An Assessment of Deindividuation and Roles: The Stanford Prison Experiment
In the Stanford Prison Experiment Craig Haney, Curtis Banks, and Philip Zimbardo conducted a study in order to explore how easily a person would conform to the role of a prisoner or guard in simulated role-play. These researchers wanted to deliver a reason as to how our “dishonorable” disciplinary system was the reason for guard brutality or was it not their environment but their personalities. This was done by recruiting 21 college students in the Stanford area to see the psychological effects of prison life and becoming a prisoner or guard.
Research Question and Hypothesis
The research question in this study is, what circumstances lead to guards behaving savagely and violently towards inmates, environment or personality? Haney, Banks, Zimbardo, hypothesized that it is not the environment of the prison that compels people to specifically behave the way they do but, comparatively the dispositions of the people that work and reside there. The researchers essentially are trying to argue that the situation is the reason people behave in the ways that they do.
Methodology
This study was conducted through the use of a simulation. Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo created an environment that mimicked a prison. The “prison” restricted participants physically and confined them to a “cell” that psychologically emitted the feeling of imprisonment. It is stated by the researchers that: “Our intention was not to create a literal simulation of an American prison, but rather a functional representation of one” (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973). The independent variable of the study was the situations the participants were randomly assigned too whether it be guard or prisoner. The dependent variable is the behavior that followed. The roles of prisoner or guard were performed for almost one week.
Within the simulation guards had free range within certain limits to execute the techniques used in “induction” into the care for those who were prisoners. The operational details reads as follows: “The ‘prisoner’ subjects remained in the mock-prison 24 hours per day for the duration of the study … three were arbitrarily assigned to each of the three cells. The ‘guard’ subjects worked on three-man eight-hour shifts” (Haney et al., 1973). Both groups were observed through video, audio, and direct observation. Personality tests, daily guard reports, mood inventories, and questionnaires that recorded individual reactions were also used. About 12 hours of videotape and over 30 hours of recordings were created of the daily regularly occurring events that took place within the simulation.
Each group was provided with identical uniforms within their respected roles to “enhance group identity and reduce individual uniqueness within the two groups” (Haney et al., 1973). The prisoners uniform specifically was intended to deindividuate and humiliate them with the ankle chain being a reminder that they were in fact prisoners and had to submit to their situation. Each of the “prisoners” were “arrested” at their homes and went through the proper arrest and booking procedure by real police officers unbeknownst to the participants that this was a part of the study they signed up to participate in. After the arrest, participants were taken to the simulated prison environment and the study than began.
Results
After the simulation was completed the researchers found that the results of this study supported many previously held understandings about prison life. Due to the autocratic nature of the environment both groups endured, they each were highly influenced by it. Both groups were overall more negative with their actions and perspective. The prisoners in the study instantly assumed a submissive manner or state of being while the guards took their roles very seriously. At one point, the amounts of intense verbal abuse, harassment, and humiliation caused five prisoners to be released prematurely because they exhibited: “extreme emotional depression, crying, rage, and acute anxiety” (Haney et al., 1973). Some experienced these reactions as early as the second day of participating.
The whole experiment in total only lasted six days opposed to the 14 it was designed to, which prompted pleasurable reactions from the prisoners that remained. On the contrary, the guards were disturbed and highly upset that the study had concluded. They were so immersed into the simulation and the power that their roles had given them that they had no desire to give it up. Out of the group of guards only one expressed remorse and was upset at the horrible conditions the prisoners had to endure and contemplated asking to switch roles but never ended up doing so. Some guards, while in the simulation, were malevolent as opposed to others who exerted “tough” behavior when it was deemed necessary instead of overtly resorting to savage like behavior. When taking a look at the “personality-attitude disposition’s” we are able to see that they take little responsibility for the different reactions to the simulation. On the other hand, in a small number of occasions those dispositions appeared to parallel with the capability of the prisoners to adapt to the simulated prison.
The video recordings revealed that the majority of the time prisoners exhibited passive behavior and guards tended to be aggressive and humiliatory despite that fact. In addition to this, 58 interactions recorded with the guards and prisoners verbally, showed the guards referencing the prisoners in a deindividuating way rather than using the prisoners name or anything else that separated them from any other prisoner in that group. The guards essentially stripped away any individuality that each prisoner had. Over all the video recordings showed how excessively malicious the guards were opposed to the prisoners who tended not to act in ways expected of them such as: insulting or threatening guards. The audio recordings revealed that when the prisoners were in “private” without the presence of cameras the researchers were shocked to find that 90% of the conversations that took place amongst the group were within their respective roles still. In the words of the researchers, “there was no discontinuity between their presentation of self when under surveillance and when alone … the prisoners had begun to adopt and accept the guards’ negative attitude toward them” (Haney et al., 1973).
At the very end it was discovered, after follow-ups with the participants that the negative effects of the simulation were not permeant meanwhile, the personal gain survived. So, what this means in respect to Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo’s original hypothesis is that it is the situation that can explain or result in extreme unsympathetic behavior towards other people. Social roles can have a huge impact on a person’s behavior. The degree of pathology that was able to be shown in such a small amount of time in this simulation is astonishing. It is expressed by the researchers that they believed this simulation, “reveals new dimensions in the social psychology of imprisonment worth pursuing in future research” (Haney et al., 1973). They believed the benefits of this study outweighed the ethical costs.
Today is proof that Stanford Prison experiment was a necessary contribution to our understanding of Social Psychology. One important take away from the study is that “power” has the ability to alter the behavior of people entirely.