Stanford prison experiment: Encyclopedia II - Stanford prison experiment - Criticism of the experiment

Stanford prison experiment - Criticism of the experiment

Despite its apparently dramatic effects, the experiment was widely criticized as being unethical and bordering on unscientific. Critics including Erich Fromm challenged how readily the results of the experiment could be generalized.

Because it was a field experiment, it was impossible to keep traditional scientific controls. Zimbardo was not merely a neutral observer, but influenced the direction of the experiment as its "superintendent". Conclusions and observations drawn by the experimenters were largely subjective and anecdotal, and the experiment would be difficult for other researchers to reproduce.

Some of the experiment's critics argued that participants based their behavior on how they were expected to behave, or modeled it after stereotypes they already had about the behavior of prisoners and guards. In other words, the participants were merely engaging in role-playing. In response, Zimbardo claimed that even if there was role-playing initially, participants internalized these roles as the experiment continued.

The experiment was also criticized on a basis of ecological validity. Many of the conditions imposed in the experiment were arbitrary and may not have correlated with actual prison conditions, including blindfolding incoming "prisoners", making them wear women's clothing, not allowing them to wear underwear, not allowing them to look out windows and not allowing them to use their names. Zimbardo argued that prison is a confusing and dehumanizing experience and that it was necessary to enact these procedures to put the "prisoners" in the proper frame of mind; however, it is difficult to know how similar the effects were to an actual prison, and the experiment's methods would be difficult to reproduce exactly so that others could test them.

Some said that the study was too deterministic: reports described significant differences in the cruelty of the guards, the worst of whom came to be nicknamed "John Wayne," but others were kinder and often did favors for prisoners. Zimbardo made no attempt to explain or account for these differences.

Lastly, the sample size was very small, with only 24 participants taking place over a relatively short period of time.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Criticism of the experiment", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki