Talk:Stanford prison experiment

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Stanford prison experiment was a good article, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Delisted version: December 5, 2006
This article is considered to fall outside the scope of the Version 0.5 test release, which is of limited size. It is now being held ready for a later version.

Contents

[edit] Question

Question: Does this article by Carlos Prescott have any relevance? http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=content&id=17075&repository=0001_article

Are the additions by MK (questioning Zimbardo's methodology, starting with "It can be argued...") appropriate for the article, or are they an example of the kind of editorializing that should generally be avoided? It struck me as rather tangential to the main article body. --141.20.103.68 10:31, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

There are obviously different interpretations possible. One interpretation was already included in the article before I edited it. As there are other possible interpretations, I think they should be presented. All of the facts I used in what I wrote came directly from Professor Zimbardo's own reports. MK 21:33, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It's more NPOV to say "Some have argued that" or "critics contend that" followed by criticism from actual relevant authorities. There's no shortage of criticism of the experiment from relevant authorities, so there's no excuse not to use it and cite where it's coming from.

This site is about reporting specific facts, not hypothetical conjectures like "It can be argued"

--Taak 00:40, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Note: This article contains a few misguided facts. A few of them I list here:

  • The abuse was not initiated by Zimbardo himself, as the article suggested. It was initiated by the guards. Zimbardo, also played no part in the abuse. Although there were many times he overlooked the activities undertaken within the prison.
  • Zimbardo did not take an overly active role in the experiment. He had both roles of psychologist, and Prision Superintendant. Although he admits he should not have taken on this dual role, because he did indeed become absorbed into it.
  • It is also worth noting that the participants underwent "Normality Screening" to establish their stability. It is written that they were checked for normality, but this was the phrase used.
  • It should also be noted that everyone was paid for the whole 14 days, despite the experiment being called off after the 6th day.

Should we be linking to Abu Ghraib? Is it at all relavant to this article? →Raul654 23:40, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I thought it was similar... a bunch of soldiers were made prison guards with no training in that area, left to their own devices with no guidelines and no supervision, and ended up humiliating the prisoners to absurdity. Seemed like a pretty clear-cut example of what happened in the SPE to me. --Taak 03:08, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

Ok, but put that instead of "see also" and letting the reader guess what the relavance is. Btw - just so you know, 'see also' is depricated. →Raul654 03:27, May 1, 2004 (UTC)

where does it say that? --Taak 14:55, 1 May 2004 (UTC)
I'm also curious, Raul. "See also" is of course second-best to working the applicable reference into the article text, but are you saying that in situations where that's not appropriate, there's something other than "See also" which should be used? -- Antaeus Feldspar 18:06, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think it's entirely applicable.

It applies to any situation where one human is strongly in control of another, or groups respectively thereof. Examples abound, particularly in sitations where force or significant coersion can be applied by the party in charge without reasonable fear or assumption of punishment for their actions. Usual examples are: Police vs. Suspect (police generally are given immense powers, such as to recommend charges be filed, have the authority to legally use deadly force with less justification than the layman, act without asking questions, and let a prosecutor sort out the issues), Prison Guard vs. Convict.

Less extreme examples would be Judge vs. Defendent in a criminal trial (Judge has full jurisdiction to act in his courtroom, relief may only be found after a punishment immediately begins), Large corporation with (pragmatically) unlimited assets suing an individual (the normal kind, not a rich one), or a Professor vs. Student (the professor can deny reasonable grades, good job references, other opportunities), and Boss vs. Worker (the boss can fire a worker for any reason, particularly in an "Employment at will" area).

--JD 01:19, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

just a short question. am i allowed to use this images in the german wiki? thank you --84.168.195.244 19:04, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Novelization?

Does anyone else remember a book about a high school classroom situation/experiment in which some were made to wear arm bands and hall passes were strictly controlled (or something) and it was all related to Nazis (or something)? There was a book in my childhood library that, knowing what I know now, seems to be very much based on the Stanford Prison Experiment. jengod 01:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I saw the movie based on the book - I believe it was called "The Wave." Not sure if the book had the same title but a google search should tell you pretty quickly. Very good movie and really makes one think!

It was "The Third Wave". There was a TV movie based on it, and a condensed version appeared in The Whole Earth Catalog, circa 1980.
I recently (within the last year or so) read an article on CNN.com about a school that actually did that. You should be able to do a search and find it. ONUnicorn 20:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Apparently the book was also just called *The Wave* (or they changed the name). I found it at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Wave-Laurel-Leaf-Books/dp/0440993717/sr=8-1/qid=1169694733/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-8861222-8165501?ie=UTF8&s=books), and according to that site it's based on actual events in 1969 at a Palo Alto High School. KathL 03:14, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

"It was a variation of the Milgram experiment" - while both are often used in psychological discussion as examples of poor ethics and questionable risk/benefit ratio experiements, the two are not similar in many ways beyond the obvious ethical problems present in both and the acquiantanship of the two researchers. The Stanford Prison Experiment was not meant to be a continuation or follow-up to Milgram's work, and this line should be removed. 69.118.247.101 19:46, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ethics

Should there be more discussion of the reasons it was considered unethical? I learned about this in a weekend course, and the instructor quoted some arguments I hadn't thought about. Rachel 23:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] General Principles

It is a grave error to think that an experiment will reveal a 'general principle'. A truly 'general principle' can be revealed by any activity or event in life - real life. The truth of any explanation of an event should be judged against a general series of events rather than one individual isolated event.

Too often isolated explanations are given for events which only explain that particular event rather than trying to get to the fundamental understanding which caused that event. In most cases the explanation of human behaviour is the simple one - HUMAN NATURE and not any isolated EXCUSE - ie the usual explanation is that the person is acting UNUSUALLY - brought on by some outside force rather than the simple explanation - it is natural.

Or to put it another way: why conduct an experiment to discover an explanation of human behaviour when we have a few thousand years of actual real life? General principles controlling human behaviour do not change over time.

See http://homepage.eircom.net/~utinstinct1/index.htm

[edit] Clarification of Contract/etc.

Were the volunteers contractually obliged/etc. to stay for the entire two weeks? I'm assuming so, based on the 'parole' offer, but I'm not sure. Zetetic Apparatchik 14:30, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

No, they weren't. According to Zimbardo's report, they could have left at any time, and would simply not recieve the $15.00 per day compensation. Several of the "prisoners" did this after a few days, because of the psychological stress, before the "parole" factor was introduced.~e.o.t.d~ 08:15, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 0.5 nom

This article is considered to fall outside the scope of the Version 0.5 test release, which is of limited size. It is now being held ready for a later version.

Jaranda wat's sup 21:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Picture of 416

What exactly does the picture of Prisoner 416 show? I can't make it out at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Spe-deloused.jpg

A person with a bag (box?) over his head, holding both hands against a wall (he's facing right); the picture title would indicate he is being deloused. Raul654 10:20, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Origins of Abuse

Reading the article implies, somewhat indirectly but without any real clarification, that the abusive tactics of the guards arose from the guards, and argues that they thus came from the "situation" that the guards and prisoners were put into. Much of the analysis of the experiment comes directly with the description of facts, in the form of "the experimenters argued..." However, if you take a look at the articles crossreferenced at the bottom (specifically, the "Lie of the Stanford Prison Experiment" and "Stuationist Ethics" articles), you get a very different view of the entire experiment, in which the organizers of the experiment are blamed much more for bringing the abusive ideas to the guards' minds. In this case, the prison feels much more like the [Milgram Experiment] than some novel "descent into brutality" experiment that it is frequently seen as.

So the question: is the article NPOV? Is saying "they argued that..." good enough to imply that there are significant (and well researched, the Slate article referenced extensively) criticisms of the experiment's conclusions? I think the article needs a good bit of re-writing and some inclusion of point by point argumentation in the experiment results section. In this case, the objective facts of the experiment do not seem clear and should not be presented as such.

Apologies for any Wiki mistakes, I don't edit here often.

--192.35.35.35 16:54, 27 June 2006 (UTC) Alex Baxter

[edit] GA Re-Review and In-line citations

Note: This article has a very small number of in-line citations for an article of its size and currently would not pass criteria 2b.
Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. Agne 23:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

PS: I would also work on converting the "Popular culture" reference into a prose format, instead of bullet points. Agne 23:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reasons for GA Delisting

This article's GA status has been revoked because it fails criterion 2. b. of 'What is a Good Article?', which states;

(b) the citation of its sources using inline citations is required (this criterion is disputed by editors on Physics and Mathematics pages who have proposed a subject-specific guideline on citation, as well as some other editors — see talk page).

LuciferMorgan 08:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This article or section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone and/or spelling

it may not have the best 'style' but i wonder of the subject matter allows for a 'better style.' is this tag still needed? the article is certainly easy to follow and i've seen worse articles without this tag. El hombre de haha 19:43, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 60 Minutes 1998 episode

Didn't 60 Minutes interview several of the particpants of the experiment in 1998? If I remember correctly, the guards that were interviewed admitted several things that pokes holes in the results of the experiment. First, they all admitted that they were not given any rules. Second, many of the guards admitted that they saw Cool Hand Luke and intentionally mimicked the guards in the movie. The idea of the mirrored sunglasses actually came from "John Wayne" because he thought it looked cool in the movie Cool Hand Luke and it helped him get into the role of the warden in the movie. Also, I believe they also admitted that if they had not seen the movie Cool Hand Luke, the experiment probably would have turned out differently. Does anyone else remember this episode of 60 Minutes from 1998? LegitReality

There may well be info on this on the CBS news website, though I'm not sure how long they keep things around. Anyway, it's worth taking a look, try http://www.cbsnews.com Cgingold 22:04, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] hypothesis of experiment

So, the article says: "Zimbardo and his team intended to test the hypothesis that prison guards and convicts were self-selecting of a certain disposition that would naturally lead to poor conditions". What the heck does the guards and prisoners were self selecting of a certain disposition etc. mean? The parcipitants were certainly not self selecting. They were assigned roles by the experimenter. Is this really a clumsy way of saying that the hypothesis was that the subjects would pick up attitudes that would lead to poor conditions? Pdarley

I believe that the hypothesis is meant to refer to prison guards and convicts in real life being self-selecting and so that the experiment should have produced a less violent outcome. People have to choose to be criminals and prison guards in real life as opposed to the experiment. The study is purported to have found the opposite, that in a high pressure situation there will always be conflict between those in control and those not in control. Knightw 02:53, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not really sure where this would go on the talk page, but two things:

  1. "The Third Wave" is a phenomenon that occurred in a Palo Alto high school when teaching them about World War 2. The SPE was an experiment held in the basement of Stanford's psychology building. The two are utterly unrelated.
  2. There is a new book out by the SPE's PI, Zimbardo. It's called The Lucifer Effect and goes into a day-by-day recounting of the entire experiment, and should be looked at. I'm not enough of a Wikipedian to actually mess with the article itself.

Saraid 18:13, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia Section

at the start of veronica mars (season 3) the had a episode which was similar to this, shoulfit be mentioned like the big brother episode/task 59.167.214.31 03:31, 27 June 2007 (UTC) / peachey88(sorry im not logged in)

This isn't a trivia section, it's a references section. Why is it marked as a trivia section? --Perryar 22:43, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Web Results 1 - 10 of about 39 for "stanford prison" "" "kid nation" "". (0.12 seconds)

< http://google.as/search?q=%22stanford+prison%22+%22%22+%22kid+nation%22+%22%22 >.

Thirty-nine results comparing Stanford prison to Kid Nation.

Thank You,

[[ hopiakuta Please do sign your signature on your message. ~~ Thank You. -]] 12:45, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Naming - capitals?

Shouldn't the article title be capitalized? Strikes me it's the proper name of an event, or at least has come to be regarded as such. Deiz talk 05:37, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Contradiction

In the "Goals and Methods" section, it is said that those who played the guards were chosen for this role, while those who were in the role of prisoners did not:

The participants who had been chosen to play the part of prisoners were told simply to wait in their homes to be "called" on the day the experiment began. Without any other warning, they were "charged" with armed robbery and arrested by the actual Palo Alto police department, who cooperated in this part of the experiment.
The prisoners were put through a full booking procedure by the police, including fingerprinting, having their mug shots taken, and information regarding their Miranda rights. They were transported to the mock prison where they were strip-searched, deloused, and given their new identities.

As far as I can see, the above information means that the "prisoners" thought they actually had been arrested. They may not have connected being told they would "be "called"", with their arrest, if it was done convincingly as above. However, in the "Results" section, we see the following:

Zimbardo argued that the prisoner participants had internalized their roles, based on the fact that some had stated that they would accept parole even with the attached condition of forfeiting all of their experiment-participation pay. Yet, when their parole applications were all denied, none of the prisoner participants quit the experiment.

This implies that the "prisoners" were there by choice.

Which was it? Were these people there by choice, or did they think it was real? I find the former hard to believe, otherwise WHY THE F**K didn't they just walk out?

WikiReaderer 18:08, 26 October 2007 (UTC)


There's another contradiction. The opening paragraph of the article reads:

"Twenty four undergraduates were selected out of 70 to play the roles of both guards and prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. The students who were assigned to be the prisoners were paid $15 dollars a day as an incentive."

However, the "Goals and Methods" section states that:

"Participants were recruited via a newspaper ad and offered $15 a day ($77 adjusted for inflation in 2008) to participate in a two-week "prison simulation." Of the 75 respondents, Zimbardo and his team selected the 24 males whom they deemed to be the most psychologically stable and healthy. These participants were predominantly white and middle-class."

Which one was it? --Lareine (talk) 02:33, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Inappropriate use of the term "sadism"

This article repeatedly misuses the term "sadism" to refer to what might be more correctly termed cruelty. Sadism is a sexual paraphilia. 195.33.105.17 (talk) 16:37, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

If I recall correctly "sadism" was the word used by the experimenter, Philip Zimbardo? Subdolous (talk) 22:43, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
A lot of people misuse the term "sadism" in that way. So the question is, did Zimbardo really suggest that the guard's progressive cruelty was sexual in nature - or did he use the term sadism in its nonsexual sense? I agree that cruelty and sexual sadism are separate phenomena - a military drill instructor or prison ward may enjoy exercising power and cruelty in an emotional but nonsexual way. Such a person is often wrongly called a sadist - wrongly, because he is not a sadist in any sexual, paraphilic sense. If Zimbardo did not mean sexual sadism, we should change the wording and not link to articles such as sadism and masochism. If he meant sexual sadism, what led him to this conclusion? --84.155.225.124 11:14, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, in the Stanford Prison Experiment the prisoners were sexually abused, so I would say sadism is appropriate, along with the use of the word by Zimbardo himself. It's probably better to unlink the words to the sadism article, which I will do now, but I don't think the wording itself is inappropriate. Subdolous 07:20, 3 December 2007 (UTC)