The Stanford Prison Experiment

Yesterday we watched a movie that turned out to be more upsetting than expected. Das Experiment is rather loosely and yet tightly based on the famous Stanford Prison Experiment. Dr. Zimbardo, the main brain behind the Prison experiment, randomly devided 18 students into two groups and assigned the one to be the guards and the other to be the prisoners. The guards were supposed to control the prisoners for two weeks, in a lab built prison. Very soon though, the situation got out of hand and the experiment needed to be ended. "In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress."

The movie started off with some romance and finished with an escalation including multiple murders. Both of these hollywood-ish contributions to the movie were completely unnecessary, and rather made a movie that could have been so good, bad. The message had already been passed on before things got too far though, and I had a very very bad night. Not just because of having seen a violent and scary movie, but because while watching you realise how extremely real this is. You wake up from that nightmare when the guards start to take the experimenters as prisoners. Right.

The most shocking thing, however, came later. We were curious about how far the Stanford Prison Experiment really got before escalating, and looked it up on the web. Beside a website devoted to the experiment, there is a link to (now professor) Zimbardo's site. First thing you read is in red font in the middle of the screen: Currently Hot! It is a bit weird to see an academic website claiming to be hot, let alone a professor's website being hot. On top of that, it was the website of the professor that created one of the most cruel experiments ever designed, claiming to be hot.

When you enter the website, you find a link to the Prison Experiment. There, it says literally: "It all began one warm Sunday in August, 1971..." . Who's movie is this actually? Has it ever really happened? Or is this all one big joke?

There is a lot of information on the subsequent page with a slideshow of the story. Proudly presented by Zimbardo. The moviemakers have followed some parts of the story very narrowly, it appears. Including the scene where the request of one of the prisoners, to get out, is being turned down, more or less.

Besides the cruel and unethical aspects of this experiment, there was another big flaw to be found in the movie and in Stanford. The prisoners behaved like real prisoners, guards like guards that use humiliation and aggression and most of all, Zimbardo behaved as the prison warden. In his explanation he frequently expressed himself as having been totally in his role of prison warden. He invented, created, and led the game. That is exactly where he went too far. If trying to experimentally and moreover, scientifically study prison behaviour, you should observe and not interfere. Or end the game.

Zimbardo is researcher that wanted to reach this one goal by going too far, this one experiment without thinking about the personal lives of the participants. In the same way as his experimental prison was extremely similar to other prisons, he was extremely similar to an evil prison ward, or worse, an influential person with just one goal: war, punishment and torture. Oh but don't forget: this was 'just' an experiment. Or a game. Or a movie.