The Buchtelite

Issue date: 10/25/07 Section: News

Students were divided into groups of prisoners and jailers by the flip of a coin to research the psychology of imprisonment. The experiment produced extreme results, which caused it to be stopped prematurely.

"Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated," Zimbardo said in a statement on his Web site. "In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress."

He said participants were unaware of the roles they would play. They were told they would be contacted within a certain time frame. The students selected as jailers were contacted. However, the prisoners were picked up and "arrested" by local police working with the experiment, who took them directly to jail. The jail was actually a basement of a building on Stanford's campus.

Zimbardo explained that this was important because it made students lose their freedom rather than give it up for the experiment.

"If freedom was given up," he said, "it could be taken back."

All of these examples were then compared to the incidents of mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison in 2003.

During the Abu Ghraib hearings, the defense team called Zimbardo as an expert witness. However, he said his testimony did nothing for the defense.

Zimbardo argued that the soldiers were not properly supervised and they were the bottom of the military chain of command and untrained for the job at hand.

He argued that, as in the Stanford Prison Experiment, the jailers in uniform without supervision begin a transformation, regardless of whether they were normal people who lived next door.

He said by the jailers wearing uniforms - in both Abu Ghraib and Stanford - it changed their outward appearance and allowed them to become a member of a group.

The psychologist then compared that to the way the KKK form in groups and de-individualize themselves through their hoods. Through this, he said, people can change and those who were once perceived as normal and good are now capable of evil.

Continued...

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