A terrible sense of déjà vu

In 1971 a team of psychologists designed and conducted an experiment to try to understand the behaviour of prisoners and their guards – a study that became widely known as the Stanford Prison Experiment.

The psychologists ran a number of adverts and recruited college students from all over the United States. These students were subjected to a range of physical and mental tests to ascertain that they were healthy, well-adjusted people, and then each student was randomly assigned the role of prisoner or guard.

A prison of sorts was set up in the basement of Stanford University’s Psychology Department. The results were immediate, and they were shocking. The behaviour of the guards became so extreme that the experiment had to be prematurely terminated. The normal young people who had been randomly assigned the role of guards changed their behaviour dramatically when put in a position of total power over their prisoners – after just a few days the degrading and sadistic acts they perpetrated against the prisoners escalated to such a point that the psychologists had no option other than to stop everything before someone got seriously hurt.

The study also made some interesting findings regarding the behaviour of prisoners. A good number of student “prisoners” reacted to their environment and the behaviour of the guards by behaving in a zombie-like fashion, totally disconnecting and accepting the mistreatment as if they had no choice. A few, however, had extreme reactions to the behaviour of the guards, resulting in extremely high tension levels and some physical altercations, both between prisoners and with the guards themselves. In fact on the second day of the study a number of the “prisoners” rebelled and barricaded themselves inside their cells in order to prevent the guards from entering.

The following is the description of the guards’ reaction by Philip G. Zimbardo, one of the authors of the experiment.

“The guards broke into each cell, stripped the prisoners naked, took the beds out, forced the ringleaders of the prisoner rebellion into solitary confinement, and generally began to harass and intimidate the prisoners.”

“Less than 36 hours into the experiment, Prisoner #8612 began suffering from acute emotional disturbance, disorganised thinking, uncontrollable crying, and rage. In spite of all of this, we had already come to think so much like prison authorities that we thought he was trying to “con” us – to fool us into releasing him.

“When our primary prison consultant interviewed Prisoner #8612, the consultant chided him for being so weak, and told him what kind of abuse he could expect from the guards and the prisoners if he were in San Quentin Prison. #8612 was then given the offer of becoming an informant in exchange for no further guard harassment. He was told to think it over.

“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.”

“Two months after the study, here is the reaction of prisoner #416, our would-be hero who was placed in solitary confinement for several hours:

“I began to feel that I was losing my identity, that the person that I called “Clay,” the person who put me in this place, the person who volunteered to go into this prison – because it was a prison to me; it still is a prison to me. I don’t regard it as an experiment or a simulation because it was a prison run by psychologists instead of run by the State. I began to feel that that identity, the person that I was that had decided to go to prison was distant from me – was remote until finally I wasn’t that, I was 416. I was really my number.”

Compare his reaction to that of the following prisoner who wrote to me from an Ohio penitentiary after being in solitary confinement for an inhumane length of time:

“I was recently released from solitary confinement after being held therein for 37 months. The silence system was imposed upon me and if I even whispered to the man in the next cell resulted in being beaten by guards, sprayed with Chemical Mace, black jacked, stomped, and thrown into a strip cell naked to sleep on a concrete floor without bedding, covering, wash basin, or even a toilet... I know that thieves must be punished, and I don’t justify stealing even though I am a thief myself. But now I don’t think I will be a thief when I am released. No, I am not rehabilitated either. It is just that I no longer think of becoming wealthy or stealing. I now only think of killing – killing those who have beaten me and treated me as if I were a dog. I hope and pray for the sake of my own soul and future life of freedom that I am able to overcome the bitterness and hatred which eats daily at my soul. But I know to overcome it will not be easy.”

The Stanford Prison Experiment has become one of psychology’s most dramatic studies showing how “good” people can be transformed into cruel and sadistic perpetrators of evil when the institutional and situational environment is conducive of such behaviour.

All we need to do is recall the photos of American Military Police torturing and humiliating prisoners in Abu Ghraib Prison to get a feel of just how real this psychological phenomenon is, and how extreme the sadism and mistreatment can become.

I do not know about you, but as I read the account of the study (http://www.naderlibrary.com/stanford.prison.htm) I felt chilled to the bone. It is clear to me that the very same forces at work during this experiment and also at Abu Ghraib are at work in our own detention centres. As I read the account I kept getting flashbacks to comments posted on the wall of the ‘Justice For Sergeant Mark Dimech& Colleagues’ – the behaviour of prisoners in the experiment matches that of prisoners at the detention centre to a tee. Unfortunately, so does the behaviour of the guards.

According to Philip G. Zimbardo;

“There were three types of guards. First, there were tough but fair guards who followed prison rules. Second, there were “good guys” who did little favours for the prisoners and never punished them. And finally, about a third of the guards were hostile, arbitrary, and inventive in their forms of prisoner humiliation. These guards appeared to thoroughly enjoy the power they wielded, yet none of our preliminary personality tests were able to predict this behaviour.“

I have heard countless stories of soldiers taking food to the immigrants and helping them out – these would be the “good guys” described by Zimbardo. However, unfortunately, there must also be the hostile guards – the guards who have been psychologically affected by the power that they yield.

It seems to me that if Philip Zimbardo were to visit Malta’s detention centres he would get a terrible sense of déjà vu.