Professor Zimbardo, the lead behind the now infamous Stanford Prison Experiment stated in a speech to Congress on his findings that – “for me, a prison is any situation in which one person’s freedom and liberty are denied by virtue of the arbitrary power exercised by another person or group. Thus our prisons of concrete and steel are really only metaphors for the social prisons we create and maintain through enforced poverty, racism, sexism, and other forms of social injustice”.
I have personally found it difficult to reconcile within myself the reality of what international protests and a greater number of voices crying out passionately for justice and racial equality means for me. I’ve been wrestling with many of the same questions as we all have.
The word ‘systemic’ prefixing racism alerts us to the severity of the issue but also arises a feeling of helplessness. The sheer scale of protests and the deep global undercurrents of pain and polarisation makes it hard to know where to start processing issues that have come to the fore of our collective consciousness.
To bring the experience down to the individual level in pursuit of potential actions and lessons for me, I’ve sought a couple different narratives, in this post I am drawing on lessons from the Stanford Prison Experiment.
I’m sure many will have a basic understanding of the Stanford Prison Experiment, the next paragraph is a very brief introduction for those that have no knowledge of it.
The Stanford Prison Experiment
The experiment was conducted by Professor Zimbardo and his team from the 14th August to the 20th August 1971. The volunteers had signed up to be in a study looking at the effects of prison on guards and prisoners. There were 24 students selected after 70 had applied who were all tested to establish whether any had any psychological problems, medical issues or were criminals or drug users. All students selected were deemed normal and safe to be involved in the experiment. The subjects were a group of students, healthy, intelligent, middle-class men. They were placed at a flip of a coin as prisoners or guards. At the beginning of the experiment there were nine boys placed as prisoners and nine guards. The experiment was scheduled to last two weeks, full details of the experiment can, and should, be read here. Suffice to say the brutality and horror of what began to happen in the guards conduct as well as the severe effects it had rapidly on the prisoners can be well intuited by their decision to stop the experiment after just six days, less than half the intended time frame.
The point I want to note from the experiment that has struck me so significantly since reading is taken from Professor Zimbardo, speaking on prison reform in October 1971, the proximity of the speech to the experiment showing his immediate interpretation of events. Speaking of the guards he described three groups, with the third being my main focus.
Lessons From The Guards
Some were described as tough but fair, they did what they were expected to do and generally behaved as was anticipated, perhaps these are those who are unwilling to look at the current issues surrounding race and quietly waiting for this to all ‘die down’, maintaining the status quo. The other groups are much more telling and vital for us to look at.
One third of the guards were “tyrannical in their arbitrary use of power… they enjoyed the simple act of controlling some other person. They were corrupted by the power of their roles and became quite inventive in the techniques of breaking the spirit of the prisoners, making them feel worthless”. Drawing a parallel to the issue of racism, these are those with white privilege who are blatantly racist, who revel in the benefits their skin colour grants them and relish the pain they can inflict on others, accentuating differences and inventive in the way they seek to cause division and deep hurt.
While this is disgusting and evidently wrong, I was personally more horrified to read Zimbardo’s words concerning the ‘good guards’, may they shake you as they shook me.
“Good guards… did small favours, they were friendly, they told the prisoners their names, but the really important message, and a subtle one, is that no good guard ever interfered“.
He went on to drive this point home and these words should cut those of us afraid to speak up in the face of injustice –
“The bad guards, the mean ones, the brutal ones, created a sense of terror in the prison. But it was really the good guards who perpetuated the prison because they needed the bad guys in order to make themselves be good guys.
They used the brutality of the bad guys to establish themselves as good. They needed to be liked so much, that they never objected to the bad guys. They needed the prisoners to like them, so they befriended them… They created a social reality which made rebellious prisoners be good prisoners, to go along with the system, not to make trouble”.
Dr Zimbardo, October 1971
Pause for a moment, maybe it would be a good idea to read that last section by Dr Zimbardo again.
The good guards never interfered, never intervened, never said ‘this is wrong, this is unjust, somebody stop this’. Why? A reason that is quite honestly embarrassing and worrying – they needed to be liked.
I’ve been so guilty of this, remove the label of guard or prisoner, Zimbardo is showing that the weak good make way for the evil, they perpetuate the prison by their desire to be liked and to retain some false order and peace. I must not sit with the fear of being disliked or misunderstood and subsequently stand in the way of justice and truth. While the worst, most blatant racist may seek to set the worst tone in a society, it is the quiet, good man who perpetuates it by his unwillingness to intervene.
The prison Zimbardo started by defining, the walls of which surround our societies systems, are all too often guarded by the good, too afraid to fight against the evil. It’s sustained by those too uncomfortable with the cries of the oppressed, instead quashing their voice with a false ear and shallow sentiment. Let us not be like the good guard.
Seeing Myself
The experiment was ended after just six days for a reason that surprised me, he stated that it was not because of the awful treatment and manifest depression and trauma exhibited in the prisoners even after so short a time. It was that he realised that he could have traded places in an instant with the most brutal guard or the most powerless prisoner and acted exactly the same as them.
This must be mentioned as the starting point to begin to really listen with ones guard down and to cease to be on the defensive in these issues, to attempt to understand how I could be personally, in a given system.
What this experiment shows is what none of us want to see – ourselves. It harshly illustrates that “individual behaviour is largely under the control of social forces and environmental contingencies… rather than some vague notions of personality traits, character, will power, or other empirically unvalidated constructs”.
This may be the hardest point for me to state, but this means that before I can really listen to understand, I must set aside my own self-perception and see that I could just as easily be as powerless as George Floyd was at the tragic end of his life, and I should also see Derek Chauvin’s knee as my own, or at least see myself as a silent officer looking on, reinforced in every thoughtless word or action that makes even my own friends feel separate and different from me and in some way lesser than.
I saw myself in reading notes on this experiment, and in so doing began to get a different picture of my place in society, I am no longer satisfied to sit in silence on such issues when so many are crying out. I cannot have my life be marked by an unwillingness to intervene, my silence sustaining systemic racism.
Joel Delaney 