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Iraqi Prisoner – Abu Ghraib American torture of POW’s

Conformity to social roles Zimbardo The Stanford prison experiment

The Stanford Prison Study – Zimbardo et al (1974) After reports of brutality by guards in prisons across America in the late 1960s Zimbardo wanted to answer the question- do prison guards behave brutally because they have sadistic personalities, or is it the situation that creates the behavior? Aim:To see whether people will conform to new social roles.

Background This study was funded by the US Navy. The US Navy & the US Marine Corps were interested in investigating the causes of conflict between guards and prisoners in naval prisons.

Method The study is usually described as an experiment IV: The conditions the participants were randomly assigned: prisoner or guard DV: The resulting behavior

The Prison A simulated prison was built in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford University.

The Prison Consulted with a former prisoner Intercom system installed No clocks or windows Consulted former prisoner who was imprisoned for 17years; he in turn introduced the researches to other ex-convicts and correctional personnel Corridor boarded up to represent “the yard” (the only place the prisoners could go “outside”); prisoners would be blindfolded while being brought to the bathroom so that they would not escape/find a route to escape Took out doors and put up steel bars and cell numbers Built solitary confinement Intercom system allowed guards to make public announcements and also allowed researches to “bug” the cells

Method The study can also be described as a simulation as it was attempting to create a prison like environment

Participants Respondents to a newspaper ad: “Male college students needed for psychological study of prison life. $15 per day for 1-2 weeks”

Participants Family background Physical & mental health 75 people responded They completed a questionnaire: Family background Physical & mental health Any involvement in crime Prior experiences & attitudinal tendencies in respect to psychopathology

Participants 22 men judged to be the most physically & mentally stable, the most mature, & the least involved in antisocial behaviors were chosen to participate White Middle class Male Healthy

Participants They were randomly assigned to the role of ‘prisoner’ or ‘guard’ Those assigned prisoner were informed by telephone to be available at their homes on a particular Sunday when the experiment would begin.

Uniforms To help with role identification Guards: Khaki shirts and pants, batons, reflective sunglasses

Arrests Police cars arrived and the subjects were arrested Subjects were fingerprinted & blindfolded

Humiliation Searched Stripped naked Deloused

Uniforms To help with role identification Prisoners: Loose fitting smocks (dresses) with id numbers, no underwear, a lock and chain around one ankle, stocking caps to cover their hair

The Stanford Prison Study – Zimbardo et al (1974) Procedure The prisoners were to spend two weeks locked in 'cells' in a wing of the university. The prison guards were there to look after the prisoners and to keep them under control but they were not allowed to use physical force. The prisoners were arrested at home (unexpectedly) and taken to the university. They were stripped, deloused and given a prison uniform and prisoner number. From now on they were referred to by number only, not by name. They were to spend 23 hours a day locked in their cells for two weeks. The prisoners wore a smock and stocking over their head and had no underwear The prison guards were given uniforms, including sticks and mirrored sunglasses. They worked shifts and went home at the end of their shift.

The Stanford Prison Study – Zimbardo et al (1974) Results: The experiment was called off after only 6 days. The guards had become so brutal to the prisoners that two prisoners had some form of nervous breakdown, one developed a nervous rash all over his body and one went on hunger strike!! While the guards were giving their orders, the prisoners became apathetic. They did not stand up to the guards and simply did as they were told, even though it caused them distress.

Zimbardo video clip

The Stanford Prison Study – Zimbardo et al (1974) Conclusion: One explanation for why the participants’ reactions were so extreme in this study could be that they conformed to social roles. A role is a part you play during your life. Each role requires different behaviour. If you are given a new role, e.g. when you start a new job, you change your behaviour to suit. In Zimbardo's study, the students were given new roles - prisoner or guard - and simply conformed to the behaviour of these roles.

The Stanford Prison Study – Zimbardo et al (1974) Conclusion continued : Deindividuation may also help to explain the behaviour of the participants; especially the guards. This is a state when you become so immersed in the norms of the group that you lose your sense of identity and personal responsibility. The guards may have been so sadistic because they did not feel what happened was down to them personally – it was a group norm.

Evaluation

Evaluation of the Stanford prison study – Zimbardo et al Strengths A main strength of the study was the way it managed to maintain some degree of control and some ecological validity. The situation was very tightly controlled e.g. guards and prisoners were randomly allocated and were selected using a stringent criterion. The study still had ecological validity because Zimbardo went to great extremes in making the study as true to life as possible, for example in the way that he had the prisoners arrested from their homes. A further strength was in the way that Zimbardo collected data. He used a number of qualitative approaches such as observation (sometimes overt and sometimes covert) interviews and questionnaires

Evaluation of the Stanford prison study – Zimbardo et al Limitations The study can also be criticised for its unrepresentative sample. Since the experiment was conducted using 24 normal, healthy, male college students who were predominantly middle class and white (one was described as oriental), we have to be careful generalising the results to other people. Importantly the study has been criticised for lacking ecological validity. For practical and ethical reasons the simulated prison could not be totally realistic. Many particularly unpleasant aspects of prison life were absent, such as, racism, beatings and threats to life. Also, the maximum anticipated sentence was just two weeks. It is therefore possible that the study does not serve as a meaningful comparison to real prison environments.

Of course, the main criticism of the Stanford prison study is on ethical grounds, but Zimbardo defends the research in a number of ways:

Ethics Approval for the study was given from the Office of Naval Research, the Psychology Department and the University Committee of Human Experimentation. This Committee also did not anticipate the prisoners’ extreme reactions that were to follow. The only deception involved was to do with the arrest of the prisoners at the beginning of the experiment. The prisoners were not told partly because final approval from the police wasn’t given until minutes before the participants decided to participate, and partly because the researchers wanted the arrests to come as a surprise. However this was a breach of the ethics of Zimbardo’s own contract that all of the participants had signed.

Ethics When Zimbardo realised just how much the prisoners disliked the experience, which was unexpected, the experiment was abandoned. Alternative methodologies were looked at which would cause less distress to the participants but at the same time give the desired information, but nothing suitable could be found.

Ethics Extensive group and individual debriefing sessions were held and all participants returned post-experimental questionnaires several weeks, then several months later, then at yearly intervals Zimbardo also strongly argues that the benefits gained about our understanding of human behaviour and how we can improve society should out balance the distress caused by the study. However it has been suggested that the US Navy was not so much interested in making prisons more human and were in fact more interested in using the study to train people in the armed services to cope with the stresses of captivity.

Complete strengths and weaknesses.

Homework If avaliable Watch BBC prison experiment