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You don't need to have a background in psychology to know about Zimbardo's prison experiment. Depicted in movies, television, and of course all introductory psych textbooks, the true story is rarely told of what really happened in that famous and controversial experiment. When such iconic studies become part of psychology lore, their true story often gets buried in overly simplistic interpretations. Worse still, as in the case of the equally famous Milgram obedience studies, the findings become grossly distorted. The truth behind these studies will be revealed to the first time to American audiences in September of 2013, with the publication of Gina Perry's brilliant book, Behind the Shock Machine.

Inspired by her work, I decided to go back to the original source of some of the social psych studies I've written and taught about for years (actually, decades). Having read the same textbook summaries, ethical discussions, and secondary sources as thousands of psychology professors and students in the past 40 years since the actual study's first publication, I thought it was time to see what really transpired in those prison cells that Zimbardo and his team built to explore the "Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison." Published in 1973, this landmark study in the very first volume of the International Journal of Criminology and Penology, describes in academic, yet compelling, terms the frightening events that transpired over the course of the 6-day experiment. From personality questionnaires to follow-up interviews, audio and video recordings, and the first-person experience of the "prison superintendent" (none other than Zimbardo), we learn much more than you can ever typically expect to find in your average psychology article.

Of course, it will be impossible to do justice to the entire article here, and for more personal accounts and images from the study, you can consult many online resources including Zimbardo's own website devoted to the study. You may even have seen Professor Zimbardo on television talking about the study, or taken the video course he hosted. If you haven't, here's the study in a nutshell. 21 Stanford undergrads were recruited for a 2-week study, divided randomly into 10 "prisoners," and 11 "guards." They were placed into a prison setting, where the prisoners occupied cells, and the guards watched over them. After 6 days, the experiment had spun out of control as simulation turned into reality, necessitating the early release of some prisoners. Most introductory psych texts use this experiment to demonstrate the "power of the situation," and the fact that ordinary college students could become sadistic monsters (i.e. the guards) in the space of just a few short days. That guards and prisoners were randomly assigned to condition was a key fact that added to the validity of the conclusion. Discussions of the study's ethics today state that it could never be done now, but the fact is that Zimbardo did submit the study for approval to his institutional review board, and it met the criteria of the time (for more on the study's ethics, see Zimbardo, 1973).

First off, you should recognize that this was no hokey, clearly fake situation (a problem that seemed to plague the Milgram experiments). The authors took elaborate precautions to recreate a realistic prison environment, from the uniforms to the furniture in the cells to the food and the schedule. As a result, "within what was a surprisingly short time, we witnessed a sample of normal, healthy American college men fractionate into a group of prison guards who seemed to derive pleasure from insulting, threatning, humiliating and dehumanizing their peers..." The guards, who showed no signs of being sadistic types, were able to provoke emotional breakdowns in prisoners "selected precisely" for their emotional stability.

The guards entered the study thinking that it was the prisoners whose behavior was being studied. They received training from the Zimbardo acting out his superintendent role and an undergraduate research assistant who was the "warden." The prisoners were told that they would be asked to take on a prisoner role but given no other information other than the fact that they would be "arrested" and brought into the prison. Neither group had very specific instructions because the point of the experiment was to see how they adapted to their respective roles.

The prisoners were "arrested" by actual police officers, "booked," and then stripped and put in a cell yard until they received their uniforms. The uniforms were more like hospital gowns, and the men wore no clothing underneath so that they would feel "emasculated." These steps intentionally created a feeling of deidentification or loss of their own personal identities. Perhaps the only difference between the study prisoners and real prisoners is that the Stanford prisoners were paid, and could escape if they requested to be released from the study.

The experimenters collected almost everything that transpired as "data," leaving them with an enormous amount of information to sift through, code, and analyze. At the end of it all, Zimbardo believed that their data supports and validates the anecdotal evidence given by ex-convicts of life in prison. All the students involved experienced changes in moods including intense negative affect, an overall pessimistic outlook, and greater and greater declines in their self-esteem. Although the prisoners and guards could interact in any way they wished, the "characteristic nature of their encounters tended to be negative, hostile, affrontive, and deumanising." Prisoners became passive and guards barked commands and hurled insults (they were prohibited from any form of physical violence). Four prisoners had to be released as early as the second day due to extreme emotional reactions, and one developed a psychosomatic rash soon later which also required that he be released. What was particularly telling is that when the experiment was halted, the prisoners took the news like any prison escapees would- with glee. The guards were angry and distressed.

Not everyone reacted equally badly to their roles, though, and some guards were "tough but fair." For the most part, these differential reactions couldn't be predicted by the personal tests that the participants completed at the start of the study. Some of the prisoners high on "authoritarianism" coped better with prison life, but other than this, there were few indications from the individual data about who would conform and who would rebel or be unable to continue in their role.

The guards resorted to various forms of harassment short of physical punishment. They called prisoners by number, not name, and hurled streams of insults at them. The evening shift was the harshest- it was then that guards gave out the most commands and were most insulting and controlling.

For their part, the prisoners essentially stopped communicating with each other about anything other than prison life (talk which occupied 90% of all their private conversations). They tried to set up a grievance committee, develop escape plans, wonder what the other prisoners were doing, and express concern about being placed in solitary confinement. The dehumanization they experienced from the guards carried over to their own interpersonal interactions, and soon they started deprecating each other. When they had the opportunity to talk to a priest, they referred to themselves by number, not name, showing just how far their deidentification had penetrated. Fortunately, all of these bad experiences, including their negative moods, bounced back to normal after the end of the study. Their depression and stress were restricted entirely to the situation, further reinforcing the idea that the "power" of the situation to overwhelm individual differences in mood and personality.

The study highlights what social psychologists continually drum into our heads, which is that the situation can and does shape our behaviors, thoughts, and feelings at even the most private of levels. Yet, as Zimbardo points out, if this were a true prison, people would forget the dehumanizing and deindividuating nature of the environment and attribute everyone's behavior (guards and prisoners) to personal disposition. The prisoners would not be seen as antisocial by nature and the guards as little better. Not everyone reacts similarly to even this harsh of an environment, of course, as people learn different coping methods to help them adapt, but the range is much smaller than we would imagine.

To sum up, the Zimbardo study sheds the harshest light of perhaps any research ever done on the nature of power and its pervasive corruptive powers.

From the standpoint of the guards, the pathology of power led them to exert an "unprecedented degree of control" that was "self-aggrandising" and "self-perpetuating." Prisoners in the real world want to wrest back some of this control by any means necessary, and so when released, they "will take action to establish and assert a sense of power."

While in prison, though, the loss of personal identity and control led the prisoners to adopt the pathological prisoner syndrome a reaction that took several forms of coping strategies. They went through stages from disbelief to rebellion; when these didn't work, they tried to work the system (the "grievance committee"). When those efforts to gain control failed, it was every man for himself as each tried to find ways to preserve their own self-interests and identity. For some, this meant further rebellion and for others it meant becoming excessively obedient, even to the point of siding with the guards against intransigent prisoners.

Zimbardo and his co-authors hoped that the emotional and human price of the study would provide a model for improvements in the penal system as a whole. You might not agree with his conclusion, but it's a thought-provoking one, so I'll offer it here: "... since prisoners and guards are locked into a dynamic, symbiotic relationship which is destructive to their human nature, guards are also society's prisoners."
Follow me on Copyright Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. 2013 Twitter@swhitbo for daily updates on psychology, health, and aging. Feel free to join my Facebook group, "Fulfillment at Any Age," to discuss today's blog, or to ask further questions about this posting.
References:

Haney, C., Banks, C., & Zimbardo, P. (1973). Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison. International Journal of Criminology & Penology, 1(1), 69-97.

Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). On the ethics of intervention in human psychological research: With special reference to the Stanford prison experiment. Cognition, 2(2), 243-256. doi: 10.1016/0010-0277(72)90014-5

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The Rarely Told True Story of Zimbardo's Prison Experiment

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The story of Zimbardo's prison experiment is as legendary in psychology as the popular psyche. Yet the true story is rarely told of what really happened in that Stanford psychology building basement. From the details in the original article, we gain fascinating insights into power's corrupting influences.

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- Abraham Lincoln

I recently watched the movie adaptation of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Like most reviewers, I found it harrowing. But as a psychologist, I also found it revealing. With my eyes glued to the screen in rapt attention, heart racing, I became obsessed with understanding what really was going on, and the lessons we can glean from such an experiment gone so horribly wrong.

The standard story, given by the experimenter Philip Zimbardo, is that the experiment is a lesson about how everyday people (and groups consisting of everyday people), when given too much power, can become sadistic tyrants. In a recent article for The New Yorker, Maria Konnikova casts some doubt on that conclusion, arguing that the real lesson is the power of institutions to shape behavior, and how people are shaped by those preexisting expectations.

While this is certainly a valuable lesson, I believe another crucial variable at play that is rarely mentioned by commentators of the prison experiment or even in psychology textbooks is the person. Yes, power corrupts. But power does not corrupt everyone equally.

There's no way the small group of participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment represented the full range of human personality variation. For one, these were young males. Already, there is going to be higher levels of testosterone, on average, than most other populations. But there's also the issue that these participants actively sought out participation in a study having to do with prison. Research published in 2007 found that people who responded to an ad to be part of a study on "prison life" scored higher on tests of aggressiveness, authoritarianism, machiavellianism, narcissism, and social dominance, and lower on measures of empathy and altruism.

But even among the small sample of young male participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment, there was great variability in how people responded to power. Some guards were particularly cruel, whereas others could barely take the cruelty and offered to go on errands, while still others were actively kind to the prisoners, fulfilling their requests. Let's also not forget the hero of the film, Zimbardo's graduate student Christina Maslach, who recoiled in horror at the sight of how the participants were treated in the experiment.

I fear it's all too easy for us to focus our attention on that one loud, brash person who abuses power while ignoring the majority who were not nearly as cruel. Zimbardo has remarked that he was afraid he would be in for a very long and boring experiment. I suspect that if "Cool Hand Luke" didn't sign up for the experiment, the experiment would indeed have lasted the full two weeks. People would have generally followed the rules, and we probably wouldn't have had a movie made after it.

***

Since the Stanford Prison Experiment, we've learned a lot more about the psychology of power. Here's something we've found: power isn't inherently good or evil.

Yes, it's true that power fundamentally alters perception. As Adam Galinsky and colleagues put it, "powerful people roam in a very different psychological space than those without power." Power increases confidence, optimism, risk-taking, sensitivity to internal thoughts and feelings, goal-directed behavior and cognition, and creativity.

But these are not necessarily bad outcomes. Put to good use, power can have an incredibly positive effect on people. There are so many compassionate teachers, bosses, politicians, humanitarians, and others who wield power, who genuinely want to make the world a better place.

I think a really important point here is that power amplifies the person. It gives already existing personality dispositions and tendencies a louder voice, and increases the chances that these tendencies will be given fuller expression. Thus, we must consider interactions between the person and the situation. As Galinsky and colleagues point out, "the situation loses its suffocating hold over the thoughts and behavior of the powerful... and they are left with their own opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and personalities to drive their behavior."

Research shows that activating the concept of power in men with an already-existing disposition toward sexual harassment or aggression increases objectification of women. There's also an emerging line of research on the " Dark Tetrad"-- which consists of the darker personality dispositions of narcissism, psychopathy, machiavellianism, and everyday sadism. One study found that when given the opportunity, everyday sadists (those with a higher appetite for cruelty) killed bugs at greater rates than nonsadists, and were more willing to work for the opportunity to hurt an innocent person. Similarly, when narcissists have their ego threatened (e.g., are insulted), they are much more likely to increase aggression, even increasing aggression on innocent bystanders.

Not just anyone put in a position of power will hurt others, however. Serena Chen and colleagues found that those with an exchange relationship orientation (who focus on tit for tat) engaged in more self-serving behaviors when given power, whereas those with a c ommunal relationship orientation (who take into account other people's needs and feelings when making a decision) demonstrated greater generosity when given power.

***

So what, if anything, can we do to decrease the likelihood of power leading to bad behavior?

One interesting reversal to the finding that power amplifies the person is that when people in positions of power are given explicit and salient goals, the situation becomes much more important, and can override people's innate dispositions.* Perhaps we can refocus people's tendencies in a positive direction by providing them with clear prosocial goals.

This suggestion acknowledges the fact that no one is all good or all bad; all of us have many sides. Even people who abuse power most certainly have other, more prosocial sides that may be unexplored. We must ask ourselves which side we most want to bring out of a person. Zimbardo's experiment shines a light on the bad, but I could imagine an equally persuasive study designed in such a way to show the incredible potential for good in just about anyone when given power with prosocial goals.

Another way to bring out more positive outcomes is to simply put more people with prosocial dispositions (e.g., high empathy and compassion) in positions of power and let them carry out their already existing prosocial goals (e.g., desire to reduce violence, feed the hungry, etc.).

There are so many humane people in this world. In fact, most people are humane. Let's not let the minority who abuse power make us forget this fact. I think the media as well as psychologists could do a lot more to highlight the more uplifting and hopeful segments of humanity. As Jimmy Carter once said, "What are the things that you can't see that are important? I would say justice, truth, humility, service, compassion, love. You can't see any of those, but they're the guiding lights of a life."

Recognizing that power is not inherently good or bad, we can try to stack the deck as much as possible to harness the incredible power of power. As Galinsky and colleagues so eloquently put it,

"Perhaps human accomplishment is as much about the cans and cannots as it is the haves and the have-nots. Although power is often thought of as a pernicious force that corrupts those who possess it, it is the protection from the situational influence demonstrated here that helps powerful individuals surmount social obstacles and reach greater heights of creativity to express the unpopular ideals of today that can lead others to the horizons of tomorrow."

(C) 2015 Scott Barry Kaufman, All Rights Reserved

* This is another valuable lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment: the power of goals from authority figures. Experimenters like Zimbardo are in a position of power themselves, and are responsible for not abusing that power. This was also a lesson of the famous Milgram experiment. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, there was no ethical oversight. Zimbardo took on the role of the prisoner superintendent, and explicitly told the guards to gain control over the prisoners. In some cases, he encouraged the priosoners to abuse the guards. In a telling attempt to replicate the Stanford Prison Experiment, the BBC found that the prisoners worked together to overthrow the guards, who were ambivalent about their roles in the first place. The difference between the experiments? The experimenters were held accountable, as the BBC study had an ethical committee that continually monitored the study to make sure it didn't get out of hand. Also, there was even some uncertainty about roles. At least in the beginning, prisoners were told that they might be able to become guards. Research shows that in environments in which authority is unstable, or at least perceived as unstable, being in a position of low power can actually be empowering. As one group of researchers put it, "For low power individuals, power instability is empowering, leading them to act and behave as high power individuals... Having unstable low power leads to feelings of confidence and self-efficacy, especially when low power individuals can gain power by being creative. They may be more confident about their abilities and also perceive that they have the 'power to change their situation." I agree with other psychologists that the original message of the Stanford Prison Experiment-- that groups are bad, and that people in power automatically abuse power-- is far too simplistic.

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An Important but Rarely Discussed Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment

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Abraham Lincoln I recently watched the movie adaptation of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Like most reviewers, I found it harrowing. But as a psychologist, I also found it revealing. With my eyes glued to the screen in rapt attention, heart racing, I became obsessed with understanding what really was going on, and the lessons we can glean from such an experiment gone so horribly wrong.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
- Abraham Lincoln

I recently watched the movie adaptation of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Like most reviewers, I found it harrowing. But as a psychologist, I also found it revealing. With my eyes glued to the screen in rapt attention, heart racing, I became obsessed with understanding what really was going on, and the lessons we can glean from such an experiment gone so horribly wrong.

The standard story, given by the experimenter Philip Zimbardo, is that the experiment is a lesson about how everyday people (and groups consisting of everyday people), when given too much power, can become sadistic tyrants. In a recent article for The New Yorker, Maria Konnikova casts some doubt on that conclusion, arguing that the real lesson is the power of institutions to shape behavior, and how people are shaped by those preexisting expectations.

While this is certainly a valuable lesson, I believe another crucial variable at play that is rarely mentioned by commentators of the prison experiment or even in psychology textbooks is the person. Yes, power corrupts. But power does not corrupt everyone equally.

There's no way the small group of participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment represented the full range of human personality variation. For one, these were young males. Already, there is going to be higher levels of testosterone, on average, than most other populations. But there's also the issue that these participants actively sought out participation in a study having to do with prison. Research published in 2007 found that people who responded to an ad to be part of a study on "prison life" scored higher on tests of aggressiveness, authoritarianism, machiavellianism, narcissism, and social dominance, and lower on measures of empathy and altruism.

But even among the small sample of young male participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment, there was great variability in how people responded to power. Some guards were particularly cruel, whereas others could barely take the cruelty and offered to go on errands, while still others were actively kind to the prisoners, fulfilling their requests. Let's also not forget the hero of the film, Zimbardo's graduate student Christina Maslach, who recoiled in horror at the sight of how the participants were treated in the experiment.

I fear it's all too easy for us to focus our attention on that one loud, brash person who abuses power while ignoring the majority who were not nearly as cruel. Zimbardo has remarked that he was afraid he would be in for a very long and boring experiment. I suspect that if "Cool Hand Luke" didn't sign up for the experiment, the experiment would indeed have lasted the full two weeks. People would have generally followed the rules, and we probably wouldn't have had a movie made after it.

***

Since the Stanford Prison Experiment, we've learned a lot more about the psychology of power. Here's something we've found: power isn't inherently good or evil.

Yes, it's true that power fundamentally alters perception. As Adam Galinsky and colleagues put it, "powerful people roam in a very different psychological space than those without power." Power increases confidence, optimism, risk-taking, sensitivity to internal thoughts and feelings, goal-directed behavior and cognition, and creativity.

But these are not necessarily bad outcomes. Put to good use, power can have an incredibly positive effect on people. There are so many compassionate teachers, bosses, politicians, humanitarians, and others who wield power, who genuinely want to make the world a better place.

I think a really important point here is that power amplifies the person. It gives already existing personality dispositions and tendencies a louder voice, and increases the chances that these tendencies will be given fuller expression. Thus, we must consider interactions between the person and the situation. As Galinsky and colleagues point out, "the situation loses its suffocating hold over the thoughts and behavior of the powerful... and they are left with their own opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and personalities to drive their behavior."

Research shows that activating the concept of power in men with an already-existing disposition toward sexual harassment or aggression increases objectification of women. There's also an emerging line of research on the " Dark Tetrad"-- which consists of the darker personality dispositions of narcissism, psychopathy, machiavellianism, and everyday sadism. One study found that when given the opportunity, everyday sadists (those with a higher appetite for cruelty) killed bugs at greater rates than nonsadists, and were more willing to work for the opportunity to hurt an innocent person. Similarly, when narcissists have their ego threatened (e.g., are insulted), they are much more likely to increase aggression, even increasing aggression on innocent bystanders.

Not just anyone put in a position of power will hurt others, however. Serena Chen and colleagues found that those with an exchange relationship orientation (who focus on tit for tat) engaged in more self-serving behaviors when given power, whereas those with a c ommunal relationship orientation (who take into account other people's needs and feelings when making a decision) demonstrated greater generosity when given power.

***

So what, if anything, can we do to decrease the likelihood of power leading to bad behavior?

One interesting reversal to the finding that power amplifies the person is that when people in positions of power are given explicit and salient goals, the situation becomes much more important, and can override people's innate dispositions.* Perhaps we can refocus people's tendencies in a positive direction by providing them with clear prosocial goals.

This suggestion acknowledges the fact that no one is all good or all bad; all of us have many sides. Even people who abuse power most certainly have other, more prosocial sides that may be unexplored. We must ask ourselves which side we most want to bring out of a person. Zimbardo's experiment shines a light on the bad, but I could imagine an equally persuasive study designed in such a way to show the incredible potential for good in just about anyone when given power with prosocial goals.

Another way to bring out more positive outcomes is to simply put more people with prosocial dispositions (e.g., high empathy and compassion) in positions of power and let them carry out their already existing prosocial goals (e.g., desire to reduce violence, feed the hungry, etc.).

There are so many humane people in this world. In fact, most people are humane. Let's not let the minority who abuse power make us forget this fact. I think the media as well as psychologists could do a lot more to highlight the more uplifting and hopeful segments of humanity. As Jimmy Carter once said, "What are the things that you can't see that are important? I would say justice, truth, humility, service, compassion, love. You can't see any of those, but they're the guiding lights of a life."

Recognizing that power is not inherently good or bad, we can try to stack the deck as much as possible to harness the incredible power of power. As Galinsky and colleagues so eloquently put it,

"Perhaps human accomplishment is as much about the cans and cannots as it is the haves and the have-nots. Although power is often thought of as a pernicious force that corrupts those who possess it, it is the protection from the situational influence demonstrated here that helps powerful individuals surmount social obstacles and reach greater heights of creativity to express the unpopular ideals of today that can lead others to the horizons of tomorrow."

(C) 2015 Scott Barry Kaufman, All Rights Reserved

* This is another valuable lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment: the power of goals from authority figures. Experimenters like Zimbardo are in a position of power themselves, and are responsible for not abusing that power. This was also a lesson of the famous Milgram experiment. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, there was no ethical oversight. Zimbardo took on the role of the prisoner superintendent, and explicitly told the guards to gain control over the prisoners. In some cases, he encouraged the priosoners to abuse the guards. In a telling attempt to replicate the Stanford Prison Experiment, the BBC found that the prisoners worked together to overthrow the guards, who were ambivalent about their roles in the first place. The difference between the experiments? The experimenters were held accountable, as the BBC study had an ethical committee that continually monitored the study to make sure it didn't get out of hand. Also, there was even some uncertainty about roles. At least in the beginning, prisoners were told that they might be able to become guards. Research shows that in environments in which authority is unstable, or at least perceived as unstable, being in a position of low power can actually be empowering. As one group of researchers put it, "For low power individuals, power instability is empowering, leading them to act and behave as high power individuals... Having unstable low power leads to feelings of confidence and self-efficacy, especially when low power individuals can gain power by being creative. They may be more confident about their abilities and also perceive that they have the 'power to change their situation." I agree with other psychologists that the original message of the Stanford Prison Experiment-- that groups are bad, and that people in power automatically abuse power-- is far too simplistic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
An Important but Rarely Discussed Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Abraham Lincoln I recently watched the movie adaptation of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Like most reviewers, I found it harrowing. But as a psychologist, I also found it revealing. With my eyes glued to the screen in rapt attention, heart racing, I became obsessed with understanding what really was going on, and the lessons we can glean from such an experiment gone so horribly wrong.

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Great Reads related to the Stanford Prison Experiment

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Great Reads related to the Stanford Prison Experiment

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- Abraham Lincoln

I recently watched the movie adaptation of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Like most reviewers, I found it harrowing. But as a psychologist, I also found it revealing. With my eyes glued to the screen in rapt attention, heart racing, I became obsessed with understanding what really was going on, and the lessons we can glean from such an experiment gone so horribly wrong.

The standard story, given by the experimenter Philip Zimbardo, is that the experiment is a lesson about how everyday people (and groups consisting of everyday people), when given too much power, can become sadistic tyrants. In a recent article for The New Yorker, Maria Konnikova casts some doubt on that conclusion, arguing that the real lesson is the power of institutions to shape behavior, and how people are shaped by those preexisting expectations.

While this is certainly a valuable lesson, I believe another crucial variable at play that is rarely mentioned by commentators of the prison experiment or even in psychology textbooks is the person. Yes, power corrupts. But power does not corrupt everyone equally.

There's no way the small group of participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment represented the full range of human personality variation. For one, these were young males. Already, there is going to be higher levels of testosterone, on average, than most other populations. But there's also the issue that these participants actively sought out participation in a study having to do with prison. Research published in 2007 found that people who responded to an ad to be part of a study on "prison life" scored higher on tests of aggressiveness, authoritarianism, machiavellianism, narcissism, and social dominance, and lower on measures of empathy and altruism.

But even among the small sample of young male participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment, there was great variability in how people responded to power. Some guards were particularly cruel, whereas others could barely take the cruelty and offered to go on errands, while still others were actively kind to the prisoners, fulfilling their requests. Let's also not forget the hero of the film, Zimbardo's graduate student Christina Maslach, who recoiled in horror at the sight of how the participants were treated in the experiment.

I fear it's all too easy for us to focus our attention on that one loud, brash person who abuses power while ignoring the majority who were not nearly as cruel. Zimbardo has remarked that he was afraid he would be in for a very long and boring experiment. I suspect that if "Cool Hand Luke" didn't sign up for the experiment, the experiment would indeed have lasted the full two weeks. People would have generally followed the rules, and we probably wouldn't have had a movie made after it.

***

Since the Stanford Prison Experiment, we've learned a lot more about the psychology of power. Here's something we've found: power isn't inherently good or evil.

Yes, it's true that power fundamentally alters perception. As Adam Galinsky and colleagues put it, "powerful people roam in a very different psychological space than those without power." Power increases confidence, optimism, risk-taking, sensitivity to internal thoughts and feelings, goal-directed behavior and cognition, and creativity.

But these are not necessarily bad outcomes. Put to good use, power can have an incredibly positive effect on people. There are so many compassionate teachers, bosses, politicians, humanitarians, and others who wield power, who genuinely want to make the world a better place.

I think a really important point here is that power amplifies the person. It gives already existing personality dispositions and tendencies a louder voice, and increases the chances that these tendencies will be given fuller expression. Thus, we must consider interactions between the person and the situation. As Galinsky and colleagues point out, "the situation loses its suffocating hold over the thoughts and behavior of the powerful... and they are left with their own opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and personalities to drive their behavior."

Research shows that activating the concept of power in men with an already-existing disposition toward sexual harassment or aggression increases objectification of women. There's also an emerging line of research on the " Dark Tetrad"-- which consists of the darker personality dispositions of narcissism, psychopathy, machiavellianism, and everyday sadism. One study found that when given the opportunity, everyday sadists (those with a higher appetite for cruelty) killed bugs at greater rates than nonsadists, and were more willing to work for the opportunity to hurt an innocent person. Similarly, when narcissists have their ego threatened (e.g., are insulted), they are much more likely to increase aggression, even increasing aggression on innocent bystanders.

Not just anyone put in a position of power will hurt others, however. Serena Chen and colleagues found that those with an exchange relationship orientation (who focus on tit for tat) engaged in more self-serving behaviors when given power, whereas those with a c ommunal relationship orientation (who take into account other people's needs and feelings when making a decision) demonstrated greater generosity when given power.

***

So what, if anything, can we do to decrease the likelihood of power leading to bad behavior?

One interesting reversal to the finding that power amplifies the person is that when people in positions of power are given explicit and salient goals, the situation becomes much more important, and can override people's innate dispositions.* Perhaps we can refocus people's tendencies in a positive direction by providing them with clear prosocial goals.

This suggestion acknowledges the fact that no one is all good or all bad; all of us have many sides. Even people who abuse power most certainly have other, more prosocial sides that may be unexplored. We must ask ourselves which side we most want to bring out of a person. Zimbardo's experiment shines a light on the bad, but I could imagine an equally persuasive study designed in such a way to show the incredible potential for good in just about anyone when given power with prosocial goals.

Another way to bring out more positive outcomes is to simply put more people with prosocial dispositions (e.g., high empathy and compassion) in positions of power and let them carry out their already existing prosocial goals (e.g., desire to reduce violence, feed the hungry, etc.).

There are so many humane people in this world. In fact, most people are humane. Let's not let the minority who abuse power make us forget this fact. I think the media as well as psychologists could do a lot more to highlight the more uplifting and hopeful segments of humanity. As Jimmy Carter once said, "What are the things that you can't see that are important? I would say justice, truth, humility, service, compassion, love. You can't see any of those, but they're the guiding lights of a life."

Recognizing that power is not inherently good or bad, we can try to stack the deck as much as possible to harness the incredible power of power. As Galinsky and colleagues so eloquently put it,

"Perhaps human accomplishment is as much about the cans and cannots as it is the haves and the have-nots. Although power is often thought of as a pernicious force that corrupts those who possess it, it is the protection from the situational influence demonstrated here that helps powerful individuals surmount social obstacles and reach greater heights of creativity to express the unpopular ideals of today that can lead others to the horizons of tomorrow."

(C) 2015 Scott Barry Kaufman, All Rights Reserved

* This is another valuable lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment: the power of goals from authority figures. Experimenters like Zimbardo are in a position of power themselves, and are responsible for not abusing that power. This was also a lesson of the famous Milgram experiment. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, there was no ethical oversight. Zimbardo took on the role of the prisoner superintendent, and explicitly told the guards to gain control over the prisoners. In some cases, he encouraged the priosoners to abuse the guards. In a telling attempt to replicate the Stanford Prison Experiment, the BBC found that the prisoners worked together to overthrow the guards, who were ambivalent about their roles in the first place. The difference between the experiments? The experimenters were held accountable, as the BBC study had an ethical committee that continually monitored the study to make sure it didn't get out of hand. Also, there was even some uncertainty about roles. At least in the beginning, prisoners were told that they might be able to become guards. Research shows that in environments in which authority is unstable, or at least perceived as unstable, being in a position of low power can actually be empowering. As one group of researchers put it, "For low power individuals, power instability is empowering, leading them to act and behave as high power individuals... Having unstable low power leads to feelings of confidence and self-efficacy, especially when low power individuals can gain power by being creative. They may be more confident about their abilities and also perceive that they have the 'power to change their situation." I agree with other psychologists that the original message of the Stanford Prison Experiment-- that groups are bad, and that people in power automatically abuse power-- is far too simplistic.

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An Important but Rarely Discussed Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment

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Abraham Lincoln I recently watched the movie adaptation of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Like most reviewers, I found it harrowing. But as a psychologist, I also found it revealing. With my eyes glued to the screen in rapt attention, heart racing, I became obsessed with understanding what really was going on, and the lessons we can glean from such an experiment gone so horribly wrong.

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The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) took place in 1971. Young men were divided into the roles of Prisoner and Guard and put in a prison-like environment in the basement of the Psychology Department at Stanford University. The study was meant to last two weeks.

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Hamilton, D. K., & Stichler, J. F. (2015). Institutional review boards and peer-reviewed publication. HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal, 8(2), 81–84. doi:10.1177/1937586714567647

Grove, S., Burns, N., & Gray, J. (2013). The practice of nursing research: Appraisal, synthesis and generation of evidence (7th ed.). St. Louis: Saunders/Elsevier

Schrems, B. M. (2013). Mind the gaps in ethical regulations of nursing research. Nursing Ethics, 20(3), 336–347. doi:10.1177/0969733012462051

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Despite the numerous criticisms directed at Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, the general public had an understanding of how a situation influences human behavior. His experiment reinforced the importance of adhering to the ethical principles of beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice. Further, his experiment demonstrated the importance of social accountability and quality control, particularly when it comes to nursing research (Schrems, 2013). Social accountability in a contextualized process of knowledge production comes from the increased need of evidence-based practice in nursing. Quality control in nursing science demands for social accountability. Quality control enables investigators to effectively examine the objectivity, validity, reliability, practicability and usefulness of instruments and interventions. Moreover, clinical importance, social validity and generalizability were important lessons gained from the prison experiment.

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Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, which studied behaviors of students assigned to roles as prisoners or guards in a mock prison, has been regarded as a notorious experiment that led to physical torture and psychological abuse of study participants (Hamilton & Stichler, 2015).  In particular, the following ethical principles have been violated (Grove et al., 2013):

·      Beneficence and Nonmaleficence: Physical and psychological trauma were clearly not mitigated and minimized during the experiment. Further, Zimbardo, the primary researcher, has been too engrossed in his role as warden/commissioner.

·      Integrity and Responsibility. Zimbardo held important information regarding potential risks and harms from the participants when they signed their consent forms. Further, he held vital information regarding the trauma experience by the participants from their parents during their meetings.

·      Respect for People’s Rights and Dignity: Zimbardo clearly violated the participants’ right to withdraw anytime from the study. Debriefing sessions with the priest has lost its objective by becoming in itself a process/variable by playing a role in the experiment. Further, the participants certainly were not able to exercise their right to fair treatment, as well as protection from discomfort and harm.

While it has been frequently cited as an example of an unethical research, Zimbardo’s experiment had also failed to establish its study generalizability. The unrepresentative sample of mostly white and middle-class males makes it difficult to apply the results to a wider population. Further, there was clearly a lack of ecological validity despite the researchers attempt to recreate the environmental and situational variables of prison life.

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Zimbardo prison experiment (shortened clip)

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Examination of the consent form revealed missing information on the following:

·      Disclosure of essential information: There was important information left out regarding the description of research activities. In particular, information was missing regarding the purpose of the research, description of the risks and discomforts that may be experienced, disclosure of alternative courses of treatment, noncoercive disclaimers, option to withdraw and debriefing sessions.

·      Comprehension: The participants’ comprehension of the consent depended on the complexity of the study, the amount of information communicated, and the process of communicating the information. Despite having a sample of college students, the consent form should have clearly delineated and structured the document by utilizing headings for major elements of the study such as “Purpose,” “Benefits,” and “Risks.”

·      Volunteerism: Voluntary consent implied that prospective subjects have decided to take part in a study out of their own volition without coercion or any undue influence. Rewards offered in a study ought to be congruent with the risks taken by subject. While the consent form itself lack detailed information on study risks except for mentioning the loss of privacy, was the payment commensurate to the possibility of physical and psychosocial trauma? As interviews have shown, were the participants swayed by the financial reward?

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Informed consent requires the researcher to disclose specific information to each prospective subject. Grove, Burns and Gray (2013) noted that informed consent requires four vital elements, namely: (1) disclosure of essential information; (2) comprehension; (3) competence and (4) volunteerism.