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115. The Stanford Prison Experiment · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

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Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hello delicious friends,
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Speaker 1: and welcome to Who Did What Now? The history podcast
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Speaker 1: That's not your history class with me your host Katie Charlewood,
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Speaker 1: history harlot and reader of books. Oh there's a spider
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Speaker 1: on the curtains. Sorry, I looked up and saw a spider.
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Speaker 1: That's unpleasant. It's one of the spindly ones, like a
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Speaker 1: daddy long legs with no wings. Those are the creepy ones.
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Speaker 1: I don't care you show me at Arrantula. It's furry,
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Speaker 1: you could pet it. It's fine. That motherfucker is spindley
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Speaker 1: and it is plotting my demise. I can feel it. AnyWho.
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Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of time in the last couple
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Speaker 1: of days just arguing on the Internet, which I know
1:02
Speaker 1: is a fruitless task, but sometimes I just can't help myself,
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Speaker 1: especially when Oursehols decide to tone police me, which is
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Speaker 1: fucking bullshit, right. It's this whole thing where people feel
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Speaker 1: the need condemn your tone or your anger, but not
1:21
Speaker 1: what caused it. Like, it doesn't matter what the interest
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Speaker 1: is, is you expect to act cam in the face of it?
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Speaker 1: Is if there's something wrong with having real human feelings
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Speaker 1: about something. And what really gets on my frankly fabulous
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Speaker 1: tits is when people go, oh, don't let them have
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Speaker 1: the power over you to make you feel like this,
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Speaker 1: or don't let them make you angry. And of course
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Speaker 1: no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
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Speaker 1: What in the victim blaming tom fuckerway is this? No,
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Speaker 1: absolutely not, that's not true. That's true. That is absolutely
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Speaker 1: not true. Oh you can only feel bad because you
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Speaker 1: allow yourself to do that. It's just like this whole
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Speaker 1: false positivity movement which is like, oh, you have to
2:12
Speaker 1: feel good about this and you have to not let
2:14
Speaker 1: things bother you. And it's like, no, some things can
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Speaker 1: be water off a duck's back and let it not
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Speaker 1: bother you. But this, this bothers me more than the
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Speaker 1: original issue, more than the original issue of me arguing
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Speaker 1: about that stupid theory which bothers me so much, and
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Speaker 1: people choosing to spread misinformation about history, and you know,
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Speaker 1: women who are brutally and violently murdered, that's an issue.
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Speaker 1: I'm angry, but that obviously. But the people who go, oh, well,
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Speaker 1: you shouldn't say it like this, or you have to
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Speaker 1: be calm about this and don't be angry. Not I'm
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Speaker 1: allowed to be angry. My anger is justified. I'm allowed
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Speaker 1: to be annoyed. And I'm allowed to convey that we're
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Speaker 1: only willing to listen to information if it is presented
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Speaker 1: to you in a palatable way, then you don't actually
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Speaker 1: care about the information. And to imagine how bloody privileged
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Speaker 1: someone has to be to live in a world where
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Speaker 1: they feel that they should not have to deal with discomfort.
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Speaker 1: Seeing as I'm already riled up, I decided to try
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Speaker 1: and channel this energy into something useful and talk about
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Speaker 1: something that also annoys me, but from a historical point.
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Speaker 1: And I know what you're thinking, quit your gibble, Jabba,
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Speaker 1: in fact me, In fact you, I will, but first
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Speaker 1: we've got to get our source on. Oh and in
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Speaker 1: other news, I went on a very nice date to
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Speaker 1: a whiskey distillery. It was lovely. I had a great time,
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Speaker 1: and I'm going to see him again AnyWho. Our sources
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Speaker 1: are A Study of Prisoners and guards in a simulated
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Speaker 1: prison by PG. Zimbardo, WC. Banks, and see Henny, The
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Speaker 1: Lifespan of a Lie by Ben Blum, The Lie of
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Speaker 1: the Stanford Prison Experiment by Carol Prescott. Debunking the Stanford
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Speaker 1: Prison Experiment by t boat Laateexia, The Power and Pathology
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Speaker 1: of Imprisonment by Pages in Bardo. The Obedience Experiments, a
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Speaker 1: case study of controversy in social science by Arthur G. Miller.
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Speaker 1: Dynamics of Obedience by Stanley Milgram. Psychology the State of
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Speaker 1: Mind and Behavior by Richard Gross. And of course we
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Speaker 1: have history dot com and biography dot com. I owes
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Speaker 1: it incomfortably goat. Then let's begin. So if you've been
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Speaker 1: listening to me for a long time, then you'll know.
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Speaker 1: You'll know that my specialty, my area of expertise is
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Speaker 1: the rise of sensationalism and the use of Prentice propaganda
4:51
Speaker 1: in the late modern period. Like that's my specific area,
4:55
Speaker 1: and a lot of the knowledge and skills I've amassed
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Speaker 1: within that area. They're trying to hand sprinkling a dash
5:02
Speaker 1: of neuro divergent passion recognition. And this is really handy
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Speaker 1: for things like media comprehension for perception and history and
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Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff, and even things like cross referencing,
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Speaker 1: fact checking, so on and so forth. And back when
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Speaker 1: I was originally studying psychology, there were all these experiments
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Speaker 1: in studies that had such a massive effect on society,
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Speaker 1: in culture, pop culture, even like it's seeped into everywhere
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Speaker 1: and just become a general consensus that these cases, these
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Speaker 1: case studies, these experiments that are printed in these textbooks,
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Speaker 1: they are taken as fact. It is generally accepted that
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Speaker 1: this is how things wear, this is how they happened.
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Speaker 1: And this has resulted in so many concepts based on
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Speaker 1: false narratives, with so many people having the completely wrong
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Speaker 1: idea about Pavlov's dogs, Milgram's experiment, phinneas gage, Stockholm syndrome,
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Speaker 1: and of course the Stanford prison experiment. Oh you know what,
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Speaker 1: I just realized, like, this is probably the second science
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Speaker 1: based history episode we've done this year, and I'm very
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Speaker 1: sorry to say it is not going to be as
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Speaker 1: much fun as sex Raft, which was really fun to
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Speaker 1: study actually, and I didn't actually know about it until
6:26
Speaker 1: I went to look it up. But yeah, this this
6:29
Speaker 1: I've known about since I was in college, which was
6:32
Speaker 1: you know, a wee well ago, a we well ago.
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Speaker 1: Now I cannot jump into the Stanford prison experiment without
6:39
Speaker 1: talking about Milgram. Fust So Milgram is like the jumping
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Speaker 1: off point for this. So Stanley Milgram in nineteen sixty
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Speaker 1: one he conducts this experiment on obedience and authority. And
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Speaker 1: the reason he does this is because Stanley Milgram is Jewish.
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Speaker 1: I assure you it's relevant. So the idea of this
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Speaker 1: experiment actually comes about from quotes from the Newer and
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Speaker 1: Berg trials, in statements from Nazi soldiers and and people
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Speaker 1: working either for or with Germany committing atrocious acts and
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Speaker 1: stating that they were only following oddels. And so the
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Speaker 1: idea is like, was this just like a perfect patri
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Speaker 1: dish of things to happen that created this situation? Or
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Speaker 1: could the Holocaust happen again? Will people perform horrible, cruel
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Speaker 1: or violent things just because they're told to by a
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Speaker 1: person in authority? Is that the case? I'll probably do
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Speaker 1: it a bittysod on Melcolm's experiment when I have tend
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Speaker 1: to like refresh it in my mind. So this is
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Speaker 1: all from memory. I haven't looked at it in yours,
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Speaker 1: so forgive me for this bit. But basically he sets
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Speaker 1: up the experiment but doesn't tell the participants what they
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Speaker 1: ex's on. He says it's about learning or memory or
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Speaker 1: something to that effect, and he gets them into a room,
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Speaker 1: and he's got like people playing roles. One person playing
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Speaker 1: the test subject, another person playing the authority figure, which
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Speaker 1: would either be like him or some other person with
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Speaker 1: a lab coat and a clipboard, and then one person
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Speaker 1: who isn't in on it, who has to follow instructions. Now,
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Speaker 1: this person would come in and they would have to
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Speaker 1: ask questions to the person being tested. The person being tested, though,
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Speaker 1: was wired up to like an electric shock device. There
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Speaker 1: would be like a dial that goes all the way
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Speaker 1: up to eleven, not like it just went up to
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Speaker 1: like a certain number, and so it would be like
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Speaker 1: the level of shock they would get. So initially they're
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Speaker 1: answering questions while being shocked, which is by any accounts
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Speaker 1: not a valid not a valid test in any capacity.
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Speaker 1: Give your experiment involves electric shocks, you know, apart from
9:03
Speaker 1: that one where it stimulated the brain and gave the
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Speaker 1: omen orgasms, Like apart from that one, like, don't do it,
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Speaker 1: don't do that experiment. That's not that's not an appropriate
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Speaker 1: use of science. The orgasms though, definite appropriate use of science.
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Speaker 1: So initially they're asking questions, the test subject is answering them,
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Speaker 1: and they are told to like move the dial up. Now,
9:23
Speaker 1: as the experiment goes on, the test subject is getting
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Speaker 1: more questions wrong, and the more the test subject gets wrong,
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Speaker 1: the higher up the other person is supposed to turn,
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Speaker 1: you know, the shock up, and so the person in
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Speaker 1: authority will tell them to keep turning it. And it
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Speaker 1: gets to the point where the test subject slash actor
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Speaker 1: in the other room is just screaming, like begging, no stop,
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Speaker 1: and it's like, now you have to keep going. And
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Speaker 1: the study is supposed to show that like lots and
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Speaker 1: lots of people just like turned it all the way up,
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Speaker 1: like sixty five percent or something, turns the dial all
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Speaker 1: the way up, that they were happy to basically kill
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Speaker 1: this person because the person in authority told them to stop. Now,
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Speaker 1: there's a lot of secure information with this exact experiment,
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Speaker 1: like they remade it, but it's one of those experiments
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Speaker 1: that is so well known and people know of it
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Speaker 1: so much that trying to replicate it is virtually impossible.
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Speaker 1: Much like Stanford. So based on the sort of concept
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Speaker 1: of authority and enbedience, Phil's embardos like, I want to
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Speaker 1: try that. I want to try that and see how
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Speaker 1: that works, because he is this whole thing about like
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Speaker 1: is evil natural or is it sort of conditioned into you?
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Speaker 1: Like it's the natural nutural debate, which I remember there
10:46
Speaker 1: was a girl in my in my class, and she
10:50
Speaker 1: hated the nature and nutural debate because it doesn't have
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Speaker 1: an answer, because there's no definitive answer to nature and
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Speaker 1: nurture because it could be either, like there's valid arguments
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Speaker 1: on both sides, but there's no like it is nature
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Speaker 1: or it is nurture. That's why it's known as debate,
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Speaker 1: the nature nurture debate. But yeah, Zimbardo's like, I want
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Speaker 1: to get in on this and I have a plan
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Speaker 1: for a brilliant experiment in this illustrious university today. And
11:23
Speaker 1: in the late sixties early seventies, this natural nutural debate
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Speaker 1: was massive in psychology, Like it was the big thing
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Speaker 1: that everyone was talking about. Are people the way they are?
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Speaker 1: Or are they the products of their environment? As if
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Speaker 1: one is going to be right and the other isn't,
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Speaker 1: like as if it's not two things at once, okay,
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Speaker 1: And Zimbardo he wants to be the one to end
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Speaker 1: this debate once and for all. And so the Stanford
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Speaker 1: psychiatrist wants to set up a study. So he gets
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Speaker 1: twenty four male participants, they're all students. He gets them
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Speaker 1: to agree to be involved. And this basement is Stanford.
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Speaker 1: It is converted into like this makeshift prison, and these
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Speaker 1: twenty four fellas, they are separated, split down the middle
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Speaker 1: half and half twelve dudes are assigned as guards and
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Speaker 1: the other twelve are assigned as prisoners. And the way
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Speaker 1: that it's set up, the guards they have ultimate control,
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Speaker 1: They have complete power over the prisoners, and the prisoners
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Speaker 1: they have no choice but to obey. And over the
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Speaker 1: course of the next six days, the guards they go
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Speaker 1: mad with power, inflicting cruelty and torture upon the twelve prisoners,
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Speaker 1: having complete authority over them, deciding when or if prisoners
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Speaker 1: could be eat, sleep, or even go to the toilet.
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Speaker 1: Like this prison becomes a living hell for the prisoners
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Speaker 1: and the treatment that they receive at the hands of
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Speaker 1: the guards is so harsh and so incredibly cruel that
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Speaker 1: the people running the experiment zimborro at Al, have no
13:24
Speaker 1: choice but to pull it right there and then. And
13:28
Speaker 1: this experiment that was supposed to last one to two weeks,
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Speaker 1: I mean it ended after six Like that's not even
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Speaker 1: halfway and it is pulled. It's a failure. It's a
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Speaker 1: failed experiment. But it shows that if unchecked, if put
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Speaker 1: in a position of authority, if given power, that people
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Speaker 1: will automatically become tyrannical. And the evil is just part
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Speaker 1: of human nature and is triggered by circumstance. The thing delicious, friends,
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Speaker 1: it's absolute bollocks. It is a fabrication propelled by a
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Speaker 1: man courting the limblight and desperate for attention. Philip Zimbardo, Now,
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Speaker 1: Philip Zimbardo is what we in the social sciences and
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Speaker 1: humanities community call a gobshite. Here's the thing. He didn't
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Speaker 1: even come up with a Stanford prison experiment. One of
14:27
Speaker 1: his students did.
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Speaker 2: So.
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Speaker 1: He was up in his dorm and he's just arbitrarily
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Speaker 1: like split like half into one and half into the other.
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Speaker 1: And they did this little experiment and it had kind
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Speaker 1: of similar results, like the people in power had loads
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Speaker 1: of power, and the people who weren't just followed the rules.
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Speaker 1: Like that was the thing. Now, Zimbardo took this idea
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Speaker 1: and ran with it, which is probably better than some
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Speaker 1: of the shitty ideas he came up with. See Zimbardo
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Speaker 1: conducted this, I'm gonna call it an odd experiment, even
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Speaker 1: though I'm not even sure it actually happened, because it's
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Speaker 1: not in a scientific journal. It's not it's not pure
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Speaker 1: reviewed or anything. It's in like The Atlantic, like it's
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Speaker 1: in a magazine. He does his experiment where he leaves
15:18
Speaker 1: a car abandoned in the Bronx, which, to be honest,
15:23
Speaker 1: feels vaguely racist. So he's got one car parked in
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Speaker 1: the Bronx and the other in California. They're like basically
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Speaker 1: the same type of car, but they don't have license
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Speaker 1: plates and the hood is up, and he basically says,
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Speaker 1: like within a day, like the car in the Bronx
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Speaker 1: is stripped, kids are playing on the car, people are
15:43
Speaker 1: taking things from it, like just stuff is happening to
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Speaker 1: the car. Now, the one in California, it is non touched.
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Speaker 1: Nobody's dealing with it, nobody's bolling with it. And so
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Speaker 1: Zimbardo smashes a window with a sledgehammer, and after he
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Speaker 1: smashes the window, other people start like doing shit to
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Speaker 1: the car. So like they saw one bad thing happen
16:06
Speaker 1: and then they just kind of followed suit. But like
16:09
Speaker 1: there's no evidence that this actually happened. There's no like
16:15
Speaker 1: photographs or video of it, Like, there's some notes, but
16:19
Speaker 1: it doesn't explain, if you know, was it just on
16:22
Speaker 1: its own where there no other cars nearby? And he
16:25
Speaker 1: makes a really big deal about the people who were
16:28
Speaker 1: actually damaging the vehicles where clean cut whites, which granted
16:34
Speaker 1: does undercut that race as an accusation, but what an
16:38
Speaker 1: incredibly specific and consistent thing, Like, really, in two of
16:44
Speaker 1: the most densely populated multicultural places, you're telling me every
16:50
Speaker 1: single person involved was white. It feels like you're trying
16:53
Speaker 1: to make a point. Is if an act is so
16:57
Speaker 1: much more important or so much more noticeable because a
17:00
Speaker 1: white person did it, that's weird, right, That's that's not
17:03
Speaker 1: just me. That's a weird thing. And again I feel
17:07
Speaker 1: the need to reiterate this. There is no evidence that
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Speaker 1: this experiment ever actually happened at all in any capacity.
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Speaker 1: So a couple years later after this experiment supposedly happened,
17:23
Speaker 1: he's teaching in Stanford University and one of his students
17:27
Speaker 1: comes up with a project and shows him the little
17:31
Speaker 1: case study he did the little experiment up in his dorm,
17:35
Speaker 1: and Zimbardo's like, yeah, Okay, this is good, I can
17:39
Speaker 1: work with this, and then takes it and never gives
17:42
Speaker 1: the man any credit, Like he never even mentions that
17:46
Speaker 1: he got the idea from his student anywhere. And this
17:50
Speaker 1: man is very vocal in no stranger to the press.
17:55
Speaker 1: And so when Zimboro conducts the experiment, he comes up
17:58
Speaker 1: with like a couple of major points, the first of
18:02
Speaker 1: which being that every single participant in the Stanford prison experiment,
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Speaker 1: it's the typical person. They're normal, You're average Joe. They're
18:13
Speaker 1: regular people. They're not like psychopaths or people who have
18:18
Speaker 1: suffered extreme trauma. They're just everybody. To show that anybody
18:23
Speaker 1: could do this. The second is that the guards are
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Speaker 1: not given any instructions by the people conducting the tests.
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Speaker 1: It is up to them to choose how they're going
18:36
Speaker 1: to control their prison, what they're going to do. They're
18:38
Speaker 1: not told that you have to do X to y,
18:41
Speaker 1: you have to do this, you know, you have to
18:43
Speaker 1: act like such and such. You have free reign, do
18:46
Speaker 1: what you want, and of it's fine, no worries like
18:50
Speaker 1: these are two major parts. And of course, like we
18:55
Speaker 1: said earlier, there's the whole idea of authority in power
19:00
Speaker 1: and that people will do whatever a person in authority
19:03
Speaker 1: will tell them to do, like whether it's in Nazi Germany. Zimbardo,
19:08
Speaker 1: like Milgrim really had a thing about this, like they
19:12
Speaker 1: were reinforcing this information in their data like all the time.
19:15
Speaker 1: And Zimbardo he actually compares like prison guards and prisons
19:21
Speaker 1: in the States to like, you know, the guards in
19:27
Speaker 1: concentration camps, which is feels like a bit of a stretch.
19:32
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie. It feels extreme. Feels like an
19:36
Speaker 1: extreme comparison, like especially something from like the sixties in
19:41
Speaker 1: America just seems a bit much. But he's like, give
19:45
Speaker 1: them a uniform, you know, give them a haircut, let
19:49
Speaker 1: them wear like sunglasses. Like once they've got the look
19:53
Speaker 1: and they've been told they've got power, they'll just do
19:57
Speaker 1: whatever they want. You put the helmet on Barbie and
20:01
Speaker 1: suddenly Barbie's an astronaut, Like that's that's his thing. I
20:07
Speaker 1: could rant about this man for an age, but we
20:10
Speaker 1: have to get into the actual experiment. But before we do,
20:14
Speaker 1: we'll take a short break for a word.
20:15
Speaker 2: From our sponsors, and we're back, and I hope you're
20:27
Speaker 2: ready to hear the true story behind the Stanford Prison experiment.
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Speaker 1: It's August nineteen seventy one. After desiring to plageize his
20:37
Speaker 1: student's work, Phillips and Burrow is putting together an experiment
20:41
Speaker 1: in the basement in Stanford University. So he has the
20:46
Speaker 1: set built, he has the concept made. Not all he
20:51
Speaker 1: needs are active participants. So he needs to get like
20:55
Speaker 1: a decent variety, and so he decides, in order to
20:59
Speaker 1: get diverse group a collection of typical humans, he decides
21:06
Speaker 1: to recruit mail students. He puts a bunch of ads
21:10
Speaker 1: in the papills looking for male students to be participants
21:15
Speaker 1: in a psychological study of prison life. Zimbardo's ad states
21:19
Speaker 1: that participants in the study will receive fifteen dollars a
21:23
Speaker 1: day for two weeks. So fifteen dollars in today's money
21:27
Speaker 1: is nearly one hundred and fifteen bucks a day, which
21:33
Speaker 1: two weeks, that's a lot of money, like even if
21:36
Speaker 1: you account for inflation, like you would have got a
21:39
Speaker 1: lot for that back then. Like that's good money. So
21:43
Speaker 1: of course people were champion at the bit. He ends
21:45
Speaker 1: up with a fair few responses, like seventy five in total.
21:49
Speaker 1: So these seventy five fellas they are brought in interviewed.
21:54
Speaker 1: It says that they had psychological evaluation, but I have
22:00
Speaker 1: my doubts on that or like how stringent it was
22:03
Speaker 1: or what exactly they were looking for. Now it's supposed
22:05
Speaker 1: to make sure that everybody's gonna be like, okay, like
22:08
Speaker 1: doing the experiment, but again I have my doubts about
22:12
Speaker 1: this incredibly unethical study. So this gets whittled down to
22:17
Speaker 1: twenty four, and these twenty four are split into two groups,
22:21
Speaker 1: guards and prisoners. Now they're told which they're gonna be,
22:28
Speaker 1: and so the ones who think they're gonna be like prisoners,
22:31
Speaker 1: they think they're just gonna be putting a cell or whatever.
22:33
Speaker 1: So they bring books. So they're like, Oh, I'm gonna study.
22:37
Speaker 1: It'll be great. I'll have some time to myself in
22:40
Speaker 1: a quiet room. And honestly, sometimes you just feel like that, like, yes,
22:46
Speaker 1: let me be alone in a room with my books
22:48
Speaker 1: where I can be undisturbed. Like that feels like a
22:51
Speaker 1: really good time. Actually, So yeah, these guys are like
22:54
Speaker 1: planning to study and whatnot because they think it's just yeah,
22:58
Speaker 1: gonna be in a cell. And on the fourteenth of August,
23:03
Speaker 1: the participants who are selected as prisoners are arrested by
23:08
Speaker 1: actual police, like the real police force in the area,
23:13
Speaker 1: just like arrest them, shove them in the police cars,
23:17
Speaker 1: drive them to Stanford University, and like bring them down
23:22
Speaker 1: into the you know, the corridor which has been converted
23:25
Speaker 1: into a prison. And the fellows selected to be guards.
23:30
Speaker 1: They're all given uniforms and like mirrored sunglasses to sort
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Speaker 1: of make them like the group of guards, not like
23:38
Speaker 1: Tony or Peter or John. They're all guards, like they're
23:42
Speaker 1: different to you. You are different to them. And the
23:46
Speaker 1: guards are actually involved in the experiment before the prisoners.
23:50
Speaker 1: So when they come together, they have this orientation which
23:53
Speaker 1: lasts like a full day. And the reason we know
23:57
Speaker 1: this is because it was recorded. So when they were
24:02
Speaker 1: doing this study, this experiment, they filmed it and they
24:06
Speaker 1: recorded audio. Now there isn't that much film. There was
24:10
Speaker 1: like a week clip here and there, because film is
24:14
Speaker 1: expensive was back then, but film's expensive, so of course
24:18
Speaker 1: they don't waste film. And they would only turn the
24:21
Speaker 1: cameras and audio devices on at certain points. Inconveniently, when
24:26
Speaker 1: they were turned on, they happened to capture some weird stuff,
24:31
Speaker 1: some severe stuff, even horrific perhaps, And I wasso lucky
24:36
Speaker 1: that they managed to capture those specific things. But yet
24:40
Speaker 1: most of the recordings, like a lot of that, of
24:42
Speaker 1: what the one hundred and forty one hundred and fifty
24:44
Speaker 1: ils of the experiment, there's like six recorded, which that
24:51
Speaker 1: math ain't math in folks. So, yeah, we're in the
24:55
Speaker 1: basement slash prison. It's set up. The guards are already there.
25:00
Speaker 1: They're in their way uniforms there shiny wee glasses, and
25:03
Speaker 1: the prisoners are brought there by the police. They are
25:07
Speaker 1: chucked in their cells. So like as part of the experiment,
25:11
Speaker 1: they were supposed to follow certain rules, like there has
25:14
Speaker 1: to be three guards on per shift. They have to
25:16
Speaker 1: do like count so on and so forth. Now on
25:21
Speaker 1: the very first day there was like one shift with
25:24
Speaker 1: three guards. One of them just buggers off, like during
25:28
Speaker 1: a prisoner account. He's like, eh, whatever doesn't matter. And
25:32
Speaker 1: the prisoners, of course they're supposed to follow, you know,
25:34
Speaker 1: whatever the guards say. But this one fella like he
25:37
Speaker 1: isn't enforcing any of it. He doesn't make them like
25:41
Speaker 1: follow the other guards orders, he doesn't make them do shit.
25:44
Speaker 1: He's like so unbothered by it. And this gets picked
25:49
Speaker 1: up on very quickly by was it Jaffy Ufee, who
25:55
Speaker 1: is the guy who actually came up with the experiment,
25:58
Speaker 1: like the student, Like he ends up pulling the guy aside.
26:01
Speaker 1: He's got like a warden and he's got the guy
26:05
Speaker 1: and then himself, and he basically tells him that he's
26:08
Speaker 1: in the background and that he's not really doing his bit.
26:13
Speaker 1: And this guard he tells him it's not really his thing.
26:16
Speaker 1: He's not a tough guy. He's not about that. And
26:19
Speaker 1: he gets told that he basically has to be tough,
26:22
Speaker 1: he's going to be firm, and he has to do
26:24
Speaker 1: this and if he doesn't do this, then the experiment's
26:28
Speaker 1: not going to work. And like the reason that he's
26:30
Speaker 1: been pulled aside and being told this is because they
26:34
Speaker 1: had already brought this up in the orientation Like that
26:39
Speaker 1: guard training day. They're basically told to be shitty. They
26:44
Speaker 1: were told to be aggressive and abusive and and you know,
26:48
Speaker 1: generally abusing their authority, which from the get go completely
26:53
Speaker 1: invalidates the study because the whole point is you put
26:58
Speaker 1: people in this environment and you see how they act,
27:02
Speaker 1: Like you want to see if they become drunk with power,
27:06
Speaker 1: like you want to see if they'll just do that
27:08
Speaker 1: like it's spontaneous, like they're just going to choose to
27:12
Speaker 1: do horrible things. Like there's this one prisoner who they
27:16
Speaker 1: dehumanize by putting a bag on his head, like that's
27:20
Speaker 1: something they in the study. They say, he just did that,
27:24
Speaker 1: he just put the bag on his head, when in fact,
27:28
Speaker 1: it was the researchers. They told them to put a
27:31
Speaker 1: bag on the person's head before they walk them to
27:34
Speaker 1: the toilets out to the bathrooms because it's in a
27:37
Speaker 1: different area and they didn't want them to have a
27:39
Speaker 1: sense of reality. But they're like, you need to do this,
27:43
Speaker 1: and then they're like they did it of their own accord. Wow,
27:47
Speaker 1: I wonder where they got the idea. Now, from the
27:50
Speaker 1: moment this experiment started, Zimbardo is courting the press like
27:56
Speaker 1: he is straight up promoting it while it's happening. So
28:00
Speaker 1: he's like putting a press release out on the second day,
28:04
Speaker 1: which incidentally one of the guards resigned. Like on the
28:09
Speaker 1: second day he's like, no, I don't like this. He says,
28:12
Speaker 1: it's quote unquote too heavy because you know, being told
28:17
Speaker 1: to abuse people seems a bit much for him. He's
28:20
Speaker 1: like the man, he's not worth it, met not thanks
28:24
Speaker 1: and he resigns, which is something they don't mention for years,
28:31
Speaker 1: Like nobody mentions in the study. This guy just nopes
28:35
Speaker 1: out of it. They make it seem like everybody who
28:38
Speaker 1: was involved stayed in and continued to sort of roll
28:44
Speaker 1: with the punches, like no wonder this guy wanted out,
28:48
Speaker 1: so he gets in there, he's got his cool uniform.
28:51
Speaker 1: He's told to treat people worse. And these these prisoners,
28:56
Speaker 1: it is shocking because like the guards they have their
29:00
Speaker 1: uniform and the prisoners they have theirs, except instead of
29:05
Speaker 1: like a shirt and tie and slacks, they're in gunas
29:10
Speaker 1: like a wee hospital gown with no underwear. So they're
29:15
Speaker 1: in a week guna with a gully swinging it out
29:19
Speaker 1: and no protection. They're just put in such a vulnerable
29:24
Speaker 1: position like it's created to be with a harsh and
29:29
Speaker 1: unpleasant and uncomfortable but like this is genuinely a traumatic
29:35
Speaker 1: thing to do to someone. You have stripped them, you've
29:38
Speaker 1: put them in a flimsy gown, which is bad enough,
29:42
Speaker 1: but it's like they added an extra layer of almost
29:45
Speaker 1: like a chain gang without the chain, Like they put
29:48
Speaker 1: this massive, heavy padlock on their feet. I mean, it's
29:53
Speaker 1: not like there was an issue with escaping because if
29:56
Speaker 1: someone wants to leave the experiment, you have to let
29:59
Speaker 1: them leave, like legally that's a thing. And it's so
30:04
Speaker 1: horrible and uncomfortable that these prisoners, the guys being the prisoners,
30:10
Speaker 1: they don't really sleep. And there's two be interesting facts
30:13
Speaker 1: about sleep deprivation. One, it is genuinely a form of torture,
30:20
Speaker 1: like it is used when people are torturing. Sleep deprivation
30:25
Speaker 1: one of the main ones, and it really affects, you, know,
30:28
Speaker 1: your brain, It really affects how you work, how you act,
30:33
Speaker 1: and it can really affect your personality. Point two about
30:39
Speaker 1: sleep deprivation is that it's one of the main things
30:44
Speaker 1: that narcissists do, Like they will always try and affect
30:48
Speaker 1: your sleep, like they'll make your sleep uncomfortable, they'll make
30:52
Speaker 1: it difficult. They want to create sleep deprivation. They want
30:56
Speaker 1: to create this situation for you. Now, on top of
30:59
Speaker 1: all that, the guards are instructed to only call prisoners
31:03
Speaker 1: by a number and not their name. Now, this is
31:06
Speaker 1: another way to dehumanize them and just sort of separate
31:10
Speaker 1: the us versus them and to make them seem so
31:14
Speaker 1: much lesser. And again they're told to do this by
31:18
Speaker 1: the people conducting the experiment, So it should be unsurprising
31:22
Speaker 1: that on the second day, the day that one of
31:24
Speaker 1: the guards just straight up quits. There's a wee bit
31:29
Speaker 1: of a revolt. So in one of the cells, the
31:33
Speaker 1: prisoners had barricaded their door, ripped off the numbers from
31:37
Speaker 1: their goodness, and they just start making fun of the
31:40
Speaker 1: guards and they're swearing at them, and they're just being
31:43
Speaker 1: general dicks because of course they are, because it's a
31:47
Speaker 1: bunch of male students in an unpleasant situation. So these
31:51
Speaker 1: guys are basically responding to the situation they've been put in,
31:55
Speaker 1: and the guards like straight away like they're unhappy with this.
31:58
Speaker 1: They don't like so that the power is taken from them,
32:02
Speaker 1: and so they just straight up calling reinforcements. They're like,
32:05
Speaker 1: more guysier now they've got guards. Some other shifts come
32:09
Speaker 1: up and they're like really worried about like a big rebellion.
32:12
Speaker 1: So anyway, it turns into the situation where they're like,
32:15
Speaker 1: there's more than one way to skin a cat, and
32:18
Speaker 1: so they decide to do They actually did this in
32:21
Speaker 1: Big Brother background. Big Brother was on they had like
32:25
Speaker 1: the good side, which had like really nice beds and
32:29
Speaker 1: cozy and wonderful stuff and like enough food for everybody.
32:33
Speaker 1: And then they had like the bad side, which was
32:36
Speaker 1: like you were sleeping on the floor, it wasn't like
32:40
Speaker 1: warm enough, and like a bunch of other things, right
32:43
Speaker 1: I think Survivored or something similar, like those reality shows.
32:47
Speaker 1: They split like this is the good camp and this
32:49
Speaker 1: is the bad camp. And so yeah, there's like a
32:53
Speaker 1: really nice sell where you would get like blankets and
32:56
Speaker 1: beds and really nice food. And what they do is
32:59
Speaker 1: they just like take random prisoners and put them in
33:03
Speaker 1: like the nice cell. And so the prisoners start turning
33:06
Speaker 1: on each other because like why did you get the
33:08
Speaker 1: nice cell? Like are you like, are you a rap?
33:12
Speaker 1: Are you turning on us? And it just creates this
33:14
Speaker 1: divide amongst the prisoners themselves, and not only are they
33:19
Speaker 1: like having a fight within themselves, the guards, because they're
33:23
Speaker 1: being told to, are becoming much worse. Like they get
33:28
Speaker 1: prisoners to clean toilets with their hands, which no, no,
33:34
Speaker 1: that's how you get sick. Do you want dysentery, because
33:37
Speaker 1: that's how you get dysentery. Maybe even colorad we don't
33:41
Speaker 1: need that to come back. We don't speaking of dirty toilets.
33:46
Speaker 1: Instead of letting them go to the toilets like bag
33:49
Speaker 1: over the head over to the loose, what they do
33:52
Speaker 1: is they make them like defecate and urinate in buckets
33:56
Speaker 1: in the cells, and then they don't let them remove them, like,
34:03
Speaker 1: they don't take them out. So there's a putred, rancid
34:07
Speaker 1: smell in the cells apart from like the nyell, and
34:11
Speaker 1: it is disgusting. It's horrible. Eight and one guy just
34:14
Speaker 1: starts crying. He breaks down. Now this fellow goes on
34:19
Speaker 1: to say that he acted this way, and he was
34:22
Speaker 1: acting and it was a performance because he knew that
34:26
Speaker 1: he was expected to be upset this treatment, and so
34:31
Speaker 1: like that comes out like a few years later. Meanwhile,
34:36
Speaker 1: Zimbardo was still treating that like a prison, and so
34:39
Speaker 1: he's like, you get visitors, and so the visitors come
34:43
Speaker 1: and instead of staying like an hour, which is normal
34:46
Speaker 1: visiting time for the clink, they stayed ten minutes. So
34:51
Speaker 1: they get away ten minute visit and then they'll send
34:53
Speaker 1: it away and they just kind of find it weird
34:58
Speaker 1: because they I don't know, it wasn't explained to the
35:01
Speaker 1: visitals like probably at all, so they were expecting to
35:05
Speaker 1: have more time, and then they're told, like, you've got
35:08
Speaker 1: ten minutes, now go, and so they complained to the
35:12
Speaker 1: person being the warden, and then they just go. So
35:17
Speaker 1: another prisoner actually has to leave because he gets this
35:21
Speaker 1: rash all over his body, which is unsurprising considering the
35:24
Speaker 1: conditions he's in. Now, Zimbardo claims like it's psychosomatic. He
35:29
Speaker 1: gets this rash because he's in the prison, and he's
35:32
Speaker 1: assuming that he's gonna get a rash because he's in prison.
35:37
Speaker 1: When the guy with the rash, as it turns out,
35:41
Speaker 1: had ezema. He had ezema and so which is like
35:45
Speaker 1: a skin condition if you don't know what ezema is,
35:48
Speaker 1: and he had medication for his exema, but when he
35:53
Speaker 1: was taken as a prisoner, they wouldn't let him have
35:56
Speaker 1: his medication. So, oh yeah, the guy with ezema got
36:00
Speaker 1: a rash. No fucking shit, sure, lock. It's just like
36:03
Speaker 1: feigning ignorance at that point, like could you imagine being, Oh,
36:07
Speaker 1: I wonder why Billy is wazing all of a sudden,
36:10
Speaker 1: didn't you take away his inhala and he's asthmatic. I
36:13
Speaker 1: don't know what you're talking about. Clearly, he's assumed that
36:17
Speaker 1: this place is making him ill. No, you just took
36:20
Speaker 1: his inhalo and he needs it to make his lungs work,
36:24
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So remember how I said
36:27
Speaker 1: earlier that he acted like they couldn't leave. He was like,
36:31
Speaker 1: you can only leave in case of an emergency, and
36:33
Speaker 1: you only get paid once the experiment is over. So
36:38
Speaker 1: the people involved really really felt that they had to stay,
36:44
Speaker 1: which is like against the ethics board really, and then
36:47
Speaker 1: it kindness circumvented the rule, but it's like, no, you
36:51
Speaker 1: have to tell them that they were allowed to leave.
36:54
Speaker 1: So there was a thing about you could only leave
36:57
Speaker 1: in an emergency. So this guy just starts faking this breakdown.
37:01
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm burning up inside, I'm dying. I need
37:05
Speaker 1: a doctor. And he ends up leaving. And there's another
37:10
Speaker 1: guy who just has like a Texas accent for no reason,
37:15
Speaker 1: and he's like a theater major and he's like, I'm dying. Oh,
37:19
Speaker 1: And it's the funniest. It's the funniest thing because like,
37:22
Speaker 1: when you know it's an act, so at this point,
37:24
Speaker 1: if you the guards have dropped out, if you the
37:26
Speaker 1: prisoners have dropped out, and one guy on the fifth
37:30
Speaker 1: day decides to go on a hunger strike. He's just like,
37:33
Speaker 1: hunger strike done. This is also conveniently. On day five,
37:40
Speaker 1: Zimbordo decides to bring his girlfriend to his prison experiment
37:45
Speaker 1: and you show her it, which I'm sure was an
37:48
Speaker 1: incredibly romantic thing to do, she says, unconvincingly. So he
37:53
Speaker 1: takes Christine mass Luck mass Luck down to his experiment
37:57
Speaker 1: and she sees it and she's like, what the actual
38:01
Speaker 1: fuck is this. She sees the guys like in the
38:04
Speaker 1: repadlocks and they're gunnas, and the smell i'm sure hits
38:08
Speaker 1: her and she's like, you need to stop this. This
38:12
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. Now, Zimbardo himself hadn't slept in a couple
38:16
Speaker 1: of days, and he was getting tired, and he basically
38:20
Speaker 1: had everything he needed because he had like the audio stuff,
38:24
Speaker 1: he had, the video he had, he had what he needed.
38:27
Speaker 1: And remember he's already like pushing this out to the press,
38:32
Speaker 1: and so on the sixth day he goes in, he
38:36
Speaker 1: cancels it, he pulls the experiment. It's done, and this
38:40
Speaker 1: becomes like amazing news, like huge news, because the very
38:46
Speaker 1: next day there's a riot in a prison, which results
38:52
Speaker 1: to another riot in another prison and it just blows
38:55
Speaker 1: up from there. It goes to the point that Zimbardo
38:58
Speaker 1: was actually brought in to testify it to Congress because
39:03
Speaker 1: they're like, you know, stuff about prisons and treatment and
39:07
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, absolutely, But it's like you coached the
39:13
Speaker 1: people to do this, you train them to do it,
39:16
Speaker 1: and then you film them doing it. But like you
39:19
Speaker 1: had to create the situation in order for people to
39:23
Speaker 1: act like Oursehols. You know, he created a situation that
39:28
Speaker 1: turned like these like twenty something year old fellas into sadists.
39:36
Speaker 1: The perfect conditions being prison, which is, strangely enough, almost
39:40
Speaker 1: as if prison in its current iteration is prime for
39:44
Speaker 1: sadism and abuse. But yeah, Zimbardo does his experiment, he
39:51
Speaker 1: talks about it, he promotes it, It becomes myth and legend,
39:55
Speaker 1: and it seeps into all areas of like culture and
39:59
Speaker 1: society in education. And the worst part is it's not
40:05
Speaker 1: peer reviewed for years because it takes him two years
40:09
Speaker 1: to even publish it. Like he's talking about it and
40:13
Speaker 1: people are discussing it, and he's got like his little
40:15
Speaker 1: clips that he can share, but he hasn't published it
40:20
Speaker 1: in any psychological journal, Like he hasn't done it. He
40:24
Speaker 1: just hides it away for a couple of years so
40:26
Speaker 1: that nobody can really question it to begin with, and
40:30
Speaker 1: then over the years he just kind of reinforces it
40:34
Speaker 1: over and over and it becomes this massive thing. And
40:39
Speaker 1: one of the many things that bother me about the
40:41
Speaker 1: Stanfold Prison Experiment is because of the way it has
40:46
Speaker 1: ended up in the mythos, is that it reinforces this
40:50
Speaker 1: concept of the evil person, like some people are just
40:54
Speaker 1: born evil, as if they are not, you know, partly
40:58
Speaker 1: at least molded by their environment. And then a way
41:02
Speaker 1: it removes agency and it dehumanizes, It absolutely dehumanizes a
41:06
Speaker 1: person because it creates them as an other, as if
41:11
Speaker 1: that's all someone's going to be. And I think there's
41:14
Speaker 1: just something incredibly wrong and horrible about that. And so yes,
41:20
Speaker 1: that is the story of the Stanford Prison Experiment. If
41:25
Speaker 1: you liked my retelling of this story, feel free to
41:27
Speaker 1: wait and review five stars. If you didn't, just don't
41:30
Speaker 1: say anything. It's fine. Nobody cares. Okay, recommendation time at
41:36
Speaker 1: his recommendation time. So I'm going to recommend for listening.
41:42
Speaker 1: I'm going to recommend the podcast Run Bambi Run. Trust me,
41:48
Speaker 1: you'll love it. For watching I'm gonna say Ghosts, I
41:54
Speaker 1: don't care if you watch the UK or the US version,
41:56
Speaker 1: watch them both. I think they're really good and separate ways,
42:00
Speaker 1: and they're very much tailored to their respective audiences, and
42:04
Speaker 1: I think they both work in their own ways. Although
42:06
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see like the other versions about
42:09
Speaker 1: like German, French, all that quite looking forward to those.
42:13
Speaker 1: And for reading The Silk Stalking Models by Anthony Berkeley.
42:20
Speaker 1: It's a it's a classic one, but it's a good one.
42:23
Speaker 1: And with that I shall bid you good night, adios
42:28
Speaker 1: au revoir avoe. Is them my friends, Bye bye,