02 Oct. 2016. The Experiment

     When the participants arrived at the prison and were given a basic rundown of the situation, the experiment began. The prisoners were first given a set of  "prison rules"  (Breil) that was composed from the ideas of the warden and guards. The first day into the study, participants settled into their assigned roles and no significant altercation had occurred. The second day of the study, despite the relatively smooth first day, was when the experiment started to get interesting. Prisoners in one of the cell blocks had blockaded the door of the cell and refused to listen to the guards. Guards had used a fire extinguished to help control the situation, without knowledge of the experimenters. Those least involved with the rebellion were given special privileges, which lead to dissent among the prisoners. After the incident, the guards had decided to start using psychological tactics to assert authority and control over the prisoners. (Zimbardo)

     The guards used a variety of psychological tactics that lead to prisoners to express much distress. "Although it was clear to all subjects that experimenters would not permit physical violence to take place, varieties of less direct aggressive behavior were observed frequently (especially on the part of the guards)."  (Zimbardo, 80-81). The guards made prisoners do many push ups if they had made any errors, which Nazi's had also done to punish those within internment camps. They would take away mattresses, leaving only concrete for the prisoners to sleep on. As a form of degrading the prisoners, they would be forced to give their uniforms and stand naked in cells. Other forms of punishment prisoners had to endure was not being allowed to use the restroom or only using a bucket to use in their cells. Sometimes as forms of punishment the guards would not allow the prisoners to empty the buckets, creating an unsanitary environment. "Throughout the experiment commands were the most frequent form of verbal behavior and, generally verbal exchanges were strikingly impersonable, with few references to individual identity." (Zimbardo, 80). Guards used deindividualization techniques by reinforcing the idea that prisoners were just numbers and not a person with a name. They eventually started to use this technique to harass them frequently. (Zimbardo)

http://www.prisonexp.org/

     During the experiment, prisoners began to internalize their roles and began to believe this was more real than it actually was. Some of the prisoners even thought about accepting "parole" without their payment for the experiment, instead of simply quitting the study. "They talked about prison issues a great deal of time. They "told tales" on each other to the guards. They started taking prison rules very seriously, as though they were there for the prisoners' benefit and infringement would spell disaster for all of them. Some even began siding with guards against prisoner who did not obey rules." (Mcleod). As the experiment continued, prisoners began to act more erratically, express intentions of harm, and lost control of themselves. Thirty-six hours into the study, prisoner number 8612 began to scream and act irrationally to the point of possible emotional and psychological trauma that could have lasted long-term. The experimenters pulled out a total of five prisoners before the study ended in order avoid long-term damage. Prisoner number 416, was a stand-by participant, until he replaced another prisoner that had to leave because of possible psychological harm. When he saw how prisoners were treated, he decided to go on a hunger strike. The guards responded by putting him into solitary confinement and forcing the other prisoners to bang on the door and scream 416. The prisoners experienced intense psychological abuse from the participating guards, which lead to extreme measures.  "The most dramatic evidence of the impact of this situation upon the participants was seen in the gross reactions of five prisoners who had to be released because of extreme emotional depression, crying, rage, and acute anxiety. The pattern of symptoms was quite similar in four subjects and began as early as the second day of imprisonment. The fifth was released after being treated for a psychosomatic rash which covered portions of his body."  (Zimbardo, 81)

http://www.prisonexp.org/

     The experiment ended six days into a fourteen day study. The guards were becoming more cruel as the experiment went along and displayed sadistic behaviors that could end up causing emotional and psychological trauma to other participants. "Despite the fact that guards and prisoners were essentially free to engage in any form of interaction (positive or negative, supportive or affrontive, etc.), the characteristic nature of their encounters tended to be negative, hostile, affrontive, and dehumanizing." (Zimbardo, 80). Despite the fact that there were many observers in the experiment, only one person questioned the morality and ethics of the experiment. "Professor Zimbardo's former graduate student (and future wife) Christina Maslach confronted him and said that by taking on the role of prison superintendent, he had become indifferent to the suffering of his participants."  The guards thought they were not being watched by experimenters at night, so their actions were becoming more aggressive. This was also another reason the experiment ended early. (Zimbardo)



References:

McLeod, Saul. "Stanford Prison Experiment." Simply Psychology. N.p., 24 Sept. 2016. Web. 1 Oct.
      2016.

Banks, Curtis. Haney, Craig. Zimbardo, Philip. "International Journal of Criminology and                               Penology." Intropersonal Dynamics in Simulated Prison. (1973) 69-97. Web. 1 Oct. 2016.

Breil, Jeff. Plous, Scott. Jensenius, David. "Prisonexp.org." Stanford Prison Experiment. Social                    Psychology Network, 2015. Web. 1 Oct. 2016.

27 Sept. 2016. S.P.E. goal, participants, and procedure.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a controlled experiment that included a prison setting with volunteer participants that took the roles of either prisoners or guards. "The goal was to investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role playing exercise that simulated prison life."   (Saul). Zimbardo wanted to test the dispositional hypothesis that would help determine if prison atmospheres were controlled by the environment or the people in them. "The dispositional hypothesis has been embraced by the proponents of the prison status quo (blaming conditions on the evil in the prisoners), as well as by its critics (attributing the evil to guards and staff with their evil motives and deficient personality structures)."  (Zimbardo, 71). This would mean that the reason there is a violent prison atmosphere is because of the people within the prison and not the environment of the prison itself. If the participants in the experiment were more peaceful and non-aggressive, then the dispositional hypothesis could be true. If the opposite happened, which means the volunteers acted aggressive like the real prisoners and guards, then it would support a situational explanation.

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The twenty-two participants were selected from seventy-five volunteers to be subjects in the prison life experiment for fifteen dollars a day. "Those who responded to on ad in the newspaper completed an extensive questionnaire concerning their family background, physical and mental health history, prior experience and attitudinal propensities with respect to sources of psychopathology (including their involvements in crime)."   (73) The participants who passed the initial questionnaire were then interviewed by an experimenter, and the most mentally and physically stable with the least amount of anti-social behaviors were eligible for the study. All of those selected for the study were strangers to one another, healthy, Caucasian, except for one that was from Oriental descent, and college male students in the Stanford University area for the summer. (Zimbardo says) "The final sample of subjects were administered a battery of psychological tests on the day prior to the start of the simulation, but to avoid any bias, the cores were calculated after the study was completed."  (Zimbardo, 73).  Before the experiment started, one subject dropped out, which left ten prisoners and eleven guards.

http://www.prisonexp.org/gallery/

The initial procedure and set up of the experiment started with creating a "mock" prison that was similar to a real prison in certain aspects. The used a basement underneath the Psychology building at Stanford University. Those randomly assigned to the prisoner roles were arrested in their home without warning, taken to a local police station for fingerprinting and mugshots, then blind folded to be driven to the "mock" prison. Prisoners were stripped from their clothes and possessions deloused, given a prison uniform, shackles and an identification number. While they were in the prison, they were only allowed to use the ID numbers instead of their real names. Prisoners signed a contract stating: they would be given a sufficient amount of food to survive, little to no privacy, would be subject to the guards methods of control without physical abuse, and their rights would be suspended during the experiment to create the role they were given to be more authentic. Participants playing the role of the guard were given khaki uniform, a whistle, a police club, and sunglasses. They were given orders to do anything necessary to maintain law and order in the prison setting, and to command respect from prisoners without the use of physical violence. (Zimbardo says)  "The prisoners remained in the "mock" prison twenty-four hours per day for the duration of the study... The guards worked on three-man, eight-hour shifts; remaining in prison environment only during their work shifts, going about usual lives at other times." Zimbardo acted as the prison warden and also observed the behavior of both the prisoners and guards.

http://prisonexp.org/

During the study, data was collected through videotaping audio recording interactions of participants, and group rating scales for emotional changes in prisoner and guard participants, and personal observations. There was also an individual difference scale, which the participants took the day before the study and also after the study was completed. The individual scale included " F-scale of Authoritarian Personality [1], and the Machiavellianism Scale [2] - as well as areas of possible personality pathology through the newly developed Comrey Personality Scale [3]. The subscales of this latter test consist of: trustworthiness, orderliness, conformity, activity, stability, extroversion, masculinity, and empathy."   (Zimbardo, 78).

References:

McLeod, Saul. "Stanford Prison Experiment." Simply Psychology. N.p., 24 Sept. 2016. Web. 27 Sept.    
        2016.

Banks, Curtis. Haney, Craig. Zimbardo, Philip. "International Journal of Criminology and Penology."
         Intropersonal Dynamics in Simulated Prison. (1973) 69-97. Web. 27 Sept. 2016.

Breil, Jeff. Plous, Scott. Jensenius, David. "Prisonexp.org." Stanford Prison Experiment. Social
         Psychology Network, 2015. Web. 27 Sept. 2016.