Institutional Aggression

Institutional Aggression

1. Zimbardo

   • Stanford Prison Experiment
   • Aimed to investigate how people would both conform and comply with the roles of a guard and prisoner
   • Found interest in questioning whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons were due to sadistic personalities of prison guards or due to the environment itself
   • Interested in potential evolutionary findings of this study

2. Procedure

   • Turned basement of Stanford University into a prison with cells, a 'yard' type corridor and solitary confinement
   • 21 male Uni students screened and interviewed for psychological abnormality
   • Participants randomly assigned prisoner or guard
   • High mundane realism - 'prisoners' arrested by actual police - full custody routine (Miranda rights, fingerprinting etc)
   • Guards issued with Khaki uniform, handcuffs, mirrored classes
   • Zimbardo forbided the use of any violent action from the guards
   • Prisoners deindividuated - stripped naked, deloused, all personal effects removed

3. Findings

   • Both parts settled into their assigned roles
   • Within hours, some guards started harassing some of the prisoners
   • Prisoners we dehumanised quickly by being made to carry out pointless and mundane tasks
   • Prisoners often sided with guards who were against other prisoners not conforming
   • Prisoners became more dependent and guards the became more derisive toward them
   • In show of assertation + authority, some guards would randomly wake the prisoners up for recital of their numbers
     • Some punishments included push ups - similar to Nazi punishment regime of which one guard was ex-concentration camp officer
   • Study ended after just 6 days due to prisoners mental wellbeing and guards sadistic manner

4. Prisoner #8612

   • Had to be released after 36 hours in the prison
   • Uncontrollable crying, screaming and anger - entering early stages of severe depression
   • Zimbardo worried emotional disorder could've had lasting consequences

5. Prisoner #819

   • Prisoner felt sick, refused to eat and wanted to see a doctor
   • Broke down when talking to Superintendent and priest
   • Guard got all prisoners to chant about 819's actions which left him uncontrollably crying in a room

6. Evalaution

   • Ethically, Zimbardo did not protect his participants from harm
     • Could not have given full informed consent giving they didn't know what the experiment would evolve into
     • Generalisability - sample only 23 male white male students (not representative of whole sample)
       • Androcentric / Ethnocentrism
   • Participants knew study was fake, could have impacted results
   • Implication - frequent checks on prison staff / better initial training
   • Deterministic / free will - is this just situational or will someone always behave this way