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By: Maeve Brady

Throughout our lives we may have heard of many notable experiments. With many notable experiments comes ones which were conducted very dangerously and are very controversial. Yet one that is still commonly debated and probably one of the most infamous psychology experiments is the Stanford Prison Experiment. In your life, you may have heard of this twisted experiment. And even if you haven’t, you may eventually. So, for those of you who would like a more in-depth explanation of the Stanford Prison Experiment and its procedures, stick around.

First of all we must understand what the Stanford Prison Experiment was even focused on studying; why it was even conducted. Dr. Phillip Zimbardo, a psychologist and professor at Stanford University which is located in Stanford, California, asked his students to examine what happens when someone is first imprisoned and the psychological effects of that. His students, as part of their independent study, came up with the intriguing idea of this sort of mock prison simulation.

Then, when Zimbardo started to question and have the desire to further investigate social roles and situational power dynamics, especially in prison, he decided to initiate this experiment. Or, in other words, he wanted to better understand and further research how ordinary people who are considered healthy and mentally “normal” can shift mentally in a matter of a couple of days under a prison simulated environment. So, in a newspaper ad they created advertisements for college students who would be willing to partake in a simulated prison experiment.

For the originally intended two week long experiment, they would be paid around fifteen dollars per day. Initially, there were around seventy participants, but after a series of psychological and physical tests, it was narrowed down to twenty-four participants. Contrary to the belief that the guards and the prisoners were chosen based on their height and size differences, the determination of whether you were a prisoner or a guard was completely random to ensure there was no biases-well at least that we know of.

Once the roles were chosen, the experiment began. In Stanford University’s basement, a simple yet pretty secure ”jail” was constructed. According to the Stanford Prison Experiment’s official website redesigned by Jeff Breil, Scott Plous, and David Jensenius in 2015, “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).” This demonstrates that the prison was intricately designed yet also had this easily comprehensible layout. And to create prison cells, they took the doors off some laboratory rooms and replaced them with doors made of steel bars and cell numbers where the prisoners would be held. An intercom system was also installed in order to listen in on the prisoner’s conversations as well as make announcements.

To fully understand the proceedings of the Stanford Prison experiment, we must understand the way, and fact, of how humiliation spread throughout this experiment. The experiment was split into three groups: the institution-which was composed of Dr. Zimbardo, who deemed himself as the superintendent, an ex-convict who played the role of the prison consultant because of his past experiences in a prison, as well as other people who helped operate the experiment-the guards, and the prisoners.

At first Dr. Zimbardo asked the Palo Alto Police Department to arrest the prisoners at their homes, in order to instill this sense of embarrassment as all their neighbors watched in shock. Then, when they arrived at the Palo Alto Police Department station, they were blindfolded, put in a cell, and forced to ponder their fate. Once they were transferred to their make-shift jail in the basement of Stanford University, they were then stripped naked and deloused in order to prevent “them from contaminating their jail”. But in reality, this was a method of increasing the humiliation upon the prisoners. The prisoners were then forced to wear a smock and given a number to diminish their pride and take away from their individuality.

It was also important to understand that the guards were really given no training on how to be a guard. They were only given instructions to use any method, besides physical violence, to assert authority over the prisoners and make them comply. The guards then devised a set of rules which involved some effective methods to make the prisoners listen. One of them was counts. These counts were an effective way of not only familiarizing the prisoners with their numbers, but it was also an effective way of establishing that the guards had the authority in that situation and the prisoners could only be another number that was “forced” to comply with what the guards were telling them to do. This also took away from the prisoner’s individuality and established this sense that all they could do was comply with the perceived authority figures. The other method was a large amount of push-ups whenever someone spoke out and/or behaved in a “bad” way.

Although everything went smoothly the first day, a prison rebellion then broke out the morning of the second. The prisoners removed their stocking caps, ripped off their numbers, and barricaded themselves inside the cells by putting their beds against the door. Because of the rebellion, the morning-shift guards were infuriated. When the morning-shift guards arrived at the “jail”, they were upset and believed that the night-shift guards must have been too strict on the prisoners. But, how the guards handled it was shocking to many. At the beginning of the rebellion, the guards insisted that reinforcements be called in. The three guards who were on stand-by call at home came in and the night-shift guards voluntarily remained on duty to help support the morning shift. The guards then decided to use force to dispatch the rebellion caused by the prisoners. The guards then got a fire extinguisher and shot a stream of skin-chilling carbon dioxide at them. They used this mechanism to stun the prisoners and force them away from the doors. Once the guards managed to dispatch the rebellion, a new problem arose.

Although the guards were able to calm the rebellion down, the fact that it took nine guards using clubs to do so, obviously made the guards nervous. Nine guards couldn’t be on duty all the time, so instead of using physical methods, the guards decided to use more physiological methods to control the prisoners and force them in line. So, the guards devised something known as the “privilege cell”. The three prisoners least involved in the rebellion were given special privileges, and they were given their uniforms and bed backs, as well as being able to brush their teeth. The prisoners who were least involved in the rebellion also got to eat a special meal in the presence of the prisoners who temporarily lost their eating privileges.

Throughout the experiment, several prisoners had to leave due to the torture of the experiment; for example, Prisoner #8612 had a mental breakdown and went into this fit of rage, and others were tortured to their breaking points.

There were also many other significant events that occurred along the way. For example, a new prisoner was added to play with the already established social groups, as well as a family visiting hour, and a priest visiting the “jail”. Yet throughout these interactions, no one spoke out, and instead of questioning the morals of the experiment, many only gave advice on how to make their “case” less severe and tried to work within the system to help them out.

After six days of this experiment, it had to be shut down. This shutdown occurred after Dr. Zimbardo snapped back into reality, and realized how cruel it was after someone had told him that what he was doing was too cruel. Although this experiment ended short, the conclusion has been relevant for years and years. The Stanford Prison Experiment concluded that individuals readily conform to social roles, especially when those roles are strongly stereotyped and involve power dynamics. And, contrary to Dr. Zimbardo’s statement claiming that this experiment proved that everyone has a little bit of evil and violence in them just awaiting to be released under pressure packed situations, many psychologists believe that it demonstrates that we act how we think we are supposed to act, and act to our preconceived notions. Also, due to the fact that the guards were given an initiative to assert authority over the prisoners, this may have influenced the way the guards acted too.

Thank you for following me along as I explained the Stanford Prison Experiment. Although I covered a ton of different aspects of it, there is still so much to discuss. I hope you have learned a lot about the Stanford Prison Experiment and its proceedings.

For more information, please go to:

https://www.prisonexp.org/the-story

By: Maeve Brady

Starvation is a very common part of suffering, impoverished countries, communities, and so on. When humans are faced with it, there could be numerous consequences. For example, terrible illnesses, continuous suffering, and in many cases, death. Throughout history, many have tried to prevent it, yet famine and the starvation of the human body is too vast and difficult to fully resolve. Yet that hasn’t stopped many from trying to find solutions for it and see the effects of starvation in general. This leads me to a very infamous psychology project conducted at the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Starvation Project. Today, I will try my best to give an in depth explanation of what exactly it was and its findings.

To start off, we must know exactly what the project was and its background. Ancel Keys, the psychologist in charge of the University of Minnesota, was eager to take on a huge and impactful challenge of conducting an experiment based around the starvation of its subjects. This experiment had the goal of figuring out not only the physical effects of starvation on its participants, but also the psychological effects it may have. It also worked towards discovering at what point they could essentially be “rehabilitated” back into full health both mentally and physically. Along with Ancel Keys, Josef Brozek also joined in the conducting of the experiments in 1944, after he had newly joined the Minnesota lab in 1941. A couple years after Brozek had joined, in November 1944, thirty-six young men were chosen out of over two hundred to partake in the experiment. Like many experiments, there were requirements, especially for its participants. For the Minnesota Starvation Project, the young men had to be of good health, meaning they had to be a good weight- at least what was considered to be a good weight- and had to have pretty good health in general. Along with the fact that they had to take psychological tests to ensure they were “normal” and all on the same level. This made it so all the men were essentially on “an even playing field”, so when observing the changes in the men, they could find some consistency. After these thirty-six men were chosen out of the hundreds, they took up residence in the corridors of the University of Minnesota’s football stadium due to space requirements and other variables-to prevent getting in the way of the other students.

According to Dr. David Baker and Natasha Keramidas, psychologists who wrote an article about the Minnesota Starvation Project for the American Psychological Association, “The research protocol called for the men to lose 25 percent of their normal body weight. They spent the first three months of the study eating a normal diet of 3,200 calories a day, followed by six months of semi-starvation at 1,570 calories a day (divided between breakfast and lunch), then a restricted rehabilitation period of three months eating 2,000 to 3,200 calories a day, and finally an eight-week unrestricted rehabilitation period during which there were no limits on caloric intake.” This demonstrates that at the start they were required to intake the standard amount of calories just to observe their health and overall mood, yet as the months passed, they slowly started to decrease into this six month period of semi-starvation with the researchers only providing one thousand five hundred and seventy calories for the subjects. This is approximately around one thousand six hundred and thirty calories less than before.

After the six months of the monitored starvation, they switched initiatives into rehabilitation by giving them the standard amount of calories whilst also giving them an unrestricted limit on the weekends and some limits during the weekdays. During this semi-starvation period, the changes in these young men were drastic. Some of the drastic changes were that the men quickly lost weight and had a sickly appearance. Not only was there this significant decrease in weight, but also significant decreases in overall body temperature and heart rate. Also, not only were there physical effects on the men but also psychological effects such as an increased obsession. This obsession was with food. The lack of consumption made some of the men go crazy in a sense, with the constant fantasizing about food in this repetitive way. Along with more physical effects of irritability, depression, and fatigue. This especially proved to be arduous for some men, with three subjects breaking their diet and/or not meeting the weight loss requirements.

But, what may be the most notable about the experiment is the recovery process of the participants. Like I mentioned before, after the semi-starvation period, they started slowly reintroducing more calories into the subject’s life, but as they did so, there were some unexpected results. Many assumed that after introducing food back into the subjects’ lives, they may gain weight very quickly, but in fact it was the opposite of this. Instead of re-gaining all the weight back quickly, the participants actually gained weight even slower than the slowest time the researchers anticipated, along with the fact that many did not gain any weight at the start and in fact lost more. After monitoring the subjects for a while, the results that they found were that the subjects endured gastrointestinal issues, excessive hunger, and even some gaining more weight than before, although staying the same weight after some time into the rehabilitation. This further proved that the weight gain after starvation is an extremely arduous process that can have many different outcomes, although this is still being researched.

Like many experiments, there is a reason for conducting it, and in the case of the Minnesota Starvation Project, it is very complex. During WWII-when this experiment was conducted-many Americans had encountered Europeans being starved, especially in Germany. In Germany, due to Jews being deemed as evil scapegoats, they were placed in concentration camps, with Adolf Hitler, the dictator at the time, having the goal of killing them. And, one way to do this was starving them. So, at these camps all the Jews and other prisoners of war were terribly starved, which was obvious through their physical appearance and overall drowsy and irritable moods. After the United States discovery of this, a complex question arose. “How fast can one be rehabilitated from almost complete and/or complete starvation of the human body, and what psychological effects would that have?” So, in order to test this, many young men who weren’t serving in the military decided to sign up in hopes to help contribute to their country in some form, in this case, medical research. To be more specific, because these men who weren’t fighting in WWII may have been ashamed of not serving their country, many still wanted to help contribute to the war cause and thus signed up to help further medical research.

Thank you for following me along as I gave an in-depth explanation of what the Minnesota Starvation project was and its intentions. I hope you have gained a better understanding and possible interest in this subject!

For more information please go to: