Talk:Stanford prison experiment

proposed revisions to lede

The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was designed to examine the effects of situational variables on participants' reactions and behaviors, in a two-week simulation of a prison environment. Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo led the research team who ran the study in the summer of 1971.

Participants were recruited from the local community with an ad in the newspapers offering $15 per day to male students who wanted to participate in a "psychological study of prison life." Volunteers were chosen after assessments of psychological stability, and then randomly assigned to being prisoners or prison guards. Critics have questioned the validity of these methods.

Those volunteers selected to be "guards" were given uniforms specifically to deinividuate them, and instructed to prevent prisoners from escaping. The experiment officially started when "prisoners" were arrested by real Palo Alto police. Over the following five days, psychological abuse of the prisoners by the "guards" became increasingly brutal. After Christina Maslach visited to evaluate the conditions, she was so upset to see how study participants were behaving that she confronted Zimbardo. He ended the experiment on the sixth day.

Like the Milgram experiment, SPE has been referenced and critiqued as one of the most unethical psychology experiments in history. The harm inflicted on the participants prompted universities worldwide to improve their ethics requirements for human subjects experiments to prevent them from being similiarly harmed. Other researchers have found it difficult to reproduce the study, especially given those constraints.

References

where should we add: 1971 prison riots ?

This was less than a month later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attica_Prison_riot

Zimbardo told me about it this morning. We’re recording interviews for posting to Commons. Amazing stories of what it was like 50 years ago.

On Day 6 of SPE, after shutting it down and going home to be with his heroine and future wife, they woke to the news of the San Quentin prison riot of 21 August 1971

Attica Riot was only a couple weeks later. It shows how far the ugliness can go.

Thank God Zim stopped SPE when he did on Day 6.

And what are the lessons learned?

Situational forces can kill. DrMel (talk) 21:25, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

i'd like to add links to and from Prison Riots article especially the specifc articles oer riot from 1971. could anyone help? DrMel (talk) 21:37, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm concerned about including any detailed material here about the San Quentin or Attica riots. The 1971 timing with SPE is coincidental. There's no indication that Zimbardo's prior work was linked to those institutions, such that his SPE design might have been guided by any insights there. Similarly, the SPE activity itself obviously didn't cause those real-world riots, and it's not like the topic was fashionable at the time. Agreed, Zimbardo subsequently established himself as a subject matter expert on such episodes, as well as at Abu Ghraib, etc. But that's all well after the fact. Comments? jxm (talk) 08:25, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I didn't see this until now, but I've actually removed the mention of it in the lead already - it's barely important enough to be in the article, let alone in the lead. Having seen this, I've now double-checked the citation on the other mention of it, and it doesn't connect the riots to the SPE. I will also remove that mention of it.

3rd Wave

This is a related study, also conducted in Palo Alto just prior to the SPE. Should it be added to this article? ErzsieHDR (talk) 22:01, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

You're referring to The Third Wave (experiment), correct? That took place four years before the SPE, not just prior to it. It was a high school educational exercise, rather than a structured academic research study. It's not clear how it might be related, as doesn't seem to have played any role in Zimbardo's work. We'd need some reliable sources for confirmation before moving on this item. jxm (talk) 06:03, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Interpretation and reproducibility of results

In the text "Many have argued that the validity and merit of the research findings were significantly affected by the Demand characteristics § Notes and selection bias resulting from the Recruitment and selection § Notes.", is the subtext "§ Notes" really intended? Masonmilan (talk) 11:13, 22 September 2023 (UTC)