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The Stanford Prison Experiment analyzed human response to imprisonment using college students as guards and prisoners in a mock prison. The experiment showed how assigned roles affected behavior, with guards abusing their power and prisoners bonding together. The experiment was criticized for its design but is still supported by some social psychologists.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was a research study conducted in 1971 as a means of analyzing the human response to imprisonment. Directed by a researcher led by Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford Prison Experiment involved college students who played the role of guards and prisoners in a mock prison that was set up in the basement of the Psychology Building on the Stanford University campus. The study sought to recreate as best as possible the real-life conditions found in prisons of the time and the impact these conditions had on the behavior patterns of both those in positions of power and those under the direct control of established authorities. .
As life in the fictional Stanford Prison began to follow patterns, the participants began exhibiting certain tendencies directly related to their assigned positions in the experiment. The college students who gradually filled the role of guards in the experiment began to show a tendency to treat those operating as prisoners as less valuable. Bonding occurred between the guards, pitting them against the prisoners in groups. As a result, there have been instances where many of the guards have shown tendencies to abuse the authority granted under the terms of the experiment. The abuse was so severe that several volunteers had to be released from the experiment before the project was completed.
Prisoners also began to identify more closely with each other, both as a group and as a set of sub-groups within the community. To some extent, the impact of social, economic, and racial diversity was excluded from the experiment, as the volunteers selected for the Stanford Prison Experiment were largely Caucasian and came from a middle class background. Despite the limited cross-section of the experiment participants, both guards and prisoners tended to confirm some hypotheses about the disposition and identifying characteristics that emerge in places of confinement. The research team was careful not to share these assumptions with test subjects upfront, so that there was no outside influence from the team to tell the volunteers what constituted correct role-playing behavior.
Conditions inside the experiment deteriorated at an alarming rate, leading to the closure of the Stanford Prison experiment after just six days. Manifestations of sadistic behavior, humiliating tactics aimed at prisoners, and choices designed to challenge individuals to choose between the good of the community and the good of the individual were common. However, Zimbardo considered the experiment a success in terms of advancing the understanding of social psychology in a forced setting.
Over the years, a variety of criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment have been included in various studies and scholarly works. Accusations that the design of the experiment led to subjective and unscientific conclusions in many cases have been common, although the experiment continues to have the support of some social psychologists.
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