a holding cell. Pretty much the standard for an alleged criminal, although after a short while, each of the men are blind folded and bundled into a car and driven to the stanford mock prison. Once arriving in the prison each prisoner was stripped, sprayed with deodorant which was standing in for delousing spray, and made to stand naked in the yard for some time before being given a prisoners uniform, from there they were photographed for a mugshot and given an identification number. After this the prisoner was shown to their cell and locked away in the process being told to remain silent. When everyone was on boarded to their new home for the next 2 weeks, the warden went to introduce themselves, and read each of the men the rules of the prison, which had been created by the guards earlier. The prison rules and their id number had to be memorized and would be asked 3 times a day during roll call once for each guard shift. The prisoners were only to be identified by their number, this was a further effort to de-personalise each inmate. Every day the prisoners were scheduled for work time to earn their 15$ per day and they were also allowed exercise and movie time. On top of this 2 visit periods were allowed per week. But these rules would be modified and degrade over the course of the study. Data during the study would be collected by zimbardo's team in a number of ways, Filming the whole study, audio recordings from hidden microphones, rating scales taken of both guards and prisoners, and before the whole experiment all participants undertook a series of paper and pencil personality tests. 1 Back to the first day Sunday 15th August, after their interaction with the warden and tasked with memorizing the rules the prisoners were left in their cells to settle in for the night. 12:30 But that night would not be a quiet one when the first count was to be undertaken.. 2 At 02:30 on the 16th of august the prisoners were rudely awakened by the guards, needless to say this wouldn’t go down well. The prisoners were at this point still trying to assert their independence and thus didn’t take the count seriously. Many of the Prisoners refused to leave their cells, ripped off their inmate number tags, took off their stocking caps and insulted the guards. The now unexpected rebellion spilled into the morning shift, by now the prisoners had barricaded the cells with their cots. The morning guards, frustrated with the rebellion in the early hours of the 2nd day, called up the reserve guards who were at home and insisted on the night personnel to stay on. In a surprising ramping up of violence the guards decided to use a fire extinguisher in the prison cells to quell the rebellion. Further still the guards removed all of the prisoners’ clothes, removed mattresses and sentenced the main instigators time in The Hole. The rebellion was quashed but clearly the guards had a problem. All 9 couldn’t be there all the time so how to effectively manage the inmates behavior, and one person suggested psychological methods. On the Monday night, in less than 36 hours after the experiment had begun, Zimbardo was forced to release one of the prisoners due to them showing signs of a mental breakdown. Before release the prisoner was treated with skepticism, and was offered a place as an informant in exchange of improved conditions, but he refused, and was thus released. One of the three cells was to be used as a privileged cell. The three prisoners least involved in the rebellion were given special treatment. They got their uniforms and their beds back, and were allowed to wash and brush their teeth. The other prisoners were not. On top of this they also were allowed to eat special food in front of the others, all of this was intended to break the solidarity of the prisoners. After half a day of this the 3 privileged prisoners were returned to the remaining inmate population. This also sowed doubt amongst the other prisoners as to whether the privileged 3 were informers. Prisoners were not allowed to use the toilet after lights out and instead provided a bucket to relieve themselves, which inturn was not allowed to be removed from the cell by the guards. 3 On day 3 the Tuesday, a visit was allowed from friends and family, in order to reduce the risk of complaints from the outside world, the prisoners were cleaned, shaved and fed, furthermore their cells were cleaned. To immerse the families in the experiment They had to register, were made to wait half an hour, and were told that only two visitors could see each prisoner. The total visiting time was cut to only ten minutes,and was undertaken under the surveillance of a guard. Before any family members could enter the visiting area, they had to discuss their son's case with the warden. Many of the prisoners complained about the rules, but were seeming to comply. Interestingly, the family members, rather than straight up complaining at their loved ones' tired and disheveled look, actually looked to improve the situation by appealing to the superintendent. One mother said "I'm sorry; I don't want to make any trouble, but he seems so tired." after zimbardo asked her what the problem was with her son. After visiting hours a rumour had started to spread that prisoner 8612, the one who was released on the monday, was actually only pretending he was suffering in the prison, and that he was going to return to do a mass breakout. Zimbardo's team bizarrely, now fully invested in the prison themselves, decided to place a new prisoner in the cell that 8612 had occupied, who was actually an informer. The study lead then went to the Palo Alto Police Department and asked if he could have all the prisoners transferred to their jail, this request was refused due to insurance issues. Even more strangely, Zimbardo then decided to dismantle the jail immediately after visitation, call in reinforcement guards, take all the prisoners, place a bag over their heads and escort them in an elevator, to a fifth floor storage room to be hidden away from any breakout attempt. Zimbardo was then to wait in the location of the now closed prison to confront any would-be liberator, to inform them that everyone had been sent home and the experiment was over, only to then resume after the coast was clear. The prison break never materialised, The rumor turned out to be just a rumor. Once the prison was restarted, the guards continued to act sadistically to the prisoners, by again refusing access to the toilet and forcing the men to do push ups for hours on end. Another interesting thing the guards were doing was increasing the time it would take to do a count, from just 10 minutes to several hours. 4 On day 4 wednesday the 18th zimbardo invited a catholic priest to the prison to assess the situation, the invited clergy member had previously been a chaplain at a washington dc corrections facility. He interviewed each of the prisoners individually, interestingly half the prisoners he spoke to, introduced themselves by giving their numbers rather than their name. The priest asked each man “what are you doing to get out of here? ", when confronted with confusion from the inmates the priest replied: “if they didn't help themselves, nobody else would, that they were college students; they were bright enough to realize that they were in prison and that the only way to get out of prison was with a lawyer.” This meeting crushed all little hope of the prisoners that this was an experiment. Prisoner 819 was the only one to refuse to speak to the chaplain, instead insisting for a doctor, eventually He was convinced to come out and talk to the priest and the superintendent so that he could be diagnosed what his problem was and what kind of medical practitioner he needed. 819 was escorted to a side room given food and had his leg chains removed, upon his removal, the prison guards made the remaining inmates chant 819 is a bad prisoner. This sent 819 into a hysterical fit of cryingWhen Zimbardo said that it was time to leave the experiment the prisoner replied, "No, I can't leave." 819 didn't want to leave but instead wanted to go back in to prove he was not bad, shocked, Zimbardo broke character of the superintendent, and reassured that the whole thing was an experiment. The guards had now started using bags over the prisoners heads as a routine form of punishment. After 819’s departure he was replaced by Prisoner #416, one of the study standbys. 5 The 5th day, Thursday the19th, marked another part of prison life, a parole hearing. 20:08 The prisoners were chained together and ushered into the parole board meeting with bags over their heads so that they could not see or talk. The parole board were formed of people none of the prisoners had seen before, and each man was asked the question, would you forfeit the money you have earned so far to be paroled, unsurprisingly every inmate said yes. The head of the board was Carlo Prescott, the experiments consultant and ex-convict, even he had embraced his assigned role. At the end of the parole board meeting each person was told to go back to their cell and the board would consider their request. Everyone of them did so docility, that it was clear their sense of reality was completely warped, even giving up the money, which was the sole reason for them being there in the first place. This would have been a perfect opportunity for the subjects to quit, but they by now were mindlessly following any order given to them. Zimbardo had now observed the guards form into 3 different types, Good guys who were sympathetic to the prisoners, tough but fair guards whose orders were always within the rules of prison operation, and finally the sadistic, who for any reason would punish and humiliate the inmates. By now the prisoners had become completely introverted and all bonds had broken within the cells. One final act of rebellion manifested itself in prisoner 416 whom had been the stand in brough in the day before. He went on a hunger strike, the guards tried to make him eat but to no avail, interestingly his co inmates turned against him, seeing this last stand as an act of trouble making. The guards after attempting to force feed the inmate even roped the other prisoners into forcing him, as part of the psychological warfare everyone in the cells was threatened with punishment unless 416 would eat. Visits from loved ones planned for the evening was taken off the table, and this was moment the inmates completely turned on 416 screaming at him, cursing him, telling him he had to eat, even saying that they weren't going to be inconvenienced by his stupid act of defiance. 416 was bundled into solitary confinement for 3 hours, even though the agreed maximum time was 1 hour. The head guard on that shift unluckily for 416 was the most sadistic nicknamed john wayne, he gave the prisoners a choice, 416 out of solitary in exchange for their blankets or they could keep them and 416 would stay locked up all night. The prisoners opted to keep their blankets. During visiting time that evening a number of the inmates' parents requested Zimbardo contact a lawyer in order to get their son out of prison. A lawyer was called up and attended for interviews of each of the prisoners. The prison had completely devolved into the harshest guards realm with the good guards not challenging immoral acts and even enabling them. The evenings were worse for arbitrary punishment, when the guards thought the experimenters weren't watching.

Enter Christina Maslach

Enter Christina Maslach, a recent PHD student and Early in her professional career, visited the prison, she was very well known to zimbardo, and a year later would marry him. She was shocked to discover the horrendous conditions of the experiment, and appealed to Zimbardo, stating his lack of caring oversight, and the immorality of the study. Additionally, she pointed out that Zimbardo had been changed by his role as Superintendent in the experiment into someone she did not like. This in addition to the obvious signs of deterioration of the mental well being of the prisoners, led to the beginning of the end of the stanford prison experiment.

The last day

6 On the 6th day Friday, August 20, the study was cancelled over a week earlier than intended, the final day involved debriefing of both study groups. The Encounter groups as zimbardo called them were undertaken First with all the guards, then with all the prisoners including those who had been released and had been invited to corne back, and then finally a meeting for all the guards and prisoners and staff together. This allowed all the participants time to get their feelings out in the open, and to start a kind of moral reconciliation between all involved. Questionnaires similar to the ones filled out at the start of the study were given to each participant to be filled out and posted to zimbaro’s team. Even though the experiment ended early the full amount for the 14 days was paid to each participant, $210 roughly $1400 in 2021 money. Finally, all participants were invited to return to the university a week later to share their opinions and emotions. And thus the experiment was over. But what of the results, well zimbardo interpreted the results that it wasn’t the individual personalities of the participants but the prison itself that shaped the outcome. Afterall Zimbardo had taken in every other way normal people at random and merely applied different roles, be it prisoner or guard. The two groups even had the same goal for entering the study and that was to get some extra money for 2 weeks of apparently on the outset easy work. Zimbardo took the experiment as an example of situational attribution where the environment shapes the person's actions, he compared the prison experiment to that of Stanley Milgram's study 10 years earlier. Where the perceived authority of a scientist resulted in study participants administering potentially deadly electric shocks to another person. Although personality was thought not to be the reason for the way the prison experiment played out, Zimbardo did concede that the individual did affect certain outcomes, such as the individual level of rebelliousness of the prisoners and the level of cruelty shown by the guards.

Criticism

The experiment almost immediately invited criticism for the ethical way it was conducted, exposing the prisoners to a high risk of psychological injury. And tying the experiment to another controversial experiment, unsurprisingly didn't help. The apparent chaos in which the experiment devolved into meant that Zimbardo's team's conclusions were pretty anecdotal and relied on the experimenter's subjective understanding of the individual's behavior. The guards were actively encouraged to "participate" more and be more "tough" for the benefit of the experiment by David Jaffe who was acting as the warden. Subsequent attempts to recreate the results failed. Another criticism comes from Zimbardo taking on the role as superintendent himself, which gave him the excuse of himself being influenced by the situation of the prison. HIs role allowed him to directly influence the outcome of the experiment, and through a thing called demand characteristics, subconsciously influenced the participants to subconsciously act out the stereotypes of the roles they were assigned. Furthermore the advert for participants asked for volunteers for a prison experiment and thus opens Zimbardo to the criticism of selection bias on the part of the volunteers. The bbc recreated the experiment loosely in 2002 for a tv series called rather blandly the experiment. The results of this study failed to replicate zimbardo's conclusions, when the guards did not naturally fall into the role of a tyrannical prison hells cape, and interestingly the prisoners held on to their sense of independence resulting in comradery within the inmates. There was even a late experiment breakout attempt. But funnily enough this experiment was too finished early due to guards and prisoners wanting to start a new much harsher Stanford style regime. Zimbardo is still alive today and since the Stanford prison experiment has released multiple papers and books. Including introductory psychology textbooks for college students, and other notable works, including The Lucifer Effect, The Time Paradox, and The Time Cure. Reportedly none of the subjects had any adverse effects due to the experiment apart from the time actually spent at the Stanford county jail.

My rating

Now where would you rate this subject of my ethical scale 1 being all ok and 9 being pure evil,I’m going to rate the Stanford prison experiment a 6. This is mainly due to the questionable results and uncomfortable living conditions of the prisoners, even though there were apparently no long term effects on its subjects. This video is a Plainly Difficult production. All videos on the channel are creative commons Attribution-ShareAlike. Plainly difficult videos are produced by me John, in a sunny Southeastern corner of london, uk. Help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing! Check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odd and sods, as well as hints on future videos! I've got patreon and youtube membership as well so if you fancy check them out! All that's left to say is thank you for watching! https://web.stanford.edu/dept/spec_coll/uarch/exhibits/spe/Narration.pdf http://pdf.prisonexp.org/ijcp1973.pdf http://pdf.prisonexp.org/ijcp1973.pdf