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No one would take this experiment seriously

posted 8 years ago by thebricks
7 replies | jump to latest

In a real prison, a guard has to worry about prisoners trying to escape, who were dangerous gang members or murderers on the outside. In an experiment, the "inmates" are there for a paycheck and biding their time. So are the guards. No guard would actually take it seriously and abuse the "inmates." Also, since everyone knows they are getting out in a few days, no one is going to cause trouble.

It's hard to believe the guards became so abusive. It seems like the whole experiment was just designed to get attention for the academics involved, which, quite honestly, is how they work to begin with.

[–] ameade22 8 years ago

You know this happened right?

[–] thebricks 8 years ago

You seriously believe it would go down like this? Then you clearly don't know people.

BTW, you say "this happened" like you definitively know what goes on. It's no secret academia is full of shenanigans, lots of researchers trying to get attention, etc. If you've actually known anyone that was one, you'd know how biased and crooked many of these professors are.

[–] ameade22 8 years ago

They released the footage of it. The guards and prisoners have talked about it publicly. I don't really know what else to tell you. I have a feeling what you say next will be appearing on r/iamverysmart. It has been duplicated and many evolutions of this experiment have been performed. It changed the process for which all experiments are vetted since. But, believe what you will.

[–] bjp-32077 8 years ago

Did the events portrayed in the movie really happen? Yes, and the movie is somewhat accurate (though in real life much of the physical violence was stopped). It also leaves out the guards that objected to the harsh treatment and refused in several cases, which is left out of many accounts of the SPE (though not the SPE records themselves, IIRC.)

The experiment itself, however, is deeply flawed, and can hardly be called a scientific experiment at all; there is no control group, no independent Variables. It was a field experiment, despite them having the ability and resources to make it scientific. If anything, The Standford Experiment was a "simulation" - a word that does not inspire confidence from those in the research community.

There has been significant criticism of this "experiment" in the scientific, research, and psychology community. Erich Fromm is one of the most renowned critics. Here is an excerpt from "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness" (Fawcett Books, 1973):

http://www.angelfire.com/or/sociologyshop/frozim.html

In this excerpt he focuses on the vague boundaries and lack of specificity of vital parts of the experiment that would greatly influence the actions of the subjects, as well as the expected behaviors that the people running the experiment foisted on the subjects.

One of the people involved with the "experiment" spoke out against it in 2005. Here is a copy of the article, which was printed in 2005:

http://valtinsblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/lie-of-stanford-prison-experiment.html

In it, Carlo Prescott (a consultant on prison life for the project) talks about how the brutal treatment of the prisoners was not thought up by the guard subjects, but by himself and the other researchers, who placed these expectations on the shoulders of the guard subjects.

What motive did the researchers have for this bias? From the official website: "The study was funded by a government grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research to study antisocial behavior." http://www.prisonexp.org/faq/#about

For these reasons and more, many psychology textbooks gloss over the criticisms of the SPE or completely omit the SPE entirely. Here are two articles explaining this (each of them also contain informative links to other sources pertaining to this subject).

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201310/why-zimbardo-s-prison-experiment-isn-t-in-my-textbook

http://www.psypost.org/2014/09/intro-psychology-textbooks-gloss-criticisms-zimbardos-stanford-prison-experiment-27970

The official site, http://www.prisonexp.org, says nothing about the above criticisms it has received, focusing on the criticism received for the behavior of the guards and the inaction of the the researchers. "I was guilty of the sin of omission -- the evil of inaction -- of not providing adequate oversight and surveillance when it was required..." (an excerpt from Zimbardo's book about the simulation. Zimbardo was the person in charge of the SPE.)

So yeah, it happened, but the "experiment" itself really means nothing because it was corrupted from the get-go.

Here is an interesting reflection on why people accept this simulation as gospel: ans.com/library/art17/barker82.html

So, ameade22:

It has been duplicated and many evolutions of this experiment have been performed.

I've had no luck finding these duplicated experiments and many evolutions that have been performed. Could you link some here for me so that I can read up on them?

It changed the process for which all experiments are vetted since.

I'm having trouble believing this. Could you please provide some examples or sources?

And don't use r/iamverysmart as ammunition. As one of its biggest fans, that offends me greatly. *triggered

[–] FlyingSaucersAreReal 7 years ago

I've had no luck finding these duplicated experiments and many evolutions that have been performed. Could you link some here for me so that I can read up on them?

That's because there haven't been. There are major ethical problems with a study like that, in which people can end up being mistreated. And you covered the other problems with the study pretty well. I guess the psychologist running the study had pretty strong opinions going into the study, and tended to focus on the guards who got abusive with the prisoners and downplay it when other guards treated the prisoners decently. He was also playing the part of the warden, in charge of the prisoners, so who knows how much he influenced what was happening, possibly without realizing it.

Here is an interesting reflection on why people accept this simulation as gospel:

I haven't seen the movie so can't have an opinion on it, but it sounds like the movie makers did the same thing. Based the movie on the myth of the experiment instead of the more complicated, nuanced reality. But that's what usually happens with movies based on real events - nuance gets lost.

Setting up controls and recreating that kind of environment is impossible with human being too, since there's no getting around the fact that they know in the end its not real. Here's a quote I found on Wikipedia from one of the guards where he talks about he had been in plays in high school and looked at it like was an actor playing a part.

What came over me was not an accident. It was planned. I set out with a definite plan in mind, to try to force the action, force something to happen, so that the researchers would have something to work with. After all, what could they possibly learn from guys sitting around like it was a country club? So I consciously created this persona. I was in all kinds of drama productions in high school and college. It was something I was very familiar with: to take on another personality before you step out on the stage. I was kind of running my own experiment in there, by saying, "How far can I push these things and how much abuse will these people take before they say, 'knock it off?'" But the other guards didn't stop me. They seemed to join in. They were taking my lead. Not a single guard said, "I don't think we should do this."

The study isn't really used much in psychology classes I believe, and then mainly as an example of an experiment with a lot of flaws. It still sticks around in pop culture though, as we can see from this movie.

-Sitting on a cornflake waiting for the van to come

[–] DoodMcDoodertun 8 years ago

Wrong.

People always comment on human nature by bringing up the stanford prison experiment...In reality the experiment is complete BS. This is only 1 piece of evidence.

(From professor teaching about stanford experiment.)

Situations are indeed powerful--but the results of this experiment were not so conclusive as they are usually presented. One problem with the experiment is that participants were recruited via a newspaper ad that stated the experiment was about prison life. This simple addition of the words "prison life" likely biased the type of person who would participate. An underappricated follow up study by Carnahan & McFarland (2007) posted two newspaper ads: one for a study on prison life and another for a psychological study. The two groups who volunteered were very different. "Volunteers for the prison study scored significantly higher on measures of the abuse-related dispositions of aggressiveness, authoritarianism,
Machiavellianism, narcissism, and social dominance and lower on empathy and altruism, two qualities inversely related to aggressive abuse." It is entirely possible that the original prison experiment got out of hand because the kind of person who signs up for a prison life experiment is the kind of person who might be prone to abuse of power.

The second major flaw in the study design was that the experimenter (Zimbardo) was actively involved in the experiment. If you watch the video, he practically encourages the cruel treatment of the prisoners.

Carnahan, T., & McFarland, S. (2007). Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: Could participant self-selection have led to the cruelty?. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(5), 603-614.

[–] dv727 7 years ago

I won't dispute what is or is not the case in actual prisons. After seeing this movie, I DO take the victimization of these students seriously, and find its "academic" purpose insincere. If this is how one gets a PhD, Stanford is a disgusting collection of excrement. Philip Zimbardo my be a "Doctor" because Stanford thinks so, and his girlfiend-turned-wife may appear to have a soul, but they rank among the most odorous of the pile, and to call them soulless animals would be to elevate them.