The Stanford Prison Experiment Hits the Big Screen

Prisoner 819 did a bad thing.

Prisoner 819 did a bad thing.

…

If you have a Ph.D. in social psychology like I do, then you probably know exactly what this chant means and where it comes from. If not, here’s a brief summary of the Stanford Prison Experiment—one of the most historically important studies in the behavioral sciences.

The Stanford Prison Experiment in Brief

Now depicted in a major film, Phil Zimbardo’s renowned study of 24 college students who were subjects in a simulation of a prison scenario stands as one of the most significant studies on the nature of human social behavior (see Zimbardo, 2007). In short, participants in this 1971 study (all young adult males) were randomly assigned to serve as either mock-prisoners or mock-guards in the basement of a university psychology building. The study sought to examine if the situational demands of the roles of the participants played a significant part in their resultant behavior. Answer? Yes!

“Guards” quickly became sadistic and crazed with power while “prisoners” quickly became anxious, confused, and pathetic. “Guards” used nasty, demeaning, disrespectful, abusive, and cruel tactics in dealing with the “prisoners.” And the “prisoners” responded with abnormally stressed and emotionally strong responses. In laypersons’ terms, they freaked out.

Social Roles in Evolutionary Perspective

The study had to be stopped after only a few days so as to avert physical violence—which was surely brewing. The nature of the hierarchical roles that participants adopted (even though they were randomly assigned) importantly shaped behavior. In fact, even the top-dog role of “Stanford County Prison Superintendent,” taken on (perhaps misguidedly) by the research project’s principal investigator, Phil Zimbardo himself (one of the world’s most important behavioral scientists, by the way), shaped behavior in ways that had several adverse consequences for the human participants in the study.

Often, people see “human nature” as meaning something about human behavior that takes place in spite of situational factors. But knowing the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment will get anyone to moderate such a view. You see, the Stanford Prison Experiment is all about human nature. When put in a situation in which one group of individuals has full authority and another group has zero power, facets of human nature will emerge. The individuals in power will be likely to abuse that power, and the powerless individuals will be likely to resort to desperate measures.

Evolutionary Psychology (see Geher, 2014) is also all about understanding human nature. The Stanford Prison Experiment is a perfect example of how a basic aspect of human nature is for humans to be behaviorally malleable as a function of situational factors. Humans in our ancestral past who effectively modified their behaviors as a function of situational cues (such as socially assigned roles) were more effective at surviving and reproducing than were their less-cognizant-of-situational-factors counterparts. A basic aspect of human nature is the tendency to modify behavioral patterns and strategies as a function of one’s role or situation. And the Stanford Prison Experiment may well be the most demonstrative example of research into human social behavior to explicate this point.

The Stanford Prison Experiment, in other words, exemplifies a basic aspect of our evolved psychology—the tendency to be highly shaped by situational factors.

Bottom Line

As a Ph.D. in social psychology, I’ve known about the Stanford Prison Experiment for decades. This said, I’ll say that I was happy to find myself gleaning new insights into the human condition based on this research at a special NYC screening of the upcoming film, titled “The Stanford Prison Experiment” (produced in close collaboration with Phil Zimbardo himself, directed by ace cinematographer, Kyle Patrick Alvarez, and supported by an all-star cast including Billy Crudup, Ezra Miller, and Nicholas Braun). Want to add to your take on what it means to be human? Don’t mind being somewhat disturbed for two hours? Then this film is for you!

References

The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015). Directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez.

Geher, G. (2014). Evolutionary Psychology 101. New York: Springer.

Zimbardo, P.G. (2007). The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. New York: Random House.