Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 241 - Thibault Le Texier on "Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment"

"'Zimbardo himself says sometimes that it's more “demonstration” than an experiment.And that the difference between an experiment and the demonstration, is that in a demonstration, you know from the beginning what you want to prove. And you have a theatrical setup to demonstrate your idea, to make it more graphic, more catchy... But he says that when he's accused of having run the experiment only once. So it cannot really be said to be an experiment, because it's happened only once.But most of the time he is talking about it as an experiment. And the expression, the “Stanford Prison Experiment,” has been coined by Zimbardo himself... It's in a press release that he broadcast on the second day of the experiment. He coined it, he christened the name of the experiment.'...

'This is another way in which it was very much not an experiment. That Zimbardo himself, the experimenter, was participating. Was he the prison superintendent, or what was his role?'

'Yeah, he was the director. And he had two PhD students who were his lieutenants. And he had an undergraduate student who was the warden, the chief of guards.. He was completely involved. And one of the things I discovered is that he knew exactly the result he wanted to achieve, and he knew exactly how to achieve it. And in fact the experiment was written as a theater play, or as a movie. There was a script and the characters were following the script... there was a schedule. So the fact that the prisoners were woken up in the night -- it was something they had, the guards had to wake up the prisoners because they were to follow the schedule.And the fact that [they were made to] do pushups was an instruction given by the warden, who was a student of Zimbardo. They had a set of rules that were written by the experimenters.

And more generally, the guards had a training day -- it was called “orientation day,” but it was a training day -- where they were explained what result the experimenter expected to achieve. And they were explained the punishments they could give to the prisoners. And they were explained that all this was very important for science and for prison reform.So they had a script, and they had also the motivation to follow the script. Besides the fact that they were paid, and they were paid at the end of the experiment. Usually in an experiment, you pay the people at the beginning, and you explain to them that whatever happens, they would keep their pay. So as not to induce certain behavior from them. But in this case they were paid at the end.So that was an incentive to stay in the experiment, and to behave in the way that was expected by the experimenters.'...

'[He] quoted Zimbardo saying, as he has many times. "We did not give any formal or detailed instructions about how to be an effective guard."And he asked Zimbardo, how do you explain this seeming contradiction?And Zimbardo replied, "Well, the point is telling a guard to be tough doesn't mean telling a guard to be mean, to be cruel, to be sadistic. Which many of the guards became of their own volition, playing the role of what they thought was a prison guard."And he concluded, “So I reject your assumption entirely.”... the guards were told that this was important for prison reform.To me, that's especially damning. Because it means that if the guards conform, it could just be out of the motive of wanting to show how terrible it is when guards are sadistic'...

'Zimbardo told them that, great, now you have an occasion to demonstrate that pigs are wrong, that the cops are bad, and that prisons are bad…  You just have to behave how you would picture that pigs would react. The meaner you will be, the better it will be for the experiment, and for prison reform.So if you want to be a good citizen, or if you want to help science, you have to be mean. We know you are not mean, but you have to pretend.And anyway what he said to the guards is that we are not testing you. We are just testing the reactions of the prisoners. You are like actors... Zimbardo lied about this. He never said that the guards were deceived.Because when you do a scientific experiment, you can deceive the participants and make them believe things, but when you publish your results, you have to say it.'...

'Here's what I don't understand. Zimbardo knew that material was in the archives, right? He knew about the camera. He knew the material was all going to be there. What did he think was going to happen?'

'I don't think he knows really what's inside the archive. I don't know if he went through the archive since the experiment took place... To me what happened is that in a way Zimbardo got trapped into his own narrative. He started to spread the official narrative before he had time to analyze his data. He started to talk to the press, he started speaking to the American Congress, before he analyzed his data. And he started to circulate this official narrative.And then six, seven, eight months later, when he has analyzed the data and he could see that the narrative is not so clear cut -- it's too late. People are expecting from him the official narrative. It's hard for him to deny what he has been circulating for six or eight months.So he just kept on repeating the official narrative. And that's what he's been doing, for 49 years.'...

'I have a quote here from Zimbardo a couple months after the experiment, when he was speaking to Congress. And he said, “The guards were simply told that they were going to go into a situation that could be serious and have perhaps some danger. They made up their own rules for maintaining, law, order and respect.”That's the thing where I don't understand how you could have, two months earlier, told the guards what was expected of them and then you go to Congress and say that.'

'Yeah, he was obviously lying.'...

'[There was] an ex-convict -- an actual ex-con, not a student playing a convict -- named Carlo Prescott, who Zimbardo hired as a consultant on the experiment.And then about 12, 13 years ago, Prescott wrote an op-ed saying the experiment was a lie, and that a lot of the guards’ behavior was suggested by him.And then the weird part is Zimbardo claims that the op-ed wasn't even written by Prescott. That it was secretly written by one of Zimbardo's enemies, a producer who lost the movie rights to the Prison Experiment. And he's angry at Zimbardo. So according to Zimbardo, this guy ghost wrote the op-ed and got Prescott to put his own name on it... Carlo Prescott is black.

And when Zimbardo was saying that the op-ed wasn't actually written by Prescott, his actual quote was, "It's white boys’ language. It's not the language of the ghetto." Referring to the Op-ed. That was Zimbardo's explanation for why it couldn't have been written by Prescott.'...

'Zimbardo, in the discussion he focused on this detail to say, okay, if this detail is wrong, then the rest of the critique is wrong. That's very shrewd of him. He doesn't have to reply to all the critiques. He's just focusing on one critique, and showing that it's not that strong. So he doesn't have to reply to all the other critiques'...

'“All the guards didn't become rude and abusing. Actually about a third of the guards did. So the experiment would tend to prove that people do not spontaneously become abusive if they are told to. Or they don't just don't need to wear a uniform, and be put into prison to become abusive guards.”So the experiment demonstrates the contrary, that people can resist their environment... it's as if we should have some polls about experiments, to ask people, “Do you think we should take this experiment as true or false?” And we should make polls to know if an experiment is scientific or not. If it feels true to a lot of people, then let's say it's true, and it's scientific.That's the kind of thing you can read in a major newspaper, like the New York Times.

So for me, as a scientist, it was very depressing to discover that most people don't care about the truth, actually. Even among scientists -- they read books or they do science to reinforce their beliefs. And people are not looking for truth. They are looking for things that make them feel better. And they are looking for things that confirm their opinions.That's why the Stanford Prison Experiment will live forever. Because it's very convenient for a lot of people. And they don't care if it's scientific or not. That's not the point. The point is that, does it feel true to me? That's the point.'

'Not to depress you even further, but there was an interview with Zimbardo where they asked him about you and your book.And his response was, “People can say whatever they want about it” -- i.e., about the experiment – “It's the most famous study in history of psychology at this point. There's no study that people talk about 50 years later. Ordinary people know about it. If he --” i.e., you, Thibault – “if he wants to say it was all a hoax, that's up to him, I'm not going to defend it any more. The defense is its longevity.”The defense is its longevity. That phrase really drew me up short.'

'And you're right. But in a way I agree with them, in the way that the Stanford Prison Experiment will never die. And that it will live on, because it's beyond the realm of science now. Now it belongs to popular culture. You have a rock band called the Stanford Prison Experiment.'"