Critical Situations
A conversation with Philip Zimbardo
Introduction
Should Have Knowns
When you first start delving into Philip Zimbardoās infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, two words immediately pop to the surface.
The first is āclassicā. Nearly half a century after those six intense days in August when 24 summer students had rapidly metamorphosed into sadistic guards and riotous prisoners, the study has long established itself as one of the most famous experiments in the history of social psychology, standing firmly alongside Stanley Milgramās work a decade earlier as a formidable demonstration of the powerful effects of situational forces on human behaviour.
The second word, though, is ācontroversialā. Ever since the results of the study were announced, there were strong voices raised against it on ethical, statistical and procedural grounds. Some said that the numbers involved were too small to prove anything, while others maintained that circumstances were so artificial as to naturally encourage the studyās participants to role-play in the way they thought was expected by them. Meanwhile, several levelled serious criticism at Zimbardoās own role in the study, accusing him of sinking to an almost similarly depraved state as the āguardsā by allowing such emotionally-damaging experiences to continue in the name of a scientific study.
What many might not appreciate, however, is that few can be harder on the renowned Stanford University social psychologist than he is himself, consistently recognizing his own profoundly unethical behaviour, together with the vital role his then-girlfriend, Christina Maslach, played in convincing him to shut the study down 8 days earlier than planned.
āShe began to tear up. I asked her what the matter was and she got really upset. She said, āI canāt look at that!ā I started telling her about the dynamics of human nature and all that, and she just ran out.
āAt that point, I was stressed to my limit. I was not sleeping regularly. We ran out in front of Jordan Hallāitās now 10:30 at nightāand I was yelling at her, saying, āDonāt you understand that there are dynamics here that have never been seen or studied before? Most experiments only last one hour, but these people are living and becoming prisoners and guards!ā
āShe just said, āItās terrible what youāre doing to these boys. Theyāre not prisoners or guards. Theyāre boys in your experiment. They are being mistreated. Itās terrible whatās happeningā.
āI kept trying to re-frame it in terms of the dynamics of the situation, but she just said, āI donāt understand how you could see what I just saw and not react the way that I am reacting. I know youāāshe had been a TA of mineāāYou love students. Youāre a loving teacher. But this situation has changed you. Youāre not the person that I thought you were.ā
āAnd then she told me, āIf this is the real you, I donāt want to have a relationship with youā. That was the clincher. That was like a slap in the face.
āIt was now eleven oāclock at night. I said, āYouāre right. I will end this study tomorrow. Letās go to dinner and think about how Iām going to shut this down.ā
Thereās no point, then, in trying to convince Phil Zimbardo that he was involved in an unethical study, or that he became far too personally involved and lost his scientific objectivity. He knows that better than anyone.
āI still feel guilty about it. I allowed evil to exist. In the breakdown of every one of those kids, I am as responsible as any of the guards, because I saw what was happening and didnāt stop it.ā
But beyond the guilt and finger-pointing lie some terrifying yet crucial lessons. What, exactly, was going on? How could a group of largely pacifistic students quickly slip into the role of barbarous guards, mercilessly forcing their fellow students to perform shockingly degrading acts for their amusement? None of that seems possible to be waved away by appealing to simple notions of role-playing or a lack of scientific objectivity. These were real people who rapidly began wantonly degrading and humiliating their peers just for the hell of it. And the more they did it, the more entrenched they became in their role.
What is happening, it seems, is that peopleās behaviour is being strongly influenced by āsituational effectsā. Weāre still ultimately responsible for our own actions, of course, but itās essential to recognize the enormously influential role played by the situational power structure around us and the systems that produces it.
So goes Philās formal, academic, view of the underlying forces of social psychology. But suddenly, well over 30 years after the Stanford Prison Experiment, the textbooks came alive with a vengeance as the world is forced to grapple with horrific images of American servicemen and women abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
āAbu Ghraib was a replay of the Stanford prison study on steroidsāexponentially worse. Things went on 12 hours every night for three months, and the few pictures that were shown publiclyāa dozen pictures or soāwere nowhere near the worst. I actually have access to a thousand of these images, which are truly horrendous: every different kind of degradation you can imagine, performed by American men and women, military police soldiers, on Iraqi prisoners in their charge, night after night for three months.
āHow could that happen for three months? When you see the pictures, you assume it must have taken place on just one night. So right away, that means that somebody was not minding the store, that there was a systemic flaw.
āThe abuses only took place during the night shift. Not one abuse occurred during the day shift. Thatās a situational variable.
āOne of the motivations for evil is boredom. The worst abuses in the Stanford prison study were at night. The guards would come in, and they had eight hours to kill. The prisoners were sleeping, they had nothing to do, so they would wake them up and play with them.
āAt Abu Ghraib, Chip Fredrick and the other guards worked 12-hour shifts, from 4 pm to 4 am. Then, at 4 am at the end of the shift, he went to sleep in a prison cell in a different part of the prison, because the prison was always under bombardment. He never left the prison, so he was situationally-bound.ā
You might think that, given the stakes involved and the likelihood of such horrific circumstances repeating themselves in the ongoing āwar on terrorā with an unequivocally catastrophic effect on everything from international opinion to troop morale, American authorities would pay more attention to the role of powerful situational forces.
But sadly, youād be wrong.
āGeneral Myers actually said, āThere is no evidence that itās anything but those individuals. Our army, our training is above that. There is no other evidence of such a thing happening anywhere else.ā
āIt turns out that was a...