In August of 1971, Philip Zimbardo, a professor at Standford University, began an experiment about the power dynamics that exist between prisoners and guards. The purpose was to determine if it was the power they had that made the guards brutal or if brutality is a part of human nature. In the experiment, 24 college students were divided into two roles: “guard” and “prisoner”. The prisoners were arrested, taken into custody, and was moved into a mock prison blindfolded. Zimbardo and the researcher David Jaffe each served as the superintendent and the warden. They instructed the guards and told them their duties. They were allowed to use any means necessary, including physical violence, harassment, withholding of food, and deprivation of privileges.
On the first night of the experiment, the guards roused the prisoners for a headcount. Those who didn’t take this seriously were punished by doing push-ups. Enraged by the punishment, prisoners decided to rebel. The next morning, guards found the prisoners yelling curses at them. It was only the second day of the experiment and things were already looking bad. In order to force the prisoners out of their cells, the guards used fire extinguishers. When they succeeded, they grabbed the prisoner, stripped them naked, and put them in solitary confinement.
Once the rebellion was controlled, the guards discussed a way to prevent another rebel from happening without having to have all the guards on duty. The solution was to divide the prisoners. Well-behaved prisoners were placed in the privileged cells, while others were denied the privileges. Sometimes the guards would move the prisoners around to create confusion and distrust among inmates, and it worked. The guards became very aggressive, dehumanizing the prisoners through inhumane punishments; the prisoners became increasingly submissive as well.
After only 36 hours, prisoner Doug Korpi, a participant of the experiment, began suffering from mental issues including uncontrollable crying and rage. The staff realized that Doug needed to be released from the experiment. Followed by Doug, many other inmates were starting to see themselves as actual prisoners instead of realizing their true intentions for the experiment, bringing an end to this experiment earlier than the deadline.
The Stanford Prison Experiment is a famous experiment that has been included in many introductory psychology textbooks and is often cited uncritically. However, its findings were wrong. It is not just due to its ethics or lack of data, but because of fraud.
A new report offers convincing evidence that the guards in the experiment were coached to be cruel. It turns out that the experiment was mostly just acting. “I took it as a kind of an improv exercise,” one of the guards said. “I believed that I was doing what the researchers wanted me to do.” Psychologists know that it is much more likely for false positives to get published than inconclusive results. With the rise of more interests and further analysis of past psychological experiments, it has been found that there are numerous experiments that have been published with false results. An example of an experiment published with false results is the Milgrim electroshock test . In this experiment, participants were told to deliver seemingly lethal doses of electricity to an unseen soul. The investigation shows that some of the researchers were going off the study’s script. In addition, there is evidence that participants were forced to deliver the desired results.
False information and myths shouldn’t be taught, and textbooks should start catching up. Many famous psychological experiments have turned out to have false results. Schools have been teaching these experiments to students, for it was considered trustworthy and valid. Schools are supposed to teach valid information, not false results. Textbooks should be updated, removing false information and instead having valid and reliable sources.
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