You are here

Thought Experiment: Zimbardo and the Standford Prison Experiment

9 January, 2015 - 09:41
Available under Creative Commons-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/3d8499e9-08c0-47dd-9482-7e8131ce99bc@11.15

In many ways, Zimbardo's experiments appear equally damaging to virtue and moral exemplar theory. Students were recruited to take part in a prison experiment. After being carefully screened for any abnormal psychological traits, they were randomly assigned the roles of prisoner guard and prisoner. The prisoners were arrested at their homes and taken to the psychology building at Stanford University whose basement had been made over to resemble a prison. The experiment was designed to last for two weeks but was halted mid-way because of its harmful impacts on the subjects. The guards abused the prisoners, physically and psychologically; individuals who behaved normally before the experiment, became sadistic when playing through the prison guard role. The prisoners were traumatized by their experience and many experienced breakdowns; all testified to how they forgot who they were before the experiment began; their normal identities were absorbed and cancelled by their new identities stemming from the role "prisoner" and from the dehumanizing treatment they received from the guards.

Just as the Milgram experiments have been used to demonstrate the weakness of character in the face of situation-based pressures, Zimbardo's experiments have been used to demonstrate the fragility of moral and personal identity. Powerful roles overwhelm moral integrity and conscience; individuals give way to the corrupting demands of immoral roles.

Nevertheless, Milgram and Zimbardo both pull up well short of this extreme position. Milgram talks of a former subject who used the knowledge he gained about himself as a subject in the obedience to authority experiment to strengthen his character and successfully take a leadership role in the protest movement against the Vietnam war. And Milgram also profiles two individuals who offered firm and resolute disobedience when asked to continue the experiment over the objections of the victim/learner. When the experimenter prompted Jan Rensaleer that he "had no other choice [but to continue]," he replied, "I came here on my own free will." Gretchen Brandt, a woman who spent her youth in Nazi Germany, responded similarly. To the same prompt she replied, "I think we are here on our own free will." During the post-experiment debriefing, both emphasized not giving over responsibility for their actions to others and acknowledged that their experience with the Nazis (Rensaleer lived in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation) may have helped them in carrying out their acts of disobedience. In reflecting on her reason for disobedience, Brandt also added, "Perhaps we have seen too much pain."

Zimbardo also thinks that individuals can develop strategies, skills, and practices to keep hold of their moral selves in the face of strong situation and role-based pressures. These consist of exercises to gain distance and perspective on the situation and to recall oneself to one's character and personality. Here are some examples from The Lucifer Effect of his "Ten-Step Program:"453-454

  • "I am responsible."
  • "I will assert my unique identity."
  • "I respect just authority but rebel against unjust authority. “our second item here
  • "I will not sacrifice personal or civic freedoms for the illusion of security."

From Gyges, Milgram, and Zimbardo to Moral Ecology

These thought experiments raise the question of the influence of environment on character and on individual agency. As we have repeatedly seen this semester, the environments of the organization (ethical, technolog ical, organizational, and economic) all constrain agency in certain ways and enable or empower it in others. This module is designed to help you identify how the organizational environment creates a moral ecology that constrains and enables your ability to act. (You can be pressured to act against conscience as the Mil-gram experiments show. And you can lose your sense of self in a particularly power role and role-supportive environment.) It is also designed to suggest strategies that increase the strength of moral character by identifying different organizational environments (finance-, customer-, and quality-driven corporations) a nd calling upon you to develop special skills that help you to keep moral and personal commitments intact.