 | Stanford prison experiment: Encyclopedia II - Stanford prison experiment - Goals and methods
Stanford prison experiment - Goals and methods
The study was funded by the US Navy to explain conflict in its and the Marine Corps' prison systems. Zimbardo and his team intended to test the hypothesis that prison guards and convicts were self-selecting, of a certain disposition that would naturally lead to poor conditions in that situation.
Participants were recruited via a newspaper ad and offered $15 a day ($76 a day in 2006 dollars) to participate in a two-week "prison simulation." Of the 70 respondents, Zimbardo and his team selected 24 whom they deemed to be the most psychologically stable and healthy. These participants were predominantly white, middle-class young males.
The group was divided in half at random into an equal group of "prisoners" and "guards". Interestingly, prisoners later said they thought the guards had been chosen for their larger physical size, but in reality they had been picked by a fair coin toss and there was no objective difference in stature between the two groups.
The prison itself was run out of the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department, which had been converted into a mock jail. An undergraduate research assistant was the "warden" and Zimbardo the "superintendent".
Zimbardo set up a number of specific conditions on the participants which he hoped would promote disorientation, depersonalization and deindividuation.
Guards were given wooden batons and a khaki, military-style uniform they had chosen themselves at a local military surplus store. They were also given mirrorshade sunglasses to prevent eye contact (Zimbardo said he got the idea from the movie Cool Hand Luke). Unlike the prisoners, the guards were to work in shifts and return home during off hours, though at times many would later volunteer for added duty without additional pay.
Prisoners were to wear only intentionally ill-fitting muslin smocks (without underwear) and rubber thong sandals, which Zimbardo said would force them to adopt "unfamiliar body postures" and discomfort in the interest of their disorientation. They were referred to by assigned numbers instead of by name. These numbers were sewn onto their uniforms, and the prisoners were required to wear tight-fitting nylon pantyhose caps to simulate shaven heads similar to those of military basic training. In addition, they wore a small chain around their ankles as a "constant reminder" of their imprisonment and oppression.
The day before the experiment, guards attended a brief orientation meeting, but were given no formal guidelines, other than that no physical violence was permitted. They were told it was their responsibility to run the prison, which they could do in any way they wished.
Zimbardo provided the following statements to the "guards" in the briefing:
You can create in the prisoners' feelings of boredom, a sense of fear to some degree, you can create a notion of arbitrariness that their life is totally controlled by use, by the system, you, me, and they'll have no privacy… We're going to take away their individuality in various ways. In general what all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness. That is, in this situation we'll have all the power and they'll have none. — The Stanford Prison Study video, quoted in Haslam & Reicher, 2003.
The participants who had been chosen to play the part of prisoners were told simply to wait in their homes to be "called on" on the day the experiment began. Without any other warning, they were "charged" with armed robbery and arrested by the actual Palo Alto police department, who cooperated in this part of the experiment.
The prisoners were put through a full booking procedure by the police, including fingerprinting and having their mug shots taken, and were informed of their Miranda rights. They were transported to the mock prison where they were strip-searched, "deloused" and given their new identities.
Other related archives1963, 1971, 2003 Iraq war, Abu Ghraib, Attica, Christopher McQuarrie, Cool Hand Luke, Das Experiment, Donald Rumsfeld, Erich Fromm, Marine Corps, Milgram experiment, Miranda rights, Nazi Germany, Palo Alto, Pentagon, Philip Zimbardo, San Quentin, Seymour Hersh, Slate, Stanford University, Stanley Milgram, The New Yorker, The Third Wave, The Usual Suspects, The Wave, U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, US Navy, William Saletan, Yale University, Yeshiva University, anecdotal, authority, batons, captivity, cognitive dissonance theory, coin toss, convicts, deindividuation, deloused, depersonalization, deterministic, disorientation, ecological validity, electric shocks, eye contact, field experiment, fingerprinting, human rights, hunger strike, hypothesis, ideology, insurance, internalized, middle-class, military basic training, military surplus store, mirrorshade sunglasses, mug shots, muslin, neutral observer, nylon, parole, personalities, police, prison, prison guards, psychological, psychosomatic, rash, reproduce, research assistant, robbery, rock band, role-playing, sadistic, scientific controls, self-selecting, situational attributions, solitary confinement, stereotypes, subjective, thong sandals, undergraduate, unethical, uniform, unscientific
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Goals and methods", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
