Do you believe that the good guys around you are the absolute good guys?
Do you believe that putting a good person in a certain situation can turn into a demon in just six days?
Can people really make such a huge change because of social pressures?
Why is human nature so fragile that it cannot withstand the test!
Today we're going to talk about the most controversial project in history, the most notorious human experiment to date, the Stanford Prison Experiment.
In the 1960s, psychologists generally believed that human goodness and ugliness were determined, that is, most of them were innate.
Stanford Professor Philip Zimbardo believes that circumstances can gradually change a person's personality, and circumstances can change a person's behavior.
To prove this theory, Zimbardo organized the famous "Stanford Prison Experiment" in 1971.
The first is to recruit college students through advertising, and promise to pay $15 per person per day, and then 24 students are selected from these registered students as experimental subjects, and the 24 students screened must be physically and mentally healthy and have no criminal record.
They then built a small prison in the basement of the school to simulate a real scene.
Half of the students played the role of "prison guard" and the remaining half played "prisoner", of course, each student signed an agreement with them and informed them in detail of the content of the experiment, and the choice of the two was also decided by random lottery.
There was an agreement that "prison guards" forbade the use of violence and physical abuse against prisoners.
In addition, the "prison guard" has absolute authority in the prison, and there are many monitors installed in it, that is, the every move of the "prison guard" and "prisoner" is closely monitored.
In order to be more realistic, on the first day of the experiment, they really sent the police to the house to arrest the "prisoners" and bring them handcuffs in front of their families and neighbors.
"Prisoners" arrested at home
After arriving at the prison, they were also required to confiscate all their personal property in slippers and clothes, and then changed into special prison uniforms, wearing women's stockings on their heads as head covers, tied with iron chains on their feet, and their names were replaced by numbers on their clothes.
In order to increase the sense of substitution of the characters, the "prison guard" must be called the chief, and the "prisoner" must be replaced by a number instead of a name.
On the first day of coming, everyone didn't take it too seriously, talking and laughing, pretending to make money, and everyone didn't really go in the role, "prisoners" did not look like prisoners, and "prison guards" did not look like prison guards.
In order to wear off their will and quickly enter the role as quickly as possible, Zimba assigned them more tasks, asking them to roll call three times a day, and then asking them to repeat this boring thing over and over again.
Played as a "prison guard" at the time
By the next day, things seemed to have changed, and a "prisoner" in the surveillance suddenly clashed with the "prison guard", who took off the stocking hood on their heads, tore off the numbers on their clothes, resisted the "prison guards" from entering, and constantly laughed and insulted.
So the duty quickly called others to suppress the riot, and after the situation subsided, in order to avoid similar riots and later management, they arranged the prisoners who had performed well in a separate room, gave them better treatment, and allowed them to brush their teeth and bathe, and give them better food.
Others, as punishment, could only sleep on the ground, and after ten o'clock in the evening, defecation could only be solved in the bucket in the cell, and the whole cell was suddenly smelly.
Punished "prisoners"
The conflict between the two sides slowly got a little out of control, the "prisoners" resisted more and more intensely, and the "prison guards" became more and more disciplined, began to confiscate the "prisoners' pillows and bedding, deprived of the right to sleep, and even forced the "prisoners" to wash the toilet with their bare hands.
Forced to wash toilets bare-handed
During this period, one "prisoner" really couldn't stand it and offered to quit, but Zimbardo believed that if he could quit casually, then other prisoners would also feel that they could not stand it and could quit at any time, so that they would not take the prison as a thing, and they would not achieve the effect of the experiment, and finally did not agree.
Later, the spirit of this "prisoner" was on the verge of collapse, and every night he talked to himself and shouted, and was forced to release the "prisoner".
The harassment and humiliation of "prisoners" by "prison guards" has become more and more out of control, except for punishments like push-ups, which even make them shout humiliating slogans over and over again.
Reprimanded "prisoners"
But the strange thing is that these prisoners did not show resistance to such humiliation, but instead became very obedient, and they began to slowly enter the role.
They have fully entered their roles, the "guards" are becoming more and more tyrannical, and the "prisoners" are becoming more and more obedient, they seem to have forgotten that this is just an experiment, and what is even more frightening is that the "warden" Zimbardo himself is also deeply involved in it, as if the research on this topic is no longer important, what matters is how the game continues.
Afterwards, the volunteers who played the guard recalled that their original behavior was not the real self, and they were not the kind of sadists who took pleasure in abusing others, and the prison also let the prisoners write letters to their families, and the result was that the end of many letters was written with their own numbers, giving the impression that these people had lost their independent selves and were replaced by the identity of the prisoners.
During this time, Zimbardo organized a hearing of prisoners to tell them that if there was an opportunity to ask for bail, but only if they could not get the promised remuneration, almost all the prisoners agreed to bail. After the professor had finished questioning, he said that he would consider the proposal and ask them to go back to the cell, and at this moment, no one had protested. At this point, as long as one of them proposes to interrupt the experiment, they can regain their freedom. But all people have taken experiments as reality and do not know how to resist.
"Prisoner" with hood
Day 6 of the experiment
The original 14-day experiment was finally terminated on the sixth day, partly because the "prison guards" became more and more brutal, and on the other hand, a professor at Harvard University came to visit the simulated prison, and saw that the "prisoners" were tied together with shackles, with hoods on their heads and could not see anything, and the "prison guards" ran around in the toilet shouting. She was rather shocked and strongly protested that the experiment could not be so abusive to volunteers. Zimbardo also woke up at this time.
Zimbardo concluded in the experiment:
When good people become bad people, those bad people do not think that they have become bad people, they either think that the victim deserves it, or they think that the means they use are based on legitimate purposes.
Zimbardo later wrote a book for this purpose, "The Lucifer Effect: How Good Men Become Demons", Lucifer was once God's favorite angel, holding the position of archangel, but then he raised the anti-flag and was cast out of heaven and fell into Satan.
The volunteer students in this experiment were all physically and mentally healthy people at first, but the results surprised us, and the power in our hands became very tyrannical, and the abused party was finally willing to give in.
This is the weakness of human nature, good and evil are not so clearly distinguished, there are no absolute good people and no absolute bad people in the world.
Ordinary people can also perform extreme behaviors in a certain environment, and the prison guards and prisoners in the experiment are trapped in their own roles.