Can We Reverse The Stanford Prison Experiment?

Can We Reverse The Stanford Prison Experiment?(blogs.hbr.org)

101 points by sgfc 14 years ago | 37 comments

jgfoot 14 years ago |

The Stanford Prison Experiment still gets a lot of ink, but unfortunately the criticisms of it do not. I recommend this article: http://www.swans.com/library/art17/barker82.html

"""over the past forty-plus years, the Stanford Prison Experiment has had a strong, and arguably detrimental impact upon both scholarly and popular conceptions of social psychology. Contrary to Zimbardo's misleading conclusions, ordinary people do not mindlessly and helplessly succumb to brutality; instead the evidence (even from his own experiment) seems to suggest that individuals tend to engage in brutality only when they truly believe that such actions are warranted -- acting upon ideas that are condoned by equally brutal group ideologies. The guards in Zimbardo's experiment were thus coerced by Zimbardo and his researchers to brutalize the prisoners; while the prisoners did not simply submit to the guards' brutality, but instead, actively resisted their oppression, both collectively and individually. This resistance was considered intolerable to Zimbardo, and as this article has shown, he utilized his system power to intervene to increase guard brutality and undermine the prisoners' collective will to resist their abusers."""

kitsune_ 14 years ago | |

I've spent over 400 days in a closed environment with "special" group dynamics - the armed forces of Switzerland. Service is mandatory. I was made a NCO against my will.

I've made some valuable unscientific, personal observations during this time. One is, that most people (I'd say 80%) do not speak up for themselves or others when it matters in groups with strict hierarchies.

Not only that, I think that most people don't have any basic moral convictions. Group punishment is highly effective.

I've learnt that sadistic, manipulative and narcissistic people thrive in such environments and if left uncontrolled, alike to a malign tumor that spreads rapidly to other parts of the body, they can impact the entire organization quickly.

masklinn 14 years ago | | |

> I've learnt that sadistic, manipulative and narcissistic people thrive in such environments and if left uncontrolled, alike to a malign tumor that spreads rapidly to other parts of the body, they can impact the entire organization quickly.

Aye. The phrase "One bad apple (spoils the bunch)" is often misunderstood but applies dreadfully well to human organizations.

antman 14 years ago | | |

I spent 540 days in a series of closed environments and it isn't that simple. I was chief sergeant in an army recruit center and every 45 days 130 people left and the system rebooted with another 130 people (in boot camp training...)

The more people in the group that have previously lived either in highly predatory enviroments, or have only seen life through TV tend to try and copy attitudes and behaviours as seen on TV.

If everybody start the same day, the most predatory get an advantage but they can't keep up with their image unless they form a subgroup. The subgroup enforces and the subgroup groupthinks. If they don't create a subgroup they soon become a nuisance and fade in to the background.

If everybody does not start at the same day then there is already an established group dynamic and people with social skills in competitive environments usually fit right in. I don't mean this always in a good way. A social skill that people adapted to was that, when nobody spoke to someone, they did not speak to him either. When they wanted to establish themselves they slowly tested their boundaries and tried to cease oportunities.

What most people did not see was that, after a few repetitions of the same procedure (new recruits) human behaviour given certain initial variables tended to repeat itself. That is bad for a predatory, freely evolving environment, but for somebody like me who had done and watched this again and again it was easy to control. The man in charge is the one who specifies how things will go.

People think they are smart and everything is a matter of intelligence. It isn't. You either know because you tested or because you studied social sciences (The second part is a guess).

So what happened: I learnt all there is to learn regarding rules and regulations. I failed one or two groups by applying everything I had seen in Hollywood movies,I was ignored and the situation turned in to a violent mess. Not violent against me but against each other... The next group I simply anticipated what would happen because I had already seen it (people attacking people, how somebody could sneak in drugs or how they used them) so it was an easy process that wasn't any more tiring for me or for them. I taught them all the rules and they would listen to me! I was very happy with myself. The recruits kept good relations to each other and they were model soldiers. So I ended my military service with a good feeling of giving.

Not a happy ending: One and a half year later I had to meet a friend of mine to a military hospital as he was being dismissed for medical reasons and nobody could drive him. There I met one of my recruits for whom I was very proud of, and I did't like what I was seeing. He looked like Charlie Seen after having served in Vietnam for 10years. Long story short, when they left my army recruit center, all of them had gained knowledge and it was better than most of their NCOs. They couldn't be forced by the book because they knew better, they knew how to assert themselves because I had shown them how it is done. They spent the rest of their days in the army manipulating people, getting power, and doing nothing themselves. Their behaviour still looked alike, and their behaviour repeated throughout the country.

Did not see that one coming.

saraid216 14 years ago | |

There are valid criticisms of the SPE, but this isn't one of them. Zimbardo, in his work on heroism, later referenced exactly how he himself came to recognize the mistake: his fiancee came in, took one look, and was terrified by what she observed.

I don't know how your author managed to read The Lucifer Effect and miss that. The last page he quotes from is page 194. The book is a good 400 pages long. The "unreflective" echo that Zimbardo gives ends a chapter offering evidence.

He spends the next two chapters answering it.

He also wrote http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_banality_of... which Barker apparently either found unworthy of mention or never read.

kenjackson 14 years ago | |

That paper seems to say that the only reason the guards were abusive is because they were told to be so. But wasn't that the point?

saraid216 14 years ago |

It's hard to encapsulate the entirety of a TV show season in a comment, so I'm going to use a quotation instead. This is from The Wire, Season 4, Major Bunny Colvin:

"This drug thing, this ain't police work. No, it ain't. I mean, I can send any fool with a badge and a gun up on them corners and jack a crew and grab vials. But policing? I mean, you call something a war and pretty soon everybody gonna be running around acting like warriors. They gonna be running around on a damn crusade, storming corners, slapping on cuffs, racking up body counts. And when you at war, you need a fucking enemy. And pretty soon, damn near everybody on every corner is your fucking enemy. And soon the neighborhood that you're supposed to be policing, that's just occupied territory."

The Wire has been acclaimed specifically for its close representation (still obviously dramatized) with the reality of Baltimore. If you haven't watched all five seasons, you should do so.

sharkweek 14 years ago | |

I was always fascinated with the idea that "the game" has a certain way of being played -- I think Bodie says something of the sort when they're trying to set up Hamsterdam --

I walk by a pretty busy drug corner on my way to work and it always fascinates me how organized it all is. One of the most interesting things I ever saw was two homeless guys fighting over some money when several of the drug dealers came over and broke it up. Self-policing to keep the police away.

stretchwithme 14 years ago |

I tried to get one company I worked with to give people a small token of appreciation when they did something of significant value to the company. I recall more valuable time spent on the process of deciding who got them than the tokens were worth.

People can forget that people who care about what they are doing innovate a lot more than people who just follow processes. If management cares most about following processes, so will everybody else.

gruseom 14 years ago |

Zimbardo, who by an almost unimaginable coincidence went to high school with Stanley Milgram

Wow. Like Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand.

Cushman 14 years ago | |

Not totally on topic, but how is that an "almost unimaginable coincidence"? Given the number of people who are involved in similar things, and the number of people at your average high school, it pretty much goes without saying that some people who go to high school together will later do similar things.

Journalists have weird ideas about probability.

JoeAltmaier 14 years ago | | |

Also clustering around time, opportunity are common. "Outliers" talks about this.

johnchristopher 14 years ago |

It contradicts the story of that old and wise guy who decided to give money to the children who were harassing him. Each time they spotted him and cursed him they would earn one dollar. In the end they stopped because it became "work".

My experience in the education system is that bad behaviour is punished in very public way and good behaviour is never publicised and rarely get any recognition except when to cast a light on bad behaviour.

Edit: the article makes a poor job of explaining that losada line and so does wikipedia.

wccrawford 14 years ago | |

Seems to me it was more likely they stopped because it wasn't giving them their jollies like they wanted. They wanted him to be angry angry. Instead, he calmly gives them money. Not fun.

johnchristopher 14 years ago | | |

> Seems to me it was more likely they stopped because it wasn't giving them their jollies like they wanted.

Indeed, that's a better explanation. One variant has the kids playing soccer and yelling in the park near the old man's house, it would fit the story better.

My apologies, the story isn't à-propos enough and I though it was more universal.

wazoox 14 years ago | |

* > It contradicts the story of that old and wise guy who decided to give money to the children who were harassing him.*

Source? I never heard of that.

Avenger42 14 years ago | | |

The version I heard went something like this:

A man was tired of the local youths <doing negative behavior>, so he offered them a small amount of money ($2-3) when they'd <do negative behavior>.

The next week he came to them and told them "sorry, business was slow, all I can give you this week is $1/time." They weren't happy, but agreed.

The next week he went back and said "sorry, even slower, I can only afford $0.25/time now." The youths said "we're not doing this for $0.25!" and stopped <negative behavior> altogether.

johnchristopher 14 years ago | | |

I am not sure there are any sources to this story, it's most likely made up to prove a point ("once it's work, it's no fun" and "old people are cunning") and there are variants but it's a rather commmon story told in classroom where I grew up (Belgium).

It's like the story of the boy who cried wolf, its origins are lost in time and not very precise.

Ralith 14 years ago |

What would it take to see this class of approach applied to policing elsewhere?

ktizo 14 years ago | |

A complete re-evaluation of police hiring practices would be a good start.

planetguy 14 years ago |

Their approach was to try to catch youth doing the right things and give them a Positive Ticket. The ticket granted the recipient free entry to the movies or to a local youth center. ... According to Clapham, youth recidivism was reduced from 60% to 8%. Overall crime was reduced by 40%. Youth crime was cut in half.

Really? I mean, really? I'm gonna have to see some extraordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim before I believe that having police go round giving out free movie tickets for not-littering is sufficient to reduce recidivism by an astonishing factor of seven. And I've never heard of it before.