Are prison officers evil? The prison simulation experiment

The "prisoners" were unpredictably "arrested" at home. To go into the prison they had to go through a delousing process where they had to be searched, given a prison uniform with ID number, nylon stocking caps to make their hair appear short and an ankle chain. They where all in the prison 24 hours a day moreover the guards referred to the prisoners by number. The prisoners where authorized certain "rights" such as 3 supervised toilet trips and 2 hours for reading or letter writing.

The guards had uniforms. This consisted of clubs, whistles, handcuffs and reflective sunglasses. Deindividuation was an important part of the procedure, encouraged for example by wearing uniforms.

[Deindividuation is the effect of wearing uniforms that removes a person's sense of individuality. This also means that others treat that person less like and individual. In some cases this may make people more conformist because they conform to the social role of the uniform as with nurses or prison guards. Or people might feel less concerned about an individuals feelings because it can result in greater obedience to unjust authority.]

Findings:

The guards grew increasingly oppressive. These guards woke up prisoners in the middle of the night to clean up toilets with their bare hands, some guards even chose to do extra hours without pay. Many participants seem to forget that they where only acting. Even when they didn't realise that they where being watched they still played their roles. Five of the ten prisoners had to be released early due to depression such as crying and acute anxiety. Due to all this depression the whole experiment ended after 6 days despite the intention to continue for 2 weeks.

Conclusions:

The study appears to illustrate that both the guards and prisoners obeyed the rules to their social roles. The participants' performance was the normative social authority. As the experiment draws to an end we can conclude that situational explanations are more appropriate than the dispositional theory. This is because the experiment portrayed that "ordinary" students easily became cruel prison guards when located in the precise environment.

It is possibly more accurate to say that the chosen participants complied rather than demonstrated "true" traditional values since they perhaps did not alter their personal beliefs.

There where two course of actions that Zimbardo et al suggested that could explain the prisoners' final "submission.

First was the process of deindividuation. The prisoners lost their sense of uniqueness due to what they had to wear. In addition the guards also wore uniforms which freed them from ordinary restrictions to perform humanely. They followed the alleged role of a prison guard. The prison guards as well as prisoners both obeyed the rules.

The second was the process of learned helplessness. This may explain the actions of the "prisoners". In certain circumstances the prisoners realised what ever they do has little effect on what happens to them. Due to the lack of rewards it leads to condensed efforts. In the fake prison the prisoners stopped responding due to the erratic decisions of the guards. The fact that the prisoners depended on the guards for absolutely everything weakened the prisoners and therefore this lead to the increase of their helplessness.

Criticisms:

The demand characteristic is a attribute of a study that in some way "invites" a participant to behave in a particular manner. The participants of this experiment took on roles of others because that is what they where asked to do. In reality the prisoner or the guard may be less likely to act as the social role dictates. Instead they are more likely to adapt to the situation depending on their personal beliefs and the requests of the circumstance. A reasonable amount of prison guards later claimed that they where only acting. Therefore this means that this experiment might give us slight information about people's behaviour in real life. However we do have to question ourselves about why some of the prisoners became really stressed.