**KIM WOODS** Zimbardo Research Paper
Transcripts

Classic Studies in Psychology

2

16. Stanford Prison Experiment Transcript

Speakers: Dr. Steve Taylor, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Male

(Music)

DR. STEVE TAYLOR: If you go to Google and type in the word “Experiment,” one of the first things you’ll see is the Stanford Prison Experiment. It’s probably the best known psychological study of all time.

It all began in West Coast America on a summer’s day back in 1971, when college students grew their hair long, protested against their government, were pro-peace and totally anti-authority, or so we thought until Philip Zimbardo.

(Music)

DR. PHILIP ZIMBARDO: So the Stanford Prison Study very simply is an attempt to see what happens when you put really good people in a bad place.

We put an ad in the city newspaper, wanted students for study of prison life lasting up to 2 weeks. We’re going to pay you $15 a day. This is back in 1971. It’s pretty good money, and we picked 75 volunteers, gave them a battery of psychological tests, and we picked two dozen who in all dimensions were normal and healthy to begin with. And then we did what is critical for all research. We randomly assigned half of them to the role of playing guards or the role of playing prisoners. It’s literally like flipping a coin.

And then what we did is we told the guards, “Come down a day early,” and we had them pick their own uniform. We had them help set up the prison so they’d feel like it was their prison, and the prisoners were coming into their place. The prisoners, we simply said, “Wait at home in the dormitories.” Well, what we didn’t tell them, which is a little bit of the deception of omission, is that they were arrested by the city police.

MALE: Right there, they took me out the door. They put my hands against the car. It was a real cop car. It was a real policeman that took me to the police station, the basement of the police station.

DR. PHILIP ZIMBARDO: I had told the policeman to put a blindfold on the prisoners. Since they had never been arrested, they didn’t know that doesn’t happen. The reason for the blindfold is my assistants would come, put them in our car, bring them down to our prison, and they’d be in our prison now blindfolded. The guards would strip them naked, delouse them, pretending that they were lice. It’s kind of a degradation ritual. And after the first day, I was about to end it because nothing was happening.

[End of audio]

From “Classic Studies in Psychology.” Copyright 2012 by Films Media Group. All rights reserved. Adapted with permission.

17. Rebellion Transcript

Speakers: Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Guard 1, Guard 2, Prisoner 1, Prisoner 2, Prisoners

DR. PHILIP ZIMBARDO: But the next day, on the morning of the next day, the prisoners rebelled. And what the guards did, they came to me and said, “The prisoners are rebelling. What are we going to do?” I said, “It’s your prison, whatever you want. I will do it, but you’ve got to tell me.” And they said, “We have to treat force with force,” so they broke down the doors —

GUARD 1: (Indiscernible) take your bed (Indiscernible).

DR. PHILIP ZIMBARDO: — stripped the prisoners naked, dragged them out. Some of them, they tied up their feet. They put them in solitary confinement which is a tiny little hole in the closet oh, about this big and dark, and they said, “At this point, everything but breathing air is a privilege. Food is a privilege. Clothes are a privilege. Having a bed is a privilege.” And so the guards began to say, “Here are the new rules. And the new rules are you are dangerous and we are going to treat you as such.” And then, it began to escalate. Each day, the level of abuse, aggression, violence against prisoners got more and more extreme.

And so the guards changed to become more dominant, and, you see, it’s all about power. It’s the whole institution that empowers the guards who are the representative of this institution called prison to do whatever is necessary to prevent prisoners from escaping, maintain law and order.

GUARD 2: Keep going. Once I was blind.

PRISONER 1: (Singing) Once, I was blind.

DR. PHILIP ZIMBARDO: The way — the direction it took was having them engage in ever more humiliating tasks, cleaning toilet bowls out with their bare hands, taking their blankets and putting them in dirt with nettles, and the prisoner had to spend hours taking the nettles out if they wanted to, you know, sleep. And it’s essentially saying, “We have the power to create a totally arbitrary, mindless environment, and that’s the environment you have to live in.”

So some of the prisoners are now crushed. And in 36 hours, the first kid has an emotional breakdown meaning crying, screaming, irrational thinking.

PRISONER 2: I’ve got to go to a doctor, anything. I want out! I want out now! Goddamnit!

DR. PHILIP ZIMBARDO: And we have to release him. In 5 days, we had to release five of the prisoners because the situation was so overwhelming.

What about the kids who didn’t break down? They became zombies, zombies in the sense that they became almost all mindlessly obedient. Whatever the guards would say, they did. Do this, they did. “Do 10 pushups. Do 20 pushups. Step on him while he’s doing pushups. Tell him he’s a bastard.”

PRISONERS: Prisoner 819 did a bad thing. Prisoner 819 did a bad thing.

DR. PHILIP ZIMBARDO: It was horrifying to see the kids break down. It was even more horrifying to see these other kids just become mindlessly obedient.

PRISONERS: Because of what prisoner 819 did, my cell is a mess. Because of what prisoner 819 did, my cell is a mess.

DR. PHILIP ZIMBARDO: Again, we have to keep remembering these are kids who start out being rebels against society, everyone of them, and now, they are just pawns. They are the puppets that the guards are manipulating. In fact, one of the guards said, it was like —

[End of Audio]

From “Classic Studies in Psychology.” Copyright 2012 by Films Media Group. All rights reserved. Adapted with permission.

18. The Results Transcript

Speakers: Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Guard 1, Prisoners, Guard 2, Dr. Steve Taylor

DR. PHILIP ZIMBARDO: The guards tested their control over the prisoners by making them write a letter home.

GUARD 1: No need to visit. It’s seventh heaven. Yours truly.

PRISONERS: Yours truly.

GUARD 1: Your loving son.

PRISONERS: Your loving son.

GUARD 1: And put the name there that your mother gave you.

DR. PHILIP ZIMBARDO: The results were surprising because I did not expect the transformation of good kids into pathological prisoners or abusing guards to occur so quickly and so extremely. That is, we had to assume from all other research, you know, that there would be verbal abuse. They would make fun of them. There would be teasing. There would be bullying, but not this kind of — I would call it creative evil. That is, thinking about ways to demean, degrade, dehumanize other human beings, and the critical thing there in that transformation is becoming the role or the role becoming you. It’s suspending your usual morality, your usual thinking.

GUARD 2: You really become that person once you put on that khaki uniform. You put on the glasses. You put on — you take the nightstick and, you know, you act the part.

DR. STEVE TAYLOR: So what Zimbardo’s research demonstrates so dramatically, is that situations can affect us more than we think. It can often outweigh individual characteristics. So if we’re going to use psychology to try to reduce the possibility for evil, maybe we need to focus more on systems and less on individuals. But should the research ever have been done? After all, the participants suffered real harm.

DR. PHILIP ZIMBARDO: In hindsight, again, I have mixed feelings about the study. Should it have been done? Well, not if it means suffering of anybody. Would I like my son to have been in that study? No. On the other hand, does it tell us something vital about human nature that has enduring value? There, I have to say yes. It’s been used in lots of prisons as a training device to get people to be sensitized to how easy it is to abuse power. So in that sense, it has widespread enduring value, therefore, I’m saying, well, I’m glad I did it.

(Music)

(On-screen text: Although scheduled to last for 2 weeks, the study was stopped after 5 days.)

[End of Audio]

From “Classic Studies in Psychology.” Copyright 2012 by Films Media Group. All rights reserved. Adapted with permission.