In 1971, researchers at Stanford University wanted to know “what the psychological effects were of becoming a prisoner or a prison guard” (Source: Stanford Prison Experiment Website). To that aim, they recruited seventy college students to play the roles of prisoners and prison guards. The shocking results of the Stanford Prison Experiment have a lot to teach us about how prison abuses, like the abuses at Abu Gharib, come about.
How the Stanford Prison Experiment was Arranged
The participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment were given standard diagnostic tests before the experiment began, and the test results showed them to be psychologically normal. The tests revealed only average, middle-class young men, not unlike the army reservists who became the prison guards of Abu Gharib.
With the flip of a coin, half of the young men in the Stanford Prison Experiment became prisoners, and half became guards. The researchers then converted a part of their psychology building into a makeshift prison, complete with a “yard” where prisoners could walk and exercise and very real-looking bars that served as doors to their “cells” (which were psychology labs). Just like in a real prison environment, the incoming prisoners were "arrested", strip-searched, de-loused, and given a prison uniform. The guards, too, dressed in khaki guard uniforms, carried a whistle around their necks, and always wore sunglasses.
The guards were given no training and very little guidance from the Stanford Prison Experiment supervisors; they were told to keep the prisoners under control, but not to use physical force. Just like in Abu Gharib, the lack of training and lack of explicit guidance on controlling the prisoners turned out to have horrible consequences.
The Prisoners Rebel, the Guards React
It only took two days in the Stanford Prison Experiment for the fake prisoners to begin rebelling against their fake prison guards, and their rebellion was met with a heavy-handed response. Guards fired fire extinguishers into their cells, stripped the prisoners naked, and generally began harassing the prisoners. Some of the Stanford Prison Experiment prisoners even found themselves in “solitary confinement”.
Realizing that they were outnumbered and that physical control alone wouldn’t be enough, the Stanford Prison Experiment guards began to use psychological intimidation and control rather than just force – very similar to the tactics used by the US military guards against their prisoners in Abu Gharib. In fact, some of the photos of the Stanford Prison Experiment show prisoners with bags over their heads and guards taunting them – hauntingly similar to some of the photos of the Abu Gharib abuses.
By this point in the experiment, the guards had begun to see themselves as “real” guards, and the prisoners were beginning to see themselves as “real” prisoners. Even the researchers themselves began to get into the role without realizing it, acting as allies to the prison guards as prisoner behavior worsened. At one point the researchers refused a young man's request to be excused from the experiment, because they believed he was "faking" his psychological distress. Only when his uncontrollable sobbing did not relent did the researchers finally agree to let him go home.
Although the experiment was supposed to last six weeks, the researchers pulled the plug after only two weeks because the experiment was clearly out of control.
Dr. Philip Zimbardo Defends Abu Gharib's Prison Guards
Thirty-two years after the Stanford Prison Experiment, its head researcher, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, served as an expert witness defending the behavior of Sgt. Chip Frederick, one of Abu Gharib’s prison guards. His defense? In the Stanford Prison Experiment, Dr. Zimbardo instructed his undergraduate prison guards that it was absolutely necessary for them to control the prisoners, but they could not use physical force to do it. Without any further guidance than this, when his "guards" came under stress, they resorted to psychological torture, humiliation, and dehumanization to control the prisoners.
With this lack of training and proper supervision, Zimbardo says, the same outcome as the Stanford Prison Experiment was inevitable at Abu Gharib. Zimbardo placed the blame on the supervisors, asserting that the behavior of the untrained army reservists, much like the untrained undergraduate “prison guards” in the Stanford Prison Experiment, had already been predicted by his own Stanford Prison Experiment (Source: Wired, 2/28/08).
K. N. Singer - There are some pros and some cons to being a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. The pros are that I can and do write about anything ...
