Implications for Defence Managers and Commanders of the Findings of Zimbardos Stanford Prison Experiment - Research Paper Example

Implications for Defence Managers and Commanders of the Findings of Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment Introduction 'Home sweet home' or 'living in a peaceful society' are two relative terms. It's relative in the sense that, our society has built up some primitives that define what is wrong and what is right, of course from the ethical perspective and, we are maintaining its line of control. But have we ever thought that one line of protocol is better suited in black and white In reality, the situation stands like as if you are experimenting to get the velocity of one single electron granting it as a particle and, forgot the rest of quantum mechanics! Take one prisoner as an example; he is kept inside a closed room with only one opening ornamented with hard iron rods but, what happens when one good human being is put in an evil place Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumphs "A prison is any situation in which one person's freedom and liberty are denied by virtue of the arbitrary power exercised by another person or group. Thus our prisons of concrete and steel are really only metaphors for the social prisons we create and maintain through enforced poverty, racism, sexism, and other forms of social injustice." (Committee on the Judiciary, 114) The above quote is what Dr. Philip Zimbardo, a Ph. D. in Psychology from Stanford University derived from his famous Stanford Prison Experiment. The Stanford prison experiment was a psychological study of "human responses to captivity and its behavioral effects on both authorities and inmates in prison". The experiment was conducted in 1971 in Palo Alto, California by a team of researchers led by psychologist Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. An Overview of Experiment As per the scheduled plan, voluntary participants were recruited via a newspaper ad and offered $15 a day to participate in a two-week "prison simulation." An astonishing number of 75 students responded. The applicants were interviewed and tested "to eliminate candidates with psychological problems, medical disabilities, or a history of crime or drug abuse" (Stanford Prison Experiment website). Twenty-four students from the U.S. and Canada, a group of healthy, intelligent, middle-class males, were considered for the experiment and were promised of $15/day. They were divided into two groups, to act as guards and prisoners. A former prisoner who had served nearly seventeen years behind bars served as consultant. A prison was constructed in the basement of Stanford's Psychology Department building, To create prison cells, doors were taken off some laboratory rooms and replaced by specially made doors with steel bars and cell numbers. Bars on cells were put in place and had three prisoners living in small quarters night and day. A small closet, about two feet wide and two feet deep was constructed to act as "The Hole" for solitary confinement. The local police co-operated in sweeping through the town, picking up suspects who were actually the selected volunteers, they were put into a car, driven to the Stanford county jail for further processing and subsequently brought to the make-shift jail. The prisoners were each searched, stripped naked, and deloused. The prisoner was then issued a uniform. The main part of this uniform was a dress, or smock, which each prisoner wore at all times with no underclothes. On the smock, in front and in back, was his prison ID number. On each prisoner's right ankle was a heavy chain, bolted on and worn at all times. Rubber sandals were the footwear, and each prisoner covered his hair with a stocking cap made from a woman's nylon stocking. The entire experiment was recorded and videotaped. The guards weren't given any specific training; they made up their own rules upon supervision of Warden David Jaffe, an undergraduate from Stanford University. They were dressed in identical uniforms of khaki, carried a whistle and a billy club borrowed from the police. But most of all, they wore special sun-glasses "which prevented anyone from seeing their eyes or reading their emotions". As the prisoners, the guards were also subject to constant observation. At 2.30 a.m. the prisoners were "rudely awakened" by whistles for a series of "counts", the counts served the purpose of familiarizing the prisoners with their numbers But more importantly, these events provided a regular occasion for the guards to exercise control over the prisoners. This was the beginning of a series of confrontation between the guards and the prisoners. Push-ups were a common form of physical punishment imposed by the guards to punish infractions of the rules or displays of improper attitudes toward the guards or the institution; such was often used in the Nazi concentration camps. The problem occurred on the second day of the experiment. The prisoners displayed a sign of rebellion by removing their stocking caps, ripping off their numbers, and barricading themselves inside the cells by putting their beds against the door. They also taunted and cursed the guards who were very much angry at such actuations of the prisoners. The guards took control of the situation themselves. The remaining guards on stand-by were called and they started to quell the rebellion by using a fire extinguisher, pushing away the prisoners from the door. The guards broke into each cell, stripped the prisoners naked, took the beds out, forced the ringleaders of the prisoner rebellion into solitary confinement, and generally began to harass and intimidate the prisoners. After the rebellion was temporarily crushed, the guards used psychological tactics by putting up a "privilege cell" for the prisoners least involved in the rebellion. These prisoners got back their uniforms, their beds, were allowed to wash and brush their teeth, and to eat special food in the presence of the other rebellious prisoners. The effect was to break the solidarity among prisoners. Confusion ensued when the guards interchanged the situation by putting the "good" prisoners into the "bad" cells, and some of the "bad" prisoners into the "good" cells creating a suspicion that there was some connivance with the guards from among the prisoners. Zimbardo explained that their ex-convict consultants informed them that this similar situation had been used by "real guards in real prisons to break prisoner alliances" the work done was "Divide and Rule" (Stanford Prison Experiment website). As a result of the rebellion, the guards started viewing the prisoners as real troublemakers which resulted in them becoming even strict, stepping up surveillance, control and aggression, leading to sever courses of harassment and they became especially tough on the leader of the rebellion, Prisoner #5401. The staff later learned that this prisoner was a self-styled radical activist who had volunteered to "expose" their study which he thought to be an establishment tool to control student radicals. He also planned to sell the story to an underground newspaper, but then "he fell so completely into the role of prisoner that he was proud to be elected leader of the Stanford County Jail Grievance Committee." One of the prisoners, #8612, showed signs of emotional disturbance, disorganized thinking, uncontrollable crying, and rage. After screening and interviews, the staff was convinced that he needed to be released, and so he was the first one to be taken out from the Stanford jail. At the end of only 6 days, as the experiment proceeded, several guards became progressively sadistic. Experimenters said that approximately one-third of the guards exhibited genuine sadistic tendencies. Zimbardo and his staff decided to close down the mock prison. Interestingly, most of the guards were upset when the experiment concluded early. The majority had become prisoners or guards, no longer able to clearly differentiate between role-playing and self. There were dramatic changes in virtually every aspect of the prisoners' and guards' behavior, the way they acted, the way they talked, the way they stood, and the way they felt. In less than a week, the experience of imprisonment undid, although temporarily, a lifetime of learning; human values were suspended, self-concepts were challenged, and the ugliest, most base pathological side of human nature surfaced. (Committee on the Judiciary, 111) The conditions to which the volunteers were subjected in this jail, caused certain behavioral changes. Similarities could be drawn between this and the Milgram experiment conducted in 1961 at Yale University by Stanley Milgram, Zimbardo's former high school friend. Prisoners suffered, and accepted, sadistic and humiliating treatment from the guards. Many showed signs of emotional disturbances in the end. The prisoners had internalized their roles when they "accepted parole in exchange for forfeiting all of their experiment-participation pay" (Answers.com). The result is also used to illustrate cognitive dissonance theory and the power of authority. In a prison riot, less than one month after the experiment, which occurred at Attica Prison in New York, the prisoners held the guards hostage and demanded that they be accorded their basic human rights. Deaths occurred when New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered the National Guard to take the prison by full force. Observations made from Experiment Zimbardo explained that "prisons dehumanize people". The prisoners in Attica demanded that they be treated like human beings, and the "prisoners" in the experiment felt the same even if they knew they were just "acting in an experiment". Zimbardo says, "The question now is how to change our institutions so that they promote human values rather than destroy them." He noted that decades after the experiment took place, prison conditions and correctional policies in the United States have become even more punitive and destructive. This is the result of the politicization of corrections and racialization of arrests and sentencing, with more African-Americans and Hispanics in prison. Media also reported "heightened fear of violent crimes even as statistics show that violent crimes have decreased." (Stanford Prison Experiment website) The most effective thing was psychological pressure, Zimbardo explains. Men can be broken with physical force or physical abuse, but the psychological pressure is much more effective. You can resist physical force, hate the person who uses it, but subtle psychological pressure such as brainwashing in the Koren war, and police interrogations of suspects is much more effective." (Committee on the Judiciary, 112). The guards in the SPE became tyrannical in their arbitrary use of power. They enjoyed the simple act of controlling some other person. They were corrupted by the power of their roles and became quite inventive in their techniques of breaking the spirit of the prisoners, making them feel worthless. (112) Zimbardo explains that individual behavior is largely under the control of social forces and environmental contingencies, things that occur, rather than some vague notions of personality traits, character, will power, or other empirically invalidated constructs. In psychology, the results of the experiment are said to support situational attributions behavior rather than dispositional attributions. In other words, it seemed the situation caused the participants' behavior, rather than anything inherent in their individual personalities. There is a need for prison reform and this starts out in the change in the operating procedures in the penal institutions, a change in the conditions of society which "makes us all prisoners, less productive, less free to grow and less concerned about our brothers than about our own survival" (115). The "Lucifer Effect" refers to a story in the bible, of God's favorite angel, Lucifer, who was transformed into Satan when he challenged God's authority. Man also experiences dramatic transformation as he encounters experiences and as he meets in his environment force that transforms him into evil. In his overview, Zimbardo provides vivid descriptions of torture in the Inquisition, in the massacre in Rwanda, the rape of Nanking, and other venues where human nature has run amok. The SPE helps make sense of corporate malfeasance, of "administrative evil," and most particularly, the abuse and torture of prisoners by American Military Police in Iraq's infamous Abu Ghraib prison. (Zimbardo) The lessons learned from SPE can be applied to an understanding of the abuses of Abu Ghraib. Zimbardo was an expert witness for one of the accused Military Policemen involved in the abuses, Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick. This man earned 9 medals and awards and a good record and reputation in the military prior to his assignment as prison guard, but things changed when he was assigned as guard on Tier 1A Night Shift. Zimbardo gave a detailed depiction of what it was like to walk in the boots of Chip for 12-hour night shifts without a day off for 40 straight nights. Chip got sentenced to 8 years of hard time in military prison, was dishonorably discharged, disgraced, and deprived of 22 years of retirement savings, was divorced by his wife and is now nearly a broken man. Zimbardo takes the blame on the System, the Military Command and the Bush Administration, that maintained the interrogation centers across military prisons. All these have become "seminal cause of the abuses in a leadership that was dysfunctional, irresponsible, conflicting or just absent." (Zimbardo: The Lucifer Effect) In other words, Chip was introduced into the System, it was not his nature to be inhuman and brutal, but like in the SPE, the situation forced him to be brutal and abusive to the prisoners. For forty straight nights, Chip was on duty, his good nature was transformed into what Zimbardo calls the "Lucifer Effect". What could be expected of the Abu Gharib guards trained as combat soldiers, when the mere actors in the SPE started displaying abusive behavior on granted authority Zimbardo says that majority of people succumb to situational forces, but not all. These people are heroes. He gives examples of those heroes as Christina Maslach, the young woman who forced him to terminate the experiment at Stanford. Pvt. Joe Darby, the Abu Ghraib whistle blower who exposed the abuses and tortures taking place, thereby forcing their termination, is another example. Zimbardo mentions "The Banality of Heroism". He makes mention of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, whistle blowers, and those who perform sudden acts of bravery on the battle field, or of spontaneous courage on the home front, or those heroes who have never before done anything else that was memorable but they responded to the call to service when they heard of it. Anyone can act heroically by being ready to do the good thin, to help others in need when situational demands give us that rare opportunity. The military establishment was unwilling to accept any of the many mitigating circumstances Zimbardo had detailed that directly contributed to Chip's abusive behavior and should have reduced his harsh prison sentence. The prosecutor and judge refused to consider any idea that situational forces could influence individual behavior. Zimbardo noted that theirs was the standard individualism conception that is shared by most people in the present culture. It is the idea that the fault was entirely "dispositional," all the consequence of Sgt. Chip Frederick's freely chosen rational decision to engage in evil. Many of the "independent" investigative reports clearly laid the blame for these abuses at the feet of senior officers and on, what Zimbardo called, their dysfunctional or "absentee landlord" leadership. These reports chaired by generals and former high-ranking government officials made evident that the Military and Civilian Chain of Command had built a "bad barrel" in which a bunch of good soldiers became transformed into so-called "bad apples" (Preface: The Lucifer Effect). Implication of Defense Managers Zimbardo was one who worked on psychology of prisoners and their guards and came to a global conclusion saying that human being behave like the situation in which he is put to. But, he worked with only 24 people a pretty less sample size. After observing the behavior of 24 people, its very tough to give one generic solution. The implication which came into the picture was for defense personnel. Civilians started thinking that in prisons only these sought of activities happen to exist and their visualization turned wrong about the defense managers and commanders. Of-course the incident of Abu Ghraib strengthened their minds which brought down complexity and tough situation to the defense managers and prison guards. Their role is to regulate and govern the prisoners but, how one can expect that the criminals (most of which) can be controlled with calm minds In one direction there is their job which they have to maintain in any cost and in the other side of way, is a fear of Frederick. Zimbardo recommended few ideas about the improvement of the system which has conflict with the commander officers directly or indirectly which are discussed below: 1. Simple solutions for complex problems of crime and law enforcement. He thought of a simple solution; now the question is how simple it should be Punishment is given to the defaulters so that crimes can be lower down. Now in jail, if they are treated peacefully and allowed to lead a life which is at par the life of a normal gentle person then, how far the crime will be taken under control 2. We should put the question of prison reform in the broader context of societal reforms and social injustice which may account for why many to commit crimes in the first place. Any type of changes is welcome if it needs to. Here, the question of prison reform had come means something is going in wrong way. It affects the mentality of prisoner and (or) guards. 3. Remove the cloak of secrecy from the prisons. It means whatever is going on, make transparent to outside world. Every time its not possible. A Prison might have some confidential things and if it gets disclosed then, problem will come into the lives of civilians. 4. Guards must be subjected to better training for the job that society imposes on them. This is the most important conclusion given by Zimbardo after his experiment. The consequences happened in Abu Ghraib may be just a coincidence that it explains Zimbardo's experimental result. It does not mean these sought of activities are going on in all the prisons. By this conclusion, government also started to thinking that, prisoners really need some training or renovation. From defense managers perspective it's a big issue as, in one sense they are said to undergo training which means they are supposed to do their job in effective means and in other side, they have to be transparent to the exterior whatever they are doing. Zimbardo explains that prison guards are in a situation that they are prisoners too. They are sacrificed to the demands of the public to be punitive, not to be soft. They are prisoners no less than the other prisoners. Social scientists and business training personnel should be called upon to help design and carry out a special training for the guards. The perceived roles of the guards and prisoners should be changed. Instead of calling them guard, you could call them counselors or teachers, and the prisoners as trainees. The important change is the reinforcement each teacher would get. Bonuses and advancement would be contingent upon whether the trainees learned new social and technical skills which will enable them to leave the training-rehabilitation center as early as possible and not come back. (Committee on the Judiciary, 117) It is three years and a few days since CBS News published the first photos documenting the systematic abuse, torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. The Bush administration and the American military have worked hard to firmly establish the "few bad apples" explanation of what happened. Eight low-ranking soldiers were convicted, and Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick II, who was found guilty of assault, conspiracy, dereliction of duty and maltreatment of detainees, is now halfway through his eight-year prison sentence. But there are very good reasons to think that Frederick and the others, however despicable their actions, only did what many of us would have done if placed in the same situation, which puts their guilt in a questionable light. Can someone be guilty just for acting like most ordinary human beings When Zimbardo, as an expert witness, interviewed Frederick during his court-martial, these were his impressions: He seemed very much to be a normal young American. His psych assessments revealed no sign of any pathology, no sadistic tendencies, and all his psych assessment scores are in the normal range, as is his intelligence. He had been a prison guard at a small minimal security prison where he performed for many years without incident. there is nothing in his background, temperament, or disposition that could have been a facilitating factor for the abuses he committed at the Abu Ghraib Prison. If someone chooses to commit an illegal act, freely, of their own will, then they are plainly guilty. Conversely, the same act performed by someone acting without free will, compromised by mental illness, perhaps, or the coercion of others, draws no blame. Far less clear is the proper moral attitude toward people who do illegal things in situations where the social context exerts powerful, though perhaps not completely irresistible, forces. Can a person be guilty of a crime if almost everyone, except for a few heroic types, would have done the same thing This is a question for legal theorists and one likely to arise ever more frequently as modern psychology reveals just how much of our activity is determined not consciously, through free choice, but by forces in the social environment. But the more immediate question is why those who set up the conditions that led to Abu Ghraib, or at least made it likely, haven't also been held responsible. When Frederick arrived at Abu Ghraib, abusive practices, authorized from above, were already commonplace. The conditions cited by Zimbardo, the situational recipe for moral disaster, were already in place. The conclusion isn't that Frederick and the others didn't do anything wrong, or that they somehow had an excuse for their actions. But you and I cannot look at Frederick and the other guards as moral monsters, because none of us can know that we'd have acted differently. The evidence suggests that most of us wouldn't have. The coercion of the social context was too powerful. And also, those really responsible for the abuse, on a deeper and more systematic level, still should be brought to justice. They're in the upper tiers of the military chain of command and its civilian leadership; they're in the White House. Today, Frederick will wake up in prison, have his breakfast, take some exercise and face the daily monotony of prison life, something he can expect for the next 1300 days or so. He can be justifiably angry that those responsible for putting him in that setting at Abu Ghraib, where almost anyone would have done the same thing, are today walking around free. Therefore we see that it is the administration and the system which assigns an individual his role responsible for the way and extent to which the person succeeds in enacting it out. Its true that, whatever things have happened in Abu Ghraib was not expected. Hence Few of the strategies for managing personnel are outlined below: The people with the commanding authority of the prison guards and the superintendents should formulate a list of actions that would be undertaken against any guard or anyone in-charge, in the case that he or she violates the rules and regulations set to run the prison and to be followed during interrogation paying due respect and staying within the limits set by the different international conventions stating the right of a prisoner. The people comprising the managerial and the commanding position should organize training and counseling workshop for the prison guard and superintendents to help shade aside the personal hatred and prepare to deal with the prisoners on a professional level. 'Do unto others as you want others to do unto you' (The Bible). They should be guards for guard. Stunned and impartial judgment should be conducted on the defaulters and example should be set for the rest, to not dare to tread the same path. The last but not the least, both the guards and the prisoners should not be forced to lose humanity, prisoners by being subjected to extreme tortures and guards by practicing it. Conclusion From this overwhelming experimental derivations and practical evidences to support it, it is apparent that, there should be measures taken from and effective reforms made in the managerial and commanding positions itself. Though his experiment has been criticized by some social scientists for its treatment of human research subjects but, he reasonably showed that it was ethical as there was no deception. Prisoners were told in advance that, many of their usual rights would be suspended including minimally adequate diet during the study. And of course we saw that, by his research work, the pendulum has swung too far. Its also need to be agreed that, few complexities came into defense managers way of managing too but we have to take the outcome as a whole and if something has been changed in good direction, that we have to accept. Finally, we can conclude that unless and until the people who are pulling the strings in the higher level are reformed, punishing and imprisoning hundreds of people like Frederick will lead to no effective change or renovation in this aspect. In order to bring any change, we have to think in something different way as Zimbaro did, or else We Will Get Changed! References Committee on the Judiciary. Part II: Prisons, Prison Reform, and Prisoners' Rights. House of Representatives, Ninety-second Congress, First Session on Corrections, California. 25 October 1971. 12 March 2008. Haney, Craig and Philip Zimbardo. The Past and Future of U.S. Prison Policy Haney, Craig, Curtis Banks and Philip Zimbardo. Interpersonal Dynamics in Simulated Prison. International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1, 69-97. 11 March 2008. Stanford Prison Experiment website. Zimbardo, Philip. A Situationist Perspective on the Psychology of Prison: Understanding How Good People are Transformed into Perpetrators. Zimbardo, Philip. Overview. The Lucifer Effect. 2006-2008. 12 March 2008. Read More