The stanford prison experiment hypothesis

Basics of Research Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology

(Maxfield & Babbie, 2016)

The Stanford Prison Experiment

Few people would disagree that prisons are dehumanizing. Inmates forfeit freedom, of course, but their incarceration also results in a loss of privacy and individual identity. Violence is among the realities of prison life that people point to as evidence of the failure of prisons to rehabilitate inmates.

Although the problems of prisons have many sources, psychologists Craig Haney, Curtis Banks, and Philip Zimbardo (1973) were interested in two general explanations. The first was the dispositional hypothesis—prisons are brutal and dehumanizing because of the types of people who run them and are incarcerated in them. Inmates have demonstrated their disrespect for legal order and their willingness to use deceit and violence; persons who work as prison guards may be disproportionately authoritarian and sadistic. The second was the situational hypothesis—the prison environment itself creates brutal, dehumanizing conditions independent of the kinds of people who live and work in the institutions.

Haney and associates set out to test the situational hypothesis by creating a functional prison simulation in which healthy, psychologically nor- mal male college students were assigned to roles as prisoners and guards. The “prison” was constructed in the basement of a psychology department building: three 6x9-foot “cells” furnished with only a cot, a prison “yard” in a corridor, and a 2x7-foot “solitary confinement cell.” Twenty-one subjects were selected from 75 volunteers after screening to eliminate those with physical or psychological problems. Offered $15 per day for their participation, the 21 subjects were randomly assigned to be either guards or prisoners.

All subjects signed contracts that included instructions about prisoner and guard roles for the planned two-week experiment. “Prisoners” were told that they would be confined and under surveillance throughout the experiment, and their civil rights would be suspended; they were, how- ever, guaranteed that they would not be physically abused.

“Guards” were given minimal instructions, most notably that physical aggression or physical punishment of “prisoners” was prohibited. Together with a “warden,” however, they were generally free to develop prison rules and procedures. The researchers planned to study how both guards and prisoners reacted to their roles, but guards were led to believe that the purpose of the experiment was to study prisoners.

If you had been a prisoner in this experiment, you would have experienced something like the following after signing your contract: First, you would have been arrested without notice at your home by a real police officer, perhaps with neighbors looking on. After being searched and taken to the police station in handcuffs, you would have been booked, fingerprinted, and placed in a police detention facility. Next, you would have been blindfolded and driven to “prison,” where you would have been stripped, sprayed with a delousing solution, and left to stand naked for a period of time in the “prison yard.” Eventually, you would have been issued a prison uniform (a loose over shirt stamped with your ID number), fitted with an ankle chain, led to your cell, and ordered to remain silent. Your prison term would then have been totally controlled by the guards.

Wearing mirrored sunglasses, khaki uniforms, and badges, and carrying nightsticks, guards super- vised prisoner work assignments and held lineups three times per day. Although lineups initially lasted only a few minutes, guards later extended them to several hours. Prisoners were fed bland meals and accompanied by guards on three authorized toilet visits per day.

The behavior of all subjects in the prison yard and other open areas was videotaped; audiotapes were made continuously while prisoners were in their cells. Researchers administered brief questionnaires throughout the experiment to assess emotional changes in prisoners and guards. About 4 weeks after the experiment concluded, researchers conducted interviews with all subjects to assess their reactions.

Haney and associates (1973, 88) had planned to run the prison experiment for two weeks, but they halted the study after six days because subjects displayed “unexpectedly intense reactions.” Five prisoners had to be released even before that time because they showed signs of acute depression or anxiety.

Subjects in each group accepted their roles all too readily. Prisoners and guards could interact with each other in friendly ways because guards had the power to make prison rules. But interactions turned out to be overwhelmingly hostile and negative. Guards became aggressive, and prisoners became passive. When the experiment ended pre- maturely, prisoners were happy about their early “parole,” but guards were disappointed that the study would not continue.

Haney and colleagues justify the prison simulation study in part by claiming that the dispositional/situational hypotheses could not be evaluated using other research designs. Clearly, the researchers were sensitive to ethical issues. They obtained subjects’ consent to the experiment through signed contracts. Prisoners who showed signs of acute distress were released early. The entire study was terminated after less than half of the planned two weeks had elapsed when its unexpectedly harsh impact on subjects became evident. Finally, researchers conducted group therapy debriefing sessions with prisoners and guards and maintained follow-up contacts for a year to ensure that subjects’ negative experiences were temporary.

Two related features of this experiment raise ethical questions. First, subjects were not fully informed of the procedures. Although we have seen that deception, including something less than full disclosure, can often be justified, in this case deception was partially due to the researchers’ uncertainty about how the prison simulation would unfold. This relates to the second and more important ethical problem: guards were granted the power to make up and modify rules as the study progressed, and their behavior became increasingly authoritarian. Comments by guards illustrate their reactions as the experiment unfolded (Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo 1973, 88):

“They [the prisoners] didn’t see it as an experiment. It was real and they were fighting to keep their identity. But we were always there to show them just who was boss.” “During the inspection, I went to cell 2 to mess up a bed which the prisoner had made and he grabbed me, screaming that he had just made it.... He grabbed my throat, and although he was laughing, I was pretty scared. I lashed out with my stick and hit him in the chin (although not very hard), and when I freed myself I became angry.” “Acting authoritatively can be fun. Power can be a great pleasure.”

You can get a good impression of what guards and prisoners experienced by viewing videos of “arrest” and “prison” scenes available on the Internet. Search for “video Stanford prison experiment” or visit the Stanford Prison Experiment website (www.prisonexp.org) for more information.

How do you feel about this experiment? On the one hand, it provided valuable insights into how otherwise normal people react in a simulated prison environment. Subjects appeared to suffer no long-term harm, in part because of precautions taken by researchers. Paul Reynolds (1979, 139) found a certain irony in the short-term discomforts endured by the college student subjects: “There is evidence that the major burdens were borne by individuals from advantaged social categories and that the major benefactors would be individuals from less advantaged social categories [actual pris-oners], an uneven distribution of costs and benefits that many nevertheless consider equitable.” On the other hand, researchers did not anticipate how much and how quickly subjects would accept their roles. In discussing their findings, Haney and associates (1973, 90) note: “Our results are ... congruent with those of Milgram2 who most convincingly demonstrated the proposition that evil acts are not necessarily the deeds of evil men, but may be attributable to the operation of powerful social forces.” This quote illustrates the fundamental dilemma—balancing the right to conduct research against the rights of subjects. Is it ethical for researchers to create powerful social forces that lead to evil acts?

Research the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Create a 10 –12 slide PowerPoint presentation incorporating speaker notes to provide an overview of the following:

Provide a brief review of the study.
What was the purpose of the study (exploratory, descriptive, explanatory, evaluative, or a combination)? Justify your reasoning.
Describe the sampling strategy and sampling technique.
Describe the research design
List four ethical principles or standards and discuss whether researchers were compliant with these principles.
Evaluate the validity and reliability of this experiment. Explain your answer.
Analyze whether the results can be generalized to another situation or population. Justify your reasoning.
The key to a successful project is to ensure that the presentation:

Addresses all of the information requested (see bullet points above)
Is “creative” in that it utilizes template, color, hyperlinks, pictures, and streaming video in support of your major premises
Completed in PowerPoint (other formats will be scored a zero)
APA style is utilized on the reference slide
No large music files are included
Outside research is evidenced. You will need a minimum of 4 sources
USE ONLY ACADEMIC SOURCES: Use Google Scholar, JSTOR, textbooks, and/or .gov websites to keep the true academic sources in your papers. TURNITIN MUST BE UNDER 20%
Free of spelling and other grammatical errors

Title slide

Introduction slide

(not a table of contents)

3. Body (slides with headings)

Brief summary of experiment, research purpose of experiment, 4 ethical principles, Validity (accurate), Reliability (consistency), Generalizability,

Conclusion slide

Reference page

Stanford Prison Experiment

Do not use the words “I,” “my,” “me,” “our,” “us,” or “we.”

Do not use the phrases “to prove” or “to show.”

If the information isn’t common knowledge, you need to cite it using in-text citations.