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Showing posts with label Stanford Prison Study. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stanford Prison Study. Show all posts

Saturday, September 7, 2019

Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment

Thibault Le Texier
PsyArXiv
Originally posted August 8, 2019

Abstract

The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) is one of psychology’s most famous studies. It has been criticized on many grounds, and yet a majority of textbook authors have ignored these criticisms in their discussions of the SPE, thereby misleading both students and the general public about the study’s questionable scientific validity. Data collected from a thorough investigation of the SPE archives and interviews with 15 of the participants in the experiment further question the study’s scientific merit. These data are not only supportive of previous criticisms of the SPE, such as the presence of demand characteristics, but provide new criticisms of the SPE based on heretofore unknown information. These new criticisms include the biased and incomplete collection of data, the extent to which the SPE drew on a prison experiment devised and conducted by students in one of Zimbardo’s classes 3 months earlier, the fact that the guards received precise instructions regarding the treatment of the prisoners, the fact that the guards were not told they were subjects, and the fact that participants were almost never completely immersed by the situation. Possible explanations of the inaccurate textbook portrayal and general misperception of the SPE’s scientific validity over the past 5 decades, in spite of its flaws and shortcomings, are discussed.

From the Conclusion:

4) The SPE survived for almost 50 years because no researcher has been through its archives. This was, I must say, one of the most puzzling facts that I discovered during my investigation. The experiment had been criticized by major figures such as Fromm (1973) and Festinger (1980), and the accounts of the experiment have been far from disclosing all of the details of the study; yet no psychologist seems to have wanted to know if the archives what exactly did the archives contain. Is it a lack of curiosity? Is it an excessive respect for the tenured professor of a prestigious university? Is it due to possible access restrictions imposed by Zimbardo? Is it because archival analyses are a time-consuming and work-intensive activity?  Is it due to the belief that no archives had been kept? The answer remains unknown.The recent replication crisis in psychology has shown, however, that psychologists are not indifferent to the functioning of science. This crisis can be seen as a sign of the good health and vigor of the field of psychology, which can correct its errors and improve its methodology (Chambers, 2017, p.171-217). Hopefully, the present study will contribute to psychology’s epistemological self-examination, and expose the SPE for what it was: an incredibly flawed study that should have died an early death.

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

The Lifespan of a Lie

Ben Blum
Medium.com
Originally posted June 7, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Somehow, neither Prescott’s letter nor the failed replication nor the numerous academic critiques have so far lessened the grip of Zimbardo’s tale on the public imagination. The appeal of the Stanford prison experiment seems to go deeper than its scientific validity, perhaps because it tells us a story about ourselves that we desperately want to believe: that we, as individuals, cannot really be held accountable for the sometimes reprehensible things we do. As troubling as it might seem to accept Zimbardo’s fallen vision of human nature, it is also profoundly liberating. It means we’re off the hook. Our actions are determined by circumstance. Our fallibility is situational. Just as the Gospel promised to absolve us of our sins if we would only believe, the SPE offered a form of redemption tailor-made for a scientific era, and we embraced it.

For psychology professors, the Stanford prison experiment is a reliable crowd-pleaser, typically presented with lots of vividly disturbing video footage. In introductory psychology lecture halls, often filled with students from other majors, the counterintuitive assertion that students’ own belief in their inherent goodness is flatly wrong offers dramatic proof of psychology’s ability to teach them new and surprising things about themselves. Some intro psych professors I spoke to felt that it helped instill the understanding that those who do bad things are not necessarily bad people. Others pointed to the importance of teaching students in our unusually individualistic culture that their actions are profoundly influenced by external factors.

(cut)

But if Zimbardo’s work was so profoundly unscientific, how can we trust the stories it claims to tell? Many other studies, such as Soloman Asch’s famous experiment demonstrating that people will ignore the evidence of their own eyes in conforming to group judgments about line lengths, illustrate the profound effect our environments can have on us. The far more methodologically sound — but still controversial — Milgram experiment demonstrates how prone we are to obedience in certain settings. What is unique, and uniquely compelling, about Zimbardo’s narrative of the Stanford prison experiment is its suggestion that all it takes to make us enthusiastic sadists is a jumpsuit, a billy club, and the green light to dominate our fellow human beings.

The article is here.