Philip Zimbardo, he of the Stanford Prison Experiment, is interviewed here. Included are helpful rundowns of the Migram and Stanford experiments–classics of freaky 70s psychology. Here’s a reminder of how far things went:
BLVR: At any point did you have a kind of awareness that “I’m getting sucked into it,” or did that only come afterward?
PZ: No, well—it came out partially when 819… he was beginning to have an emotional breakdown. When the chaplain was interviewing him among the others, he started crying, you know, hysterically, and at that point I thought the chaplain was going to say, “Blow the whistle, look, this is out of control.” In fact, he tells me later, he said, “Oh, that’s a first-offender reaction, that is, they’re all very emotional initially and they have to learn not to do that, because they’re going to look like sissies, they’re going to get abused.” But then 819 goes ballistic, he starts ripping up his pillow and mattress and shit, and they put him in solitary confinement. And his cellmates get punished for not limiting that. He’s now hysterical and one of the guards comes and says, “We think he’s breaking down.” So I bring him up to a recreation room for the cameramen and observers. When prisoners were going to be released we brought them there to settle down, cool down, before we took them to student health, whatever. So I bring this guy there, 819, and I’m saying, “OK, 819, look, time is up, we’re going pay you for the whole time,” and so forth, and just then the guards line up the prisoners and get them to chant: “[Number] 819 is a bad prisoner. Because of what 819 did my cell is a mess. I’m being punished for 819.”
Now this guy starts crying again and says, “I’ve got to go back!” “What do you mean?” He said, “I’ve got to go back and prove I’m not a bad prisoner.” And so that was a shock. And so I said, “Wait a minute, you’re not a prisoner, you’re not 819, this is an experiment, you’re a student, your name is Stewart.” And at that point I said, “And I’m Phil Zimbardo.” He said, “OK, OK.” And I escorted the student out. But saying: “I’m not the superintendent. I’m this other person…”
Tucked away about half way through is this chestnut: one of the nastier prison ‘guards’ went on to become “a mortgage broker in the suburbs someplace.” Surely there’s a study of the financial crisis to be eeked out of this.
Throughout is a pretty remarkable image of life before ethics review. Not that’s it’s all that long ago. Recall that some Brits recently replicated Milgram. Apparently it still holds water. Apparently the need for guidelines preventing this sort of thing still holds as well.
