Running head: STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT 1

Stanford Prison Experiment

Name

Affiliation

Date
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Introduction

The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) attempted to investigate the psychological impact of

perceived power and focused on the struggle between guards and prisoners (Haslam & Reicehr,

2012). The experiment was conducted in the psychology building basement at the Stanford

University between the 14th and 20th of August 1971. The research was led by Professor

Zimbardo and a team of researchers, and involved college students. The US Office of Naval

Research funded the study even as it investigated the cause and difficulties between prisoners

and guards in the US. Marine Corps and US Navy (Haslam et al., 2012). This paper will dissect

the study to establish its robustness, relevance, and the role it played in forming the basis of

future studies. A recommended hypothetical study will truncate the analysis.

Psychological Concept and Goals

Zimbardo and his team wanted to test the hypothesis that abusive behaviour is as a result

of inherent traits in prison guards. The researcher wanted to find out whether prison brutality

against prisoners was because of guards' sadistic personalities or was more attuned to the prison

environment, in other words, whether it is as a dispositional or situational nature(Haslam et al.,

2012). For example, guards and prisoners may possess personalities which predispose them to

being in conflict. In such a scenario, prisoners disregard the law while guards become aggressive

and domineering. Alternatively, guards may be hostile because of the prison social environments

that wield a rigid power. If the guards and prisoners behaved in a manner that is non-aggressive

it would support the dispositional hypothesis. Behaving in a way similar to how people do in

real prisons would support the situational hypothesis(Haslam et al., 2012).

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Methodology and Results

The researcher converted a basement located at the psychology building at Stanford

University into a mock prison. He then placed an advertisement seeking for volunteers to

participate in the study that researched prison life psychological effects. There were over 70

applicants who underwent personality tests and diagnostic interviews. These tests were to

eliminate any applicants that had medical disabilities, psychological problems, and a drug abuse

or crime history (Gerrig, Zimbardo, & Campbel et al., 2015).

The participants were assigned in a random manner, guard or prisoner roles. There were

two reserves but one dropped out leaving 11 guards and 10 prisoners. The guards worked in two

shifts and in sets of three while the prisoners were housed three in a room. There was also a

solitary confinement room for prisoners that misbehaved. The prison simulation was as real as

possibly could be (Gerrig et al., 2015).

The study was set to run for 2 weeks but was terminated on the sixth day. Christina

Maslach who had come in to interview the guards and prisoners was appalled at the brutality

meted on the prisoners. Though there had been more than 50 outsiders who had visited the

prison, they never questioned the morality of the study (Gerrig et al., 2015). The study was thus

terminated due to moral issues that arose.

Human Behaviour, Thoughts, or Emotions

People conform to social roles willingly especially if the said roles are stereotypical such

as that of prison guards(Smith, Mackie, &Claypool 2014). The guards brutal character was

strongly influenced by the prison environment; none of those acting as guards displayed any

brutal character prior to the onset of the study. Hence, the study findings support the behavior

situational explanation as opposed to the dispositional one (Haslam et al., 2012).

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Two processes were proposed by Zimbardo to explain the final submission of the

prisoners; deindividuation and learned submission. Deindividuation could explain the guards'

behavior (Theerathitiwong, 2017). It is a state where a person becomes immersed in group norms

to the extent they lose the sense of personal responsibility and identity. The sadistic nature of the

guards may have been due to their lack of perceiving it as an individual personality but rather as

it being a group norm. The prisoners on the other hand, lost their self identity because of wearing

a uniform and being identified with their ID numbers only(Theerathitiwong, 2017).

Learned helplessness could provide an explanation of the submission of the prisoners

(Mikulincdr 2013). The prisoners learned that it did not matter what they did, it still had no effect

on what eventually happened to them. The unpredictable decisions that the guards made led the

prisoners to give up on responding to them.

Why the Study Was Unethical

The study was unethical because it did not seek the consent (Sieber & Tolich, 2013) of

the prisoners to play in that role; guards and prisoners were randomly assigned their roles.

Prisoners were arrested from their homes without any prior warning and taken to a local precinct

where they were booked after being photographed and finger printed. However, the prisoners

were driven blindfolded to the fake prison created by Zimbardo (Haslam et al., 2012).

Secondly, the prisoners were subjected to inhumane treatment through their identification

via ID numbers. Each prisoner was called by his ID and referred to him and others with this

number only. Their clothes were a smock that had the ID, no underclothes, a tight nylon cap that

covered their hair, and a chain that was locked round one ankle (Gerrig et al., 2015).
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Changes That Would Make the Study Ethical

The study should have been conducted in a real prison where Zimbardo would have

observed the guards and prisoners on their normal routines. Role playing would not have been

necessary if the psychologist had done the study in a real prison. In the real prison, the

psychologist could have given some prisoners a notebook where they would be required to

document their thoughts on how the prison guards treated them. The prisoners would have been

picked randomly or after an initial analysis of them.

Current Study of the Concept

The current studies on inherent traits and effect on abusive behaviour is done using the

Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) was developed in 1982 by Auke Tellegen

(Tellegen & Waller, 2008). The test is in various versions comprising of 198, 276, and 300 True-

False items. It also comes in a short version (MPQ-BF) of 155 items. Rating in the questionnaire

are given in four broad traits including Constraint and Absorption; Negative Emotional

Temperament; Positive Emotional Temperament; and 111 other primary dimensions of traits

Similarity of Findings of Past and Current Studies

Current studies show that inherent traits determine a person's abusive behavior. An

example of one such study was conducted by Chen & Palmer (2017). In the study, the

researchers revealed that when a person has a high level of openness, he/she will experience

lower levels of authoritianism while higher levels of authoritarianism are predicted where a

person is conscientious, agreeable, an extravert, and a neurocist.

Study Examining the Psychological Concept

If I would conduct a study that examined the psychological concept of inherent traits as the

cause of abusive behaviour, I would conduct it within a family context. Adults who grew up in
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authoritarian homes where either parent was authoritative would be approached to participate in

the study. The MPQ questionnaire would be administered and the results used to determine if the

participants exhibited authoritarian tendencies too. Further, a separate questionnaire would be

administered which would aim at gathering participants' information on their current marital and

family relationship. How the participants relate to their children and spouses would be reflected

against their childhood experience. In sum, the study would highlight whether inherent traits and

learned behaviour can influence a person's manner of relating to the nuclear family.
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References

Chen, P. G., & Palmer, C. L. (2017). The Prejudiced Personality? Using the Big Five to Predict

Susceptibility to Stereotyping Behavior. American Politics Research, 1532673X17719720.

Gerrig, R. J., Zimbardo, P. G., Campbell, A. J., Cumming, S. R., & Wilkes, F. J.

(2015). Psychology and life. Pearson Higher Education AU.

Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. (2012). Revisiting Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. Social

psychology: Revisiting the classic studies, 126.

Mikulincer, M. (2013). Human learned helplessness: A coping perspective. Springer Science &

Business Media.

Sieber, J. E., & Tolich, M. B. (2013). Planning ethically responsible research (Vol. 31). Sage.

Smith, E. R., Mackie, D. M., & Claypool, H. M. (2014). Social psychology. Psychology Press.

Tellegen, A., & Waller, N. G. (2008). Exploring personality through test construction:

Development of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire. The SAGE handbook of

personality theory and assessment, 2, 261-292.

Theerathitiwong, S. (2017). Prison Culture. The Encyclopedia of Corrections.