Problem
Stanford Prison Experiment
This research study sought to explain how people respond to authority roles. During this study, the researcher, Philip Zimbardo, enlisted students to play the role of either an inmate or a prison guard. This study was planned to take place for two weeks and is referred to as the "Stanford Prison Experiment." Zimbardo's goals were to "see what the psychological effects were of becoming a prisoner or prison guard." In the study, Zimbardo played the role of the prison superintendent. The "guards" were given no training and made up whatever rules they deemed necessary to maintain control of their "prisoners." The guards used humiliation tactics to control the prisoners by stripping them, delousing them, and subjecting them to repeated rounds of push-ups and "counts" where the prisoners had to call out their prisoner number, as well as solitary confinement and physical confrontations.
The prisoners eventually rebelled, but this rebellion was quickly squashed when the guards called in reinforcements and order was restored. Eventually, the guards decided to use the prisoners against each other to help maintain order, and they created a "privilege cell" where the most compliant prisoners were allowed to have additional privileges such as clothing, beds, and special food, all of which the other prisoners were allowed to watch. Then, the guards decided to randomly shift the prisoners around and placed the "good" prisoners back in with the "bad" prisoners, and some of the bad prisoners were selected to enjoy the privileges of the good cell. The purpose of this tactic was to get the prisoners to direct their aggression toward each other and away from the guards. These authoritarian tactics and the psychological abuse sustained by the prisoners had a profound effect, and the prisoners became convinced that they were not free to leave. Zimbardo himself even began to feel as though his role and the situation were real when a fellow researcher questioned what his independent variable was and his response was anger at the question, because he "had a prison break on his hands." In the end, the experiment was called off after only six days.
Task
Describe what went wrong in the Stanford Prison Experiment and what could have been done to avoid this situation in the first place?