Why Power Corrupts: The Stanford Prison Experiment

Why Power Corrupts: The Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971

Corruption of power is known to be inevitable. This tendency can be seen in those like the dictator Suharto, a former President of Indonesia, who allegedly stole $35 billion (Greenlees, 2008). Or, the corruption of Arnoldo Aleman, previous president of Nicaragua, who was known for his outrageous spending and vast amount of wealth, who was imprisoned and fined $10 million because of the supposed millions he stole (Dellios, 2002). Why is it that these alike world leaders are convicted of exploitation? Could these repeated acts of extortion and fraud be caused by the high honor that was stowed up them? Piloted in 1971 by Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford Prison Experiment studied the psychological

The results of the experiment are reflected by infamous tyrannical and power-corrupted leaders in history (Shuttleworth). Zimbardo, a psychology professor at Stanford University, had always wondered why powerful leaders throughout history were often known to be corrupt. In the hopes to find the answer, he created the idea of an experiment where subjects would play the parts of prison guards and prisoners, hopefully emulating powerful societal roles and the behavior that becomes of it. As Zimbardo and his team built a set that imitated a jail house in the Psychology Department basement of the university, a total of 24 “healthy” and “intelligent” middle-class students volunteered to be a part of the experiment, each earning $15 a day. They were, at random, assigned to either a role of a guard or a prisoner. The set of mock guards were given the typical police officer uniforms: clothed from head to toe in khaki, reflective sunglasses, and even clubs that were to be used as weapons. In order for this experiment to accurately display legitimate prison occurrences, inmates were given uniforms (medical dresses and stocking caps), and new identities in

This freedom that the guards were given and the isolation that was put upon the prisoners swiftly turned negative, proving the entirety of the experiment. Only on the second night of the experiment, prisoners rebelled against the vigorous guards and riots broke out. Prisoners cursed the guards’ names and harass them, barricaded their beds on the doors, and removed their stocking caps and dresses. This, of course, angered the guards. Backup was called as the night shift guards acknowledged a fire extinguisher and shot a “skin-chilling” dose of carbon dioxide towards the prisoners. They broke into individual jail cells, stripped the prisoners of their dresses, and forced many into solitary confinement. Zimbardo and the rest of his team were caught off guard at this unexpected turn of events. The guards wittily came up with a solution for this outbreak of anger: they would, instead of using physical tactics to control the prisoners, they would utilize psychological strategies. The guards quickly created a system that allowed the well-behaved prisoners to enter the newly-formed “privilege cell,” and were allowed to eat special food in front of the other starving prisoners