Stanford Prison Experiment and Behavioural Experiments

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ok so i cant find a thread about this yet. I saw "das experiment" last night and it scared the shit out of me. having a look at the stanford prison experiment website, i began to wonder how on earth anyone can go ahead with doing these sort of things. Do these sort of mass behavioural experiments really contribute to anything, except for possibly fucking up the lives of the people that take part? how are they justifiable? Zimbardo, the guy who set up the experiment at Standford, comes over as a complete idiot in his notes on the site, completely unaware of what he was doing.

is there not a case for some sort of regulation. should scientists have to apply for some sort of licensing before they can subject people to experimentation? is there already such regulation?

isnt a bit lamentable that this "social experiment" thing has now given license for ~~endemol to print money~~ countless reality shows, and even more articles in the paper going "ooh wife swap, its so trashy and immoral but i love it. so interesting!"

its all "so interesting". i think thats why i got a bit worked up about this.

anwya, any thoughts? anyone else see the film?

― ambrose (ambrose), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 10:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Do these sort of mass behavioural experiments really contribute to anything, except for possibly fucking up the lives of the people that take part? how are they justifiable?

These experiments are completely unethical - Stanley Milgram himself was censured under professional ethics rules brought in as a result of Nazi experiments on human subjects.

HOWEVER, these kind of experiments tell us very interesting things about how human beings work in strange situations. The Stanford experiment in particular provides useful insights to anyone interested in the Abu Ghraib events.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 10:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Er, how are such experiments unethical, if the people who take part in them do so wilfully, and the experiment is stopped if there's a risk someone'll get physically hurt. Is S/M sex between consenting partners unethical too? Or master/slave relationships?

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 10:32 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah it does sound kind of interesting.

also the Stanford Prison Experiment makes for a very good band name.

― ken c (ken c), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 10:33 (twenty-one years ago)

you do know there is a band called Stanford Prison Experiment, right?

― dog latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 10:40 (twenty-one years ago)

no i didn't know that.

is there one called Behavioural Experiments? this thread can be a double bill.

― ken c (ken c), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 10:49 (twenty-one years ago)

S/M sex isnt unethical, but both parties are acknowledged to be part of the experience, if you look at it as a an experiment, which it maybe sometimes be, in initially, then both participants are subjects of it. Also, sex is a selfish, pleasure thing. People dont have sex to further mankinds understanding, or to bring about change (babies excepted). I dont think you can compare them - the power dynamic is pretty different. I think consent is a red herring too, just becasue people consent to do something, doesnt mean that it justifies whatever you do. Although we've been here before....

― ambrose (ambrose), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 11:19 (twenty-one years ago)

I think the Milgram experiments might fall foul of current ethical practices just because of the trauma they cause participants.

I seem to recall that they have been replicated several times though, sometimes with real shocks on animals, to get around the objection that subjects might know at some level that the shocks couldn't really be real.

Solomon Ashe's 50s experiments on conformity are interesting too.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 12:55 (twenty-one years ago)

The Stanford experiment in particular provides useful insights to anyone interested in the Abu Ghraib events.

What are those insights? When the news on Abu Ghraib broke, there was all this talk about SPE, but personally I think there are far more instructive insights to be gained about Abu Ghraib by just looking at America's prison system, not a bunch of students play-acting.

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 12:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Also, sex is a selfish, pleasure thing. People dont have sex to further mankinds understanding, or to bring about change (babies excepted).

wait but that kinda implies that it's better if human experiments were done purely for pleasure....

although big brother watchees will actually agree with this.

― ken c (ken c), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 12:58 (twenty-one years ago)

watchers. not watchees. although they might enjoy it too.

― ken c (ken c), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 12:58 (twenty-one years ago)

They did a Stanford Prison Experiment type thing on TV here a couple of years ago. I missed the last episode though. They were all going nuts. It was quite good.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 13:00 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah i remembered that. a couple of prison dudes started taking charge.. i also missed the end.

― ken c (ken c), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 13:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Er, how are such experiments unethical, if the people who take part in them do so wilfully, and the experiment is stopped if there's a risk someone'll get physically hurt.

I'm maybe thinking more of the Milgram experiment. the subjects were misled, in that they were told that the experiment was to test resistance to pain, not their ability to inflict it. Also there is the issue of causing trauma to the subjects.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 13:51 (twenty-one years ago)

again, I'm maybe thinking more of the Milgram experiment, which showed a worrying tendency for random people pulled in off the side of the road to torture to death if told to do so by an authority figure. Some of these experiments generally are good for outlining how relatively normal people can behave like thugs in the right circumstances.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 13:54 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't think that deceiving people about the point of the experiment is outlawed per se. Many of the psychology experiments entailed this, anyway. As long as you debriefed them afterwards it was OK.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:00 (twenty-one years ago)

well, whatever. I read that Milgram was censured in a Psychology textbook. If the man in the book says it IT MUST BE TRUE.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:06 (twenty-one years ago)

incidentally, I think we should have a thread about Ellen Slater's book about psychological experiments, but I need to read the book first.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:06 (twenty-one years ago)

'Many of the psychology experiments' was meant to read 'Many of the psychology experiments I did at university', btw.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:09 (twenty-one years ago)

I guess what I'm saying is that there is plenty of anecdotal evidence in real life of how humans are terrible to each other (like, say, the Holocaust) that I'm not sure what the value is of psychological experiments trying to prove that thesis (although maybe that's not what they're trying to prove explicitly, it's there implicitly).

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Because people still like to think that it's just evil foreigners that get up to that sort of thing. And it's not just about 'ha ha - see' proof, either. It's about identifying the kind of conditions that tend to promote such behaviour.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:16 (twenty-one years ago)

like the human condition?

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:19 (twenty-one years ago)

seriously though, I know what you mean, but I'm not sure better answers to the question of why stuff like this happens might be brought out through methods other than experimentation.

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:20 (twenty-one years ago)

nyeh, the experiments are more complicated, because they seem to show that very bad things can be perpetrated by ordinary people rather than by bad people. Hstencil, you seem to be saying "let's accept we are bad and get on with torturing each other", while social science is about identifying conditions where torture and badness will occur, and trying to avoid those conditions.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:26 (twenty-one years ago)

I think hstencil is saying why do you have to set up controlled experiments when you can just observe the things that go on in a natural setting. Well, any social psychologist worth their salt would agree that both approaches have pros and cons, and should complement one another.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:32 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost to DV - that's not what I'm saying at all! Jeez, talk about putting words in my mouth! I am very explicitly against torture (and I'm not sure who is for it, aside from the US Department of Defense and a number of our allies). I just think there is no bugbear "bad people" that commits these things. Certainly ordinary Germans, ones who did not torture or kill people prior to Nazism, were swept up in that and committed greatly evil acts. I'm saying study that, WITHOUT trying to replicate it (even in a much more benign way).

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Homo Homini Lupus

(Not very fair to the wolves, Plautus, is he?)

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:39 (twenty-one years ago)

social science is about identifying conditions where torture and badness will occur, and trying to avoid those conditions

thing is, badness is difficult to quantify and many of these behavioural studies just seem to be spinning wheels (and causing extreme distress) without offering any solutions.

― lauren (laurenp), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:50 (twenty-one years ago)

some of these behavioural experiments sound like they would be very handy for people (like Hstencil) who approve of torture. I almost wonder whether Rumsfeld decided to set up Abu Ghraib as one big Stanford Prison Experiment because that would be cool.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I am making the joke when I say that H approves of torture, obv.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:56 (twenty-one years ago)

sorry, DV, I don't find it that funny.

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Shitstorm in 5...4...3...

(xpost BAH)

― VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:57 (twenty-one years ago)

no shitstorm, Dan. More weirded out than pissed off.

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Palo Alto seems to really go in for this sort of thing:

http://www.vaniercollege.qc.ca/Auxiliary/Psychology/Frank/Thirdwave.html

― Nemo (JND), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 15:02 (twenty-one years ago)

this whole thread has become a behavioural experiment.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 15:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Getting back on topic, what I find interesting about these behavioural experiments is the way they point out the programmability of people - that our behaviour is very determined by our environment. My current get-rich-quick plan is to work out some way of programming people to give me all their money.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 16:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Church of Sc!3ntol0gy beat you to it.

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 18:23 (twenty-one years ago)

and lex luther

― ken c (ken c), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 19:49 (twenty-one years ago)

BAH! your cruel wit tortures me.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 5 August 2004 08:54 (twenty-one years ago)

twenty years pass...

Bumping this thread - gahhh… I guess as there’s no other place here to do it but maybe other folks here have been following it also.

If you’re in this thread, you probably know the fundamentals of the Stanford Prison Experiment. In the last several years, these fundamentals have been reexamined and have amplified now that Zimbardo is dead. This three-parter will get you up to speed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igUQwX6vZRU

Retraction Watch finally asks Should Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment be retracted?

― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, 11 March 2025 10:18 (nine months ago)

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