Stanford Prison Experiment

Have you ever thought about the social roles you are given? Or the social roles you have to enter into willingly or unwillingly. Whether we accept it or not, each person has different social roles in different areas of their lives. In your own home, you may be a mother or a father, but in your parents' home, you may be just a child. How do the roles you are assigned in these different spheres allow your behavior to change?

(Ad for participants)

This is exactly what Zimbardo, a social psychologist, wanted to know. In 1971, Zimbardo placed a newspaper advertisement and selected twenty-four undergraduate students from among seventy people to play the roles of prison guards or prisoners. In the process, half of those selected were picked up from their homes, just as a criminal would be picked up. Police cars came to their homes, told the students that they were accused of a crime, handcuffed them, and arrested them. The selected students were placed in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Here, they were given uniforms with an identification number on the front and back, so that the students would be called the prisoner they were numbered as, rather than their real identity. 

(Handcuffing Prisoner #8612)

The students did not know what they were getting into. They had just all volunteered for a two-week experiment in prison life. Half of these selected students became prisoners and half became guards, but everyone was randomly selected. All of these students were mentally healthy and "normal" people. The prisoners had to stay in prison for 24 hours, just like in real life, while the guards had to work standard 8-hour shifts. 

How would you behave in this situation? I am sure that everyone who has heard about this experiment has thought, even if only for a short time, what would I do? It cannot be said that these selected students had an experience exactly as they imagined. They were not told exactly what to do or what not to do. Only the guards were ordered not to physically abuse the prisoners and were given mirrored sunglasses that prevented eye contact. Soon after the experiment began, however, the student guards began to change. What kind of change? The guards were now in power and the prisoners had to obey them. If the prisoner-students did not obey and follow the rules given by the guards, their rights were taken away and they were punished. Some of the punishments included not talking to other prisoners, not eating, not sleeping, or showering. But the punishments did not stop there. Many included extras such as cleaning the toilets and forced push-ups while one of the guards stepped on the prisoner's back. After a while, the guards started to punish people just for the sake of punishing them.

I said that all the students selected were psychologically healthy, right? As the experiment progressed, these healthy students started to show pathological behavior. Less than 36 hours later, there was a failed uprising. Prisoner 8412 was crying uncontrollably. In the following days, other inmates began to exhibit stress-related symptoms like prisoner 8412. 

(Prisonor #819 leaves the study.)

Obviously, no one could have predicted the events and behavior of these subjects. This is why this experiment, which was planned for two weeks, lasted only six days. Since the students were basically healthy, it did not take long for them to recover from the experiment. However, there were some students on whom this experiment had a long-lasting effect. For example, one of the prisoner-students who was released before the end of the experiment became a clinical psychologist and began working in the San Francisco penal system. He decided to focus on improving the relationship between prisoners and guards, both because of what he had experienced and what he had observed in the experiment. Some people have said that this experiment has added a lot to what they know about themselves and human nature. 

In fact, on the one hand, these students have always lived this experience in their own lives without realizing it. In other social roles we are given, such as parent-child, teacher-student, doctor-patient, boss-employee, and male-female, the person with power is more authoritarian. These students adapted the real-life roles only to the prison environment. When talking about the process at the end of the experiment, many guard students said that they were surprised by the person a uniform transformed them into. In fact, we choose who we are by the roles we take on, just as in this experiment the prison guards were not told to be a strict tyrant, but they were. This role was a role they chose.

And what role do you play in this life?