Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Stanford Prison Experiment

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

In the summer of 1971, Stanford professor of psychology Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment to determine if cruelty amongst people of authority was because of the position or the people.  Twenty-four men were selected and randomly assigned roles of guard or prisoner.  The results were shocking and are still being debated over 50 years later.  Learn more about the Stanford Prison Experiment, one of the most controversial experiments ever conducted, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Darcy Adams Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Everything Everywhere is an Airwave Media podcast." or "Everything Everywhere is part of the Airwave Media podcast network Please contact [e-mail] to advertise on Everything Everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the summer of 1971, Stanford Professor of Psychology Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment to determine if cruelty amongst people of authority was because of the position or because of the people. 24 men were selected and randomly assigned roles of guard or prisoner. The results of the experiment were shocking and are still being debated over 50 years later. Learn more about the Stanford Prison Experiment, one of the most controversial experiments ever conducted on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. A major question that psychologists have had is how it's possible for some people to act so cruelly when they're given to. positions of authority. There have been countless examples of humans who otherwise were relatively normal, who acted with an absolute lack of humanity when placed in a role with authority over others. A good example would be the guards who worked at concentration camps in Nazi Germany.

Those people engaged in unspeakable acts that they probably would never have engaged in otherwise. A more recent example would be the guards at the Abu Ghra prison, who tortured and humiliated the people that they were assigned to guard. There have been many other cases of teachers, police officers, guards, and others who have abused their positions of authority to behave cruelly where they might otherwise never have. The big question was if the people attracted to these positions were cruel to begin with, or does the nature of the position make them cruel? One psychologist wanted to conduct an experiment to see what the answer was. Philip Zimbardo was a professor of psychology at Stanford University in the early 70s. His idea was to create a mock prison in the basement of the

Stanford Psychology Department Building. He would recruit volunteers to take part in the experiment, and they would be randomly assigned the role of guard or prisoner. The plan was to run the prison for two weeks to see how the assigned roles determine the behavior of the volunteers. Zimbardo placed a classified ad in a Palo Alto newspaper that read, quote, male college students needed for psychological study of prison life, $15 per day for one to two weeks, beginning on August 14th. For further information and applications, come to room 2,40, Jordan Hall, Stanford University. End quote. They received 75 inquiries and then narrowed the pool down to 24 men. They excluded those with a criminal record or psychological or physical problems. Half of the group were assigned to be guards and half were assigned to be prisoners.

Nine in each group were selected and three in each group were to be alternates. The prison cells were six feet by nine feet or 1.8 meters by 2.7 meters and each of them held three prisoners. The cells contained a copy. for sleeping as well as sheets. The guards were assigned wooden clubs, uniforms, and reflective sunglasses. They also had access to a special area in the basement that the prisoners couldn't access. Perhaps most importantly, they had a special orientation meeting the day before it started, where they were told that they couldn't injure the prisoners nor withhold food or drink. More on this meeting in a bit. The experiment began with the help of the Palo Alto Police Department. they went to the homes of all the men assigned to be prisoners and mock arrested them. The participants did not know that this was going to happen.

The prisoners were all taken to the local police station, where they were fingerprinted, mugshots were taken, and they were strip searched. They were then assigned prison clothing with a number and taken to the mock jail on the Stanford campus in a police car with the sirens wailing. At all times during the experiment, the prisoners were to only be referred to by their number and not their names as to dehumanize them. The first day, August 15th, went without incident. However, the prisoners were already staging a rebellion as soon as 2 a.m. on the 16th.

They didn't like how they were woken up and rebelled by refusing to eat, ripping the numbers off their clothes, and insulting the guards. The guards responded by using a fire extinguisher on the prisoners, putting them in solitary confinement and taking away their beds. By day three, guards began humiliating the prisoners and forced them to use a bucket in their cells to go to the bathroom, and then wouldn't let them empty the bucket. On day four, the guards began dividing the prisoners to get them to work against each other, giving some rewards and others' punishments. Day five was scheduled to be the day where prisoners could be visited. The guards

made the visitors wait far longer than necessary just to be difficult. Several members of the Stanford Psychology Department visited and expressed concerns about the ethics of the experiment. Almost everything had been recorded, and there was video footage of the guards making the prisoners wear bags on their heads. On day of the guards, Day 6, given the concerns of his colleagues and the parents of the prisoners, as well as the increasingly cruel behavior of the guards, Zimbardo ended the experiment a week early. Two of the prisoners had withdrawn from the test before it had ended. They held a debriefing with everyone, paid them their money for the full 14 days, and everyone

is invited back a week later to get their thoughts on the experiment. The Stanford Prison Experiment went on to become probably the most famous psychological experiment in history, and it's been the subject of many papers and books. and it's also taught in most introductory courses on psychology. According to Zimbardo, the experiment showed that people would conform to their assigned roles. The guards became crueler, and the prisoners became more passive and acquiescent. The conclusion fit with past experiments, which showed a similar pattern of behavior. One previous experiment, known as the Milgram experiment, asked people to shock a subject that they could hear but not see with increasing levels of electricity,

and the Milgram experiment will be the subject of a future. episode. These conclusions of the experiment are the standard explanation that's been given for about the last 50 years. However, since the experiment was run, and even in the middle of it, other psychologists have had problems with the experiment and its conclusions. For starters, one of the biggest objections was the ethics of the experiment. The men assigned as prisoners had no idea what they would be subjected to. The prisoners were told that they could leave at any time, but that wasn't the case. The The experiment continued even after some prisoners expressed a desire to leave. Beyond just the ethics, however, there were many problems with the experiment itself.

For starters, it wasn't really an experiment. There were no variables that were being controlled. There wasn't another group running a similar experiment that was holding a variable constant. Another problem is the fact that it wasn't really a prison. The guards and the prisoners knew that this was just an experiment, and it would end relatively soon, and they would be paid for their participation. No one would really get hurt, and there was no real danger. There is something known as the Hawthorne effect,

which says that people will change their behavior when they know that they're being watched. Almost all of the interactions in the mock prison were recorded on either audio or video. Years later, when interviewed about the experiment, both the guard and prisoner participants admitted that they were just acting out what they thought the experimenters wanted to see. One of the guards later said, quote, I believed I was doing what the researchers wanted me to do. One of the prisoners who had a meltdown and was released early, Douglas Corpie, later admitted he thought he'd be able to study for an exam while in the prison.

When he found out that he couldn't, he threw a fit to get released so he could go home and study. He said, quote, if you listen to the tape, it's not subtle. I'm not that good at acting. I mean, I think I do a fairly good job, but I'm more hysterical than psychotic, end quote. Douglas Corpie is today a forensic psychologist. There was one guard who was considered the cruelest. He was nicknamed John Wayne because he had a Southern accent. His real name was Dave Eschelman. Eschelman had studied acting and didn't actually have a Southern accent. He later said, quote, I took it as kind of an improv exercise. I believe that I was doing what the researchers wanted me to do, and I thought I'd do it better than anyone

else by creating this despicable guard persona. I'd never been to the South, but I used a Southern accent, which I got from Cool Hand Luke. End quote. Perhaps most damning of all was research done by a French filmmaker by the name of Thiebo Le Texier. He went back and actually listened to the original tape recordings of the experiment, which were still in the Stanford University Archives. What the guards were told to do in their orientation meeting was vastly different

from what Zimbardo had told everyone for years. He told the guards, quote, we cannot physically abuse or torture them, but we can create boredom, we can create a sense of frustration, We can create fear in them to some degree. We have total power in the situation. They have none. End quote. So they were not just told to keep order.

In fact, Zimbardo went out of his way to tell Eschelman what a good job he was doing during the experiment. In the 50 years since the Stanford Prison Experiment took place, has anyone tried to replicate it? Well, yes, sort of. In 2002, the BBC created a four-part documentary series called The Experiment. They took 15 men and assigned them to guards and prisoners over an eight-day period. None of the cruelty which was seen in the Stanford Prison Experiment was observed. There was group identification between the guards and the prisoners, and there was a prison break on the six-day where the prisoners tried to create a commune, but nothing supported the Stanford experiment's conclusions.

So if the Stanford Prison Experiment was so badly run, why has it gotten all the attention it has? why are its conclusions still part of every introductory psychology course? Part of it has to do with the timing of the experiment. Within a month of the experiment's conclusion, two major prison uprisings took place in San Quentin in California and Attica in New York. Prisons had become a top news story, and this was something that confirmed what many people wanted to believe. Zimbardo was flown to Washington, D.C. to testify before Congress about the conclusions of his study.

As with most scientific studies reported in the news, only the conclusions are usually reported, and no one bothers to actually investigate the study itself. It took decades before anyone took a deep dive into the archives of the Stanford Prison Experiment to find out what actually happened. And this isn't just a problem with one experiment. There have been a huge number of psychology experiments, many of which are the bedrock of the discipline that can't be replicated. This has been dubbed the replication crisis. It also impacts other scientific disciplines, but it has hit psychology the hardest. So, the most famous psychological experiment of all time is almost certainly wrong. Or at least it's so flawed that it can't be used to prove its conclusions.

It means that in the future, a lot of introduction to psychology textbooks are going to have to be rewritten. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Matt B. over at Podcast Republic. He writes, Always interesting and informative. First podcast I listen to every day.

I've been a member of the Completionist Club for over a year. Bears fans seem to have a rivalry with Gary, so I'll end this review with Skoll Vikings. Thanks, Matt. True story. I once attended a Packers Bears game at the Metrodome with one of my friends who's a Vikings fan. We happen to be sitting a few rows below the luxury box of the then Vikings owner, Red McCombs. He had the window of his box open to watch the game.

A woman, several rows below, kept trying to get his attention to get him to sign her Vikings jersey, but he ignored her the whole game. Eventually, I told her, Lady, if you really want an NFL owner to sign your shirt, I'd be happy to do it for you. Also, how can you tell a Packer fan from a Viking fan? Answer, the Viking fan is the one without any rings. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you two can have it read on the show.