The Prison Experiment - Overview

• 70 Applicants > 24 chosen to participate
• "Our study of prison life began, then, with an average group of healthy, intelligent, middle-class males."
• 'prisoners' were picked up in a police car and booked (fingerprints and all) into the prison
• "Our prison was constructed by boarding up each end of a corridor in the basement of Stanford's Psychology Department building. That corridor was "The Yard" and was the only outside place where prisoners were allowed to walk, eat, or exercise, except to go to the toilet down the hallway (which prisoners did blindfolded so as not to know the way out of the prison). To create prison cells, we took the doors off some laboratory rooms and replaced them with specially made doors with steel bars and cell numbers."
• "The Hole," or solitary confinement. It was dark and very confining, about two feet wide and two feet deep, but tall enough that a "bad prisoner" could stand up.
  An intercom system allowed us to secretly bug the cells to monitor what the prisoners discussed, and also to make public announcements to the prisoners. There were no windows or clocks to judge the passage of time, which later resulted in some time-distorting experiences."
• on arrival prisoners were searched, stripped naked, and sprayed (allusion to lice/germs/filth)
• "It should be clear that we were trying to create a functional simulation of a prison -- not a literal prison. Real male prisoners don't wear dresses, but real male prisoners do feel humiliated and do feel emasculated. Our goal was to produce similar effects quickly by putting men in a dress without any underclothes. Indeed, as soon as some of our prisoners were put in these uniforms they began to walk and to sit differently, and to hold themselves differently -- more like a woman than like a man."
• The chain on their foot, which also is uncommon in most prisons, was used in order to remind prisoners of the oppressiveness of their environment.
• dehumanized > weren't called by name but by ID number
• stocking cap = shaved head > remove any individuality, as well as getting them to comply
• physical punishment was imposed by guards (push-ups, often with a foot on their back, or with another inmate sitting on them)
• when rebellion was started by the prisoners, guards responded with force
• ""Let's use psychological tactics instead of physical ones." Psychological tactics amounted to setting up a privilege cell. > The effect was to break the solidarity among prisoners."
• "By dividing and conquering in this way, guards promote aggression among inmates, thereby deflecting it from themselves."
• first prisoner to show disturbing reactions/signs of 'craziness' : "During the next count, Prisoner #8612 told other prisoners, "You can't leave. You can't quit." That sent a chilling message and heightened their sense of really being imprisoned. #8612 then began to act "crazy," to scream, to curse, to go into a rage that seemed out of control. It took quite a while before we became convinced that he was really suffering and that we had to release him."
• Prisoners allowed visitors, but with all the paperwork and such that is gone through in real jails
• Priest visit to see how realistic the prison is > "The priest's visit further blurred the line between role-playing and reality. In daily life this man was a real priest, but he had learned to play a stereotyped, programmed role so well -- talking in a certain way, folding his hands in a prescribed manner -- that he seemed more like a movie version of a priest than a real priest, thereby adding to the uncertainty we were all feeling about where our roles ended and our personal identities began."
• Parole Hearings > "Several remarkable things occurred during these parole hearings. First, when we asked prisoners whether they would forfeit the money they had earned up to that time if we were to parole them, most said yes. Then, when we ended the hearings by telling prisoners to go back to their cells while we considered their requests, every prisoner obeyed, even though they could have obtained the same result by simply quitting the experiment. Why did they obey? Because they felt powerless to resist. Their sense of reality had shifted, and they no longer perceived their imprisonment as an experiment. In the psychological prison we had created, only the correctional staff had the power to grant paroles."
• ended when a psychologist questioned the morality of the experiment, basing her question on the students treatment and physical/mental appearance.

http://www.prisonexp.org/psychology/1