Social psychology: Case study 2: Prison Simulation

Social psychology: Case study 2: Prison Simulation

Author: Haney, Banks and Zimbardo (1973)

Key term: Prison simulation

Background/ context: High recividism ( re-offending) rates mean that prison does not act as a deterrent for crime and neither do they rehabilitate most inmates. What makes prison so bad? Prisoners are stereotyped as bad people, but can the dispositional assumption be tested? If good, regular people are put in a prison environment would the situational approach turn them into bad people or would they leave remaining good?

Dispositional: Behaviour is caused due to individual personality or characteristics - their disposition. 

Situational: Cause of behaviour is caused by a feature of characteristic of the situation.

Aim/Hypothesis: Test whether the behaviour of non-prisoners (regular law-abiding citizens) in a simulated prison environment is more affected by their disposition than the situation. "The deplorable conditions of our penal system and it's dehumanising effects upon prisoners and guards is due to the 'nature' (disposition) of people who administrate and of the people who populate it, or both."

Zimbardo believed that prisoners had a high recividism rate and lack of rehabilitation due to disposition rather than situation.

Setting/Apparatus: 

• For arrest of participants selected as prisoners - Police, police car and police station
• Prison construction in basement of psychology department at Stanford University
  Consisted of 3 small cells (6 x 9 feet) made of converted laboratory rooms
  Solitary confinement was a small unlit broom cupboard (2 x 2 x 7 feet)
  Corridor used as yard
• No windows, no clocks, prisoners had no contact with outside world
• Cells had a mattress, sheet and pillow per person
• Intercom set up to record conversations

Uniforms: Promote feeling of anonymity in both groups and deindividuality

Guards:

• Plain khaki shirt and trousers, whistle and wooden baton - feeling of superiority/ military attitude
• Reflecting sunglasses - Impossible to make known eye contact with a prisoner - Loss of individuality

Prisoners: 

• Loose fitting muslin smock with ID number on front and back - loss of individuality
• No undergarmets - Make the prisoners assume more feminine postures - emasculation and humiliation (loss of masculinity)
• Ankle chain, cap made from a stocking and rubber sandals - Feeling of inferiority, ankle chain makes them feel oppressed and loss of individuality

Participants/Sampling technique: Advert put in newspaper for volunteers to take part in "Study on psychological effects of prison life". Paid $15 per day (unethical - cash payment and possible deception). 24 males selected from 75 who replied, but only 21 male college students from Stanford (weakness - lack of variety - all american male students - generalization) were actually involved in experiment since one backed out and two were standby. Psychometric tests conducted to ensure participants had good mental and physical health and had not committed any crime. Self-selecting because people volunteered.

Participants randomly allocated role of prisoner or guard. All signed a contract guarenteeing adequate diet, enough clothing, appropriate clothing and medical care.

Procedure

• Induction for guards: Guards met one day prior to induction for prisoners to meet the research team which consisted of the 'superintendent' of the prison (Zimbardo himself - researcher) and the warden (research assistant). (weakness - Researcher should not participate in experiment.) Guards were told they wanted to recreate a prison environment ethically. They were told their main task was to "maintain a reasonable amount of order within the prison necessary for its effective functioning". Given tasks such as shift logs, reporting any criminal incidents and administration of meals to prisoners.Involved in placing cots in the cells. They were only given minimal guidelines on how to 'act' in order to capture genuine reactions to the simulation.Prohibited to use physical punishment or aggression.

• Induction for prisoners - Arrest: 'Arrested' from their house without prior warning along with help from Palo Alto city police department (unethical - no informed consent).
  A real police officer charged the participants for suspicion of either armed robbery or arrest, told them their legal rights, handcuffed them, searched them and took them to the police station. At the police station they were fingerprinted, had a file prepared and kept in a detention cell. The police acted as though they were dealing with a real criminal and did not answer any questions about the study.
  Each prisoner was then taken to the prison simulation where they were stripped, deloused (sprayed for lice) and made to stand alone naked - humiliate and make them feel subservient (inferior.)Given their uniform and ID number and had their picture taken.

• Prison life: Guards read the rules of the prison (devised by guards with the warden) and prisoners were told to memorize the rules.
  -Prisoners would only be referred by their uniform ID number.
  -Prisoners given 3 basic meals
  -Prisoners were allowed 3 supervised toilet visits
  -Prisoners given two hours for privileges eg. writing or reading
  -Work assignments given to prisoners so they could earn their $15 a day
  -Prisoners were lined up 3 times a day for a count - checking all prisoners were present, and they memorized their ID numbers and prison rules
  -Two visiting periods were scheduled per week (experimented lasted only 6 days)

Results

• Both sets of participants became more and more negative.
• Total of 5 prisoners had to be released because of extreme emotional depression; symptoms were seen on day 2 for 4 of the prisoners.
• 5th prisoner had to be released because he developed a psychometric rash (rash from stress)
• Experimented was terminated after 6 days because guards were becoming worse in their treatment of prisoners
• Prisoners rebelled on the 2nd day by removing their caps, tearing off their ID numbers and barricading themselves in their cells. The guards retaliated by forcing prisoners out of their cells, stripping them naked and locking some of them in solitary confinement.
• Recordings of private conversations of prisoners showed 90% of their conversations centered around prison life.
• Prisoners became more submissive while guards got more cruel. 
• Mundane realism - Participants truly believed they were stuck in the prison
• Guards started using psychological tactics to regulate prison - solitary confinement as punishment, punishment for all prisoners for the mistake of one, and privilege cells for prisoners who behaved well. This dissolved prisoner cohesion - Prisoners distrusted each other and stopped working as a team. 
• Guards became increasingly aggressive with their freedom to control - one guard locked a prisoner in solitary confinement (which was against the rules) and turned the prisoners rights into privileges.
• Prisoner #8612 left and was replaced with a replacement who went on a hunger strike to protest the treatment of inmates, but was seen as a threat by other inmates instead of trying to help.

• Pathology of power: 
  
  • Guards became increasingly aggressive with their freedom to control - one guard locked a prisoner in solitary confinement (which was against the rules) and turned the prisoners rights into privileges.
  • Aggression appeared to get stronger at the beginning when prisoners showed defiance.
  • The most hostile guards became the leader - one guard was so harsh he was nicknamed "John Wayne".
  • Guards started coming in when they were not on shift because they were so involved and enjoyed their extreme power. 
  • Some dispositional effects: Guards were either tough but fair and followed rules, never punished the prisoners and helped them, or extremely hostile and caused degradation and humiliation whenever possible.

  
  
• Pathological prisoner syndrome:
  
  • Mental state of prisoners went down rapidly
  • When their rebellion failed, they tried using subtle methods like setting up a grievance committee. When all efforts of rebellion failed they just accepted their fate and turned to self-interest at the expense of group behaviour.
  • Destroyed, isolated and obedient
  • Elements of pathological prisoner syndrome were seen:
  • Loss of personal identity: Prisoners felt deindividuated, referred to each other by ID number instead of name and rarely spoke about outside life.
  • Arbitrary control: Increased difficulty in coping with increasing stronger control and unpredictable unfairness by guards, the prisoners just accepted their fate and went along with everything - learned helplessness.
  • Dependency and emasculation: Prisoners had to depend on guards for everything from toilet breaks to cleaning their teeth (they were handcuffed and blindfolded), These became privileges and required permission. Smocks resembled dresses and without underwear the prisoners had to sit like girls. Guards taunted prisoners and called them 'sissies' or 'girls', emasculating the prisoners. 

  
  

Conclusion: Situation has a bigger effect on behaviour than disposition. People adapt what they think they should do in a situation instead of acting based on their individual thinking. Bad people do not make bad places but instead it is the other way round.

Strengths:

• Validity due to high degree of control - Laboratory experiment - 'Healthy, normal citizens' to exclude EV of disposition, guards and prisoners roles randomly assigned.
• Realistic setting: Participants began to believe they were really in an prison environment - arrest of prisoners, prison procedure, uniforms, prison environment - could show the experiment has some ecological validity
• Qualitative data - Participants conversations and behaviour - provides rich, in-depth data
• Quantitative data - Videos, counted accounts of a particular behaviour seen in participants - provides more objective data

Weaknesses:

• Participants were aware they were in an experiment - could have affected their behaviour making the experiment invalid although the situation was said to have felt 'real'.
• Participants were paid $15 a day - which may have affected the participants behaviour so they receive their pay
• Only male subjects - generalization - invalid
• Difficult to replicate - unreliable
• Researcher bias - Zimbardo himself participated in the experiment (superintendent)

Ethics

• Prisoners suffered mental abuse, harassment and having to earn basic rights (eg. toilet visits) for 5 days which could have caused psychological damage.
• Right to withdraw - Participants may not have known they could withdraw since one prisoner spread a rumor they could not leave and Zimbardo did not tell them the rumor was false
• Deception - Participants allocated the role of prisoner were not told they would be arrested as induction