But the evidence spoke for itself.
To begin with, it wasn’t Zimbardo who dreamed up the experiment. It was one of his undergrads, a young man named David Jaffe. For a course assignment, he and four classmates thought it would be a neat idea to turn the basement of their dormitory into a jail. They drummed up a handful of willing friends and in May 1971 carried out their trial with six guards, six inmates and Jaffe himself as the warden.
The guards devised rules like ‘Prisoners must address each other by number only’ and ‘Prisoners must always address the warden as “Mr Chief Correctional Officer.”’ In class the following Monday, Jaffe told all about his exciting ‘experiment’ and the intense emotions it had provoked in the participants. Zimbardo was sold. He had to try this out for himself.
There was only one aspect of the study that gave Zimbardo pause. Would he be able to find guards who were sadistic enough? Who could help him bring out the worst in people? The psychology professor decided to hire the undergrad as a consultant. ‘I was asked to suggest tactics,’ Jaffe subsequently explained, ‘based on my previous experience as master sadist.’17
For forty years, in hundreds of interviews and articles, Philip Zimbardo steadfastly maintained that the guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment received no directives. That they’d thought it all up themselves: the rules, the punishments and the humiliations they inflicted on the prisoners. Zimbardo portrayed Jaffe as just another guard who–like the others–got swept up in the experiment.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Turns out eleven of the seventeen rules came from Jaffe. It was Jaffe who drafted a detailed protocol for the prisoners’ arrival. Chaining them at the ankle? His idea. Undressing the inmates? That, too. Forcing them to stand around naked for fifteen minutes? Jaffe again.
On the Saturday before the experiment, Jaffe spent six hours with the other guards, explaining how they could use their chains and batons to best effect. ‘I have a list of what happens,’ he told them, ‘some of the things that have to happen.’18 After the whole ordeal was over, his fellow guards complimented him on his ‘sado-creative ideas’.19
Meanwhile, Zimbardo was also contributing to the sadistic game plan. He drew up a tight schedule that would keep the inmates short on sleep, waking them up for roll calls at 2:30 a.m. and 6 a.m. He suggested push-ups as a good punishment for the prisoners, or putting thorny stickers or grass burrs in their blankets. And he thought solitary confinement might be a nice addition.
If you’re wondering why Zimbardo took so much trouble to control the experiment, the answer is simple. Initially, Zimbardo wasn’t interested in the guards. Initially, his experiment focused on the prisoners. He wanted to find out how prisoners would act under intense pressure. How bored would they get? How frustrated? How afraid?
The guards saw themselves as his research assistants, which makes sense considering that’s precisely how Zimbardo treated them. Zimbardo’s shocked response to their sadistic conduct, plus the idea that this was the true lesson of the experiment, were both manufactured after the fact. During the experiment, he and Jaffe pressured the guards to be extra tough on the inmates–then reprimanded those who failed to join in.
In an audio recording that has since surfaced, Jaffe can be heard taking this tack with ‘soft’ guard John Markus, pushing him as early as day two to take a harder line with the prisoners:
Jaffe: ‘Generally, you’ve been kind of in the background […] we really want to get you active and involved because the guards have to know that every guard is going to be what we call a “tough guard” and so far, um…’
Markus: ‘I’m not too tough…’
Jaffe: ‘Yeah. Well, you have to try to get it in you.’
Markus: ‘I don’t know about that…’
Jaffe: ‘See, the thing is what I mean by tough is, you know, you have to be, um, firm, and you have to be in the action and, er, and that sort of thing. Um, it’s really important for the workings of the experiment…’
Markus: ‘Excuse me, I’m sorry […] if it was just entirely up to me, I wouldn’t do anything. I would just let it cool off.’20
What’s fascinating is that most guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment remained hesitant to apply ‘tough’ tactics at all, even under mounting pressure. Two-thirds refused to take part in the sadistic games. One-third treated the prisoners with kindness, to Zimbardo and his team’s frustration. One of the guards resigned the Sunday before the experiment started, saying he couldn’t go along with the instructions.
Most of the subjects stuck it out because Zimbardo paid well. They earned $15 a day–equivalent to about $100 now–but didn’t get the money until afterwards. Guards and prisoners alike feared that if they didn’t play along in Zimbardo’s dramatic production, they wouldn’t get paid.
But money was not enough incentive for one prisoner, who got so fed up after the first day that he wanted to quit. This was prisoner number 8612, twenty-two-year-old Douglas Korpi, who broke down on day two (‘I mean, Jesus Christ […] I just can’t take it anymore!’21). His breakdown would feature in all the documentaries and become the most famous recording from the whole Stanford Prison Experiment.
A journalist looked him up in the summer of 2017.22 Korpi told him the breakdown had been faked–play-acted from start to finish. Not that he’d ever made a secret of this. In fact, he told several people after the experiment ended: Zimbardo, for example, who ignored him, and a documentary filmmaker, who edited it out of his movie.
Douglas Korpi, who went on to earn a Ph.D. in psychology, later said that he initially enjoyed being in the experiment. The first day ‘was really fun,’ he recalled. ‘I get to yell and scream and act all hysterical. I get to act like a prisoner. I was being a good employee. It was a great time.’23
The fun was short-lived. Korpi had signed up expecting to be able to spend time studying for exams, but once he was behind bars Zimbardo & Co. wouldn’t let him have his textbooks. So the very next day he decided to call it quits.
To his surprise, Zimbardo refused to let him leave. Inmates would only be released if they exhibited physical or mental problems. So Korpi decided to fake it. First, he pretended to have a stomach ache. When that didn’t work, he tried a mental breakdown (‘I mean, Jesus Christ, I’m burning up inside! Don’t you know? I want to get out! This is all fucked up inside! I can’t stand another night! I just can’t take it anymore!’24).
Those cries would become infamous the world over.
In the decades since the experiment, millions of people have fallen for Philip Zimbardo’s staged farce.
‘The worst thing,’ one of the prisoners said in 2011, is that ‘Zimbardo has been rewarded with a great deal of attention for forty years…’25 Zimbardo sent footage from the experiment to television stations before he’d even analysed his data. In the years that followed he would grow to be the most noted psychologist of his time, making it all the way to president of the American Psychological Association.26
In a 1990s documentary about the Stanford Prison Experiment, student guard Dave Eshelman wondered what might have happened if the researchers hadn’t pushed the guards. ‘We’ll never know,’ he sighed.27
It turns out that we would.
What Eshelman didn’t know is that a pair of British psychologists were laying the groundwork for a second experiment. An experiment designed to answer the question: what happens to ordinary people when they don a uniform and step inside a prison?
5
The call from the BBC came in 2001.
It was the early days of reality TV. Big Brother had just debuted and television networks everywhere were busy brainstorming the next winning formula. So the BBC’s request didn’t come entirely out of the blue: would you be interested in taking another stab at that chilling experiment with the prisoners and the guards? But now for prime time?
For Alexander Haslam and Stephen Reicher, both doctors of psychology, it was a dream offer. The big problem with the Stanford Prison E
xperiment had always been that it was so unethical that no one dared to replicate it, and so Zimbardo had for decades enjoyed the last word. But now these two British psychologists were being offered an opportunity to do just that, on screen.
Haslam and Reicher said yes, on two conditions. One, they would have full control over the study. And two, an ethics committee would be authorised to halt the experiment at any time if things threatened to get out of hand.
In the months leading up to the broadcast, the British press was rife with speculation. To what depths would people sink? ‘Is this reality TV gone mad?’ wondered the Guardian.28 Even Philip Zimbardo expressed disgust. ‘Obviously they are doing the study in the hopes that high drama will be created as in my original study.’29
When the first episode of The Experiment aired on 1 May 2002, millions of people across Britain sat glued to their TVs. What happened next sent shockwaves around the…
Well, actually, no it didn’t.
What happened next was just about nothing. It took some real effort for me to sit through all four hour-long episodes. Rarely have I seen a programme this mind-numbingly dull.
Where did the BBC’s formula go wrong? Haslam and Reicher left one thing out: they didn’t tell the guards what to do. All the psychologists did was observe. They looked on from the sidelines as some ordinary guys sat around as though they were at the country club.
Things were just getting started when one guard announced he didn’t feel suited to the role of guard: ‘I’d rather be a prisoner, honestly…’
On day two, another suggested sharing the guards’ food with the prisoners to boost morale. Then on day four, when it looked like some sparks might fly, a guard advised a prisoner: ‘If we can get to the end of this, we can go down the pub and have a drink.’ Another guard chimed in, ‘Let’s discuss this like human beings.’
On day five, one of the prisoners proposed setting up a democracy. On day six, some prisoners escaped from their cells. They headed over to the guards’ canteen to enjoy a smoke, where the guards soon came to join them. On day seven, the group voted in favour of creating a commune.
A couple of the guards did belatedly try to convince the group to go back to the original regime, but they weren’t taken seriously. With the experiment at an impasse, the whole thing had to be called off. The final episode consists mostly of footage of the men lounging around on a sofa. At the very end, we’re treated to some sentimental shots of the subjects hugging one another, and then one of the guard gives one of the prisoners his jacket.
Meanwhile, viewers are left feeling cheated. Where are the chained feet? Why no paper bags over heads? When can we expect the sadistic games to begin? The BBC broadcast four hours of end-to-end smoking, small talk and sitting around. Or, as the Sunday Herald summed it up, ‘What happens when you put good men in an evil place and film it for telly? Erm, not that much actually.’30
For TV producers, the experiment exposed a harsh truth: if you leave ordinary people alone, nothing happens. Or worse, they’ll try to start a pacifist commune.
From a scientific perspective, the experiment was a resounding success. Haslam and Reicher published more than ten articles about their results in prestigious academic journals. But for the rest, we can say that it was a failure. The BBC Prison Study has since faded into obscurity, while people still talk about the Stanford Prison Experiment.
And what does Philip Zimbardo have to say about all this? When a journalist asked him in 2018 if the new revelations about just how much was manipulated would change how people look at his experiment today, the psychologist responded that he didn’t care. ‘People can say whatever they want about it. It’s the most famous study in the history of psychology at this point. There’s no study that people talk about fifty years later. Ordinary people know about it. […] It’s got a life of its own now. […] I’m not going to defend it anymore. The defense is its longevity.’31
8
Stanley Milgram and the Shock Machine
1
There’s one psychological experiment even more famous than the Stanford Prison Experiment, and one psychologist who’d become more widely known than Philip Zimbardo. When I started to work on this book, I knew I couldn’t ignore him.
Stanley Milgram.
Milgram was a young assistant professor when he launched his study on 18 June 1961. That day a full-page advertisement ran in the New Haven Register: ‘We will pay you $4.00 for one hour of your time.’1 The ad called for five hundred ordinary men–barbers and bartenders, builders and businessmen–to take part in research on human memory.
Hundreds of men visited Stanley Milgram’s laboratory at Yale University over the next few months. Arriving in pairs, they would draw lots assigning one man to the role of ‘teacher’, the other to that of ‘learner’. The teachers were seated in front of a large device which they were told was a shock machine. They were then instructed to perform a memory test with the learner, who was strapped to a chair in the next room. For every wrong answer, the teacher had to press a switch to administer an electric shock.
In reality, the learner was always a member of Milgram’s team, and the machine didn’t deliver shocks at all. But the teachers didn’t know that. They thought this was a study on the effect of punishment on memory and didn’t realise the study was really about them.
The shocks started small, a mere 15 volts. But each time the learner gave a wrong answer, a man in a grey lab coat directed the teacher to raise the voltage. From 15 volts to 30. From 30 volts to 45. And so on and so forth, no matter how loudly the learner in the next room screamed, and even after reaching the zone labelled ‘DANGER: SEVERE SHOCK’. At 350 volts the learner pounded on the wall. After that, he went silent.
Milgram had asked some forty fellow psychologists to predict how far his test subjects would be willing to go. Unanimously, they said that at most 1 or 2 per cent–only downright psychopaths–would persist all the way to 450 volts.2
The real shock came after the experiment: 65 per cent of the study participants had continued right up to the furthest extreme and administered the full 450 volts. Apparently, two-thirds of those ordinary dads, pals and husbands were willing to electrocute a random stranger.3
Why? Because someone told them to.
Psychologist Stanley Milgram, twenty-eight years old at the time, became an instant celebrity. Just about every newspaper, radio station, and television channel covered his experiment. ‘Sixty-five Percent in Test Blindly Obey Order to Inflict Pain’, headlined the New York Times.4 What kind of person, the paper asked, was capable of sending millions to the gas chambers? Judging from Milgram’s findings, the answer was clear. All of us.
Stanley Milgram, who was Jewish, presented his research from the outset as the supreme explanation for the Holocaust. Where Muzafer Sherif hypothesised that war breaks out as soon as groups of people face off, and where Zimbardo (who went to school with Milgram) would claim we turn into monsters as soon as we don a uniform, Milgram’s explanation was much more refined. More intelligent. And above all, more disturbing.
Stanley Milgram and his shock machine. Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education.
For Milgram, it all hinged on authority. Humans, he said, are creatures that will follow orders blindly. In his basement lab at Yale, grown men devolved into unthinking children, into trained Labradors that happily obeyed when commanded to ‘sit’, ‘shake’, or ‘jump off a bridge’. It was all eerily similar to those Nazis who after the war continued to churn out the same old phrase: Befehl ist Befehl–an order’s an order.
Milgram could draw only one conclusion: human nature comes with a fatal flaw programmed in–a defect that makes us act like obedient puppies and do the most appalling things.5 ‘If a system of death camps were set up in the United States,’ claimed the psychologist, ‘one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town.’6
The timing of Milgram’s experiment couldn’t have been better. On the
day the first volunteer walked into his lab, a controversial trial was entering its final week. Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was being tried in Jerusalem before the eyes of seven hundred journalists. Among them was the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, who was reporting on the case for the New Yorker magazine.
In pre-trial detention, Eichmann had undergone a psychological evaluation by six experts. None found symptoms of a behavioural disorder. The only weird thing about him, according to one of the doctors, was that he seemed ‘more normal than normal’.7 Eichmann, Arendt wrote, was neither psychopath nor monster. He was just as ordinary as all those barbers and bartenders, builders and businessmen who came into Milgram’s lab. In the last sentence of her book, Arendt diagnosed the phenomenon: ‘the banality of evil.’8
Milgram’s study and Arendt’s philosophy have been tied together since. Hannah Arendt would come to be regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest philosophers; Stanley Milgram delivered the evidence to confirm her theory. A whole host of documentaries, novels, stage plays and television series were devoted to Milgram’s notorious shock machine, which featured in everything from a movie with a young John Travolta, to an episode of The Simpsons, to a gameshow on French TV.
Fellow psychologist Muzafer Sherif even went so far as to say that ‘Milgram’s obedience experiment is the single greatest contribution to human knowledge ever made by the field of social psychology, perhaps psychology in general’.9
I’m going to be honest. Originally, I wanted to bring Milgram’s experiments crashing down. When you’re writing a book that champions the good in people, there are several big challengers on your list. William Golding and his dark imagination. Richard Dawkins and his selfish genes. Jared Diamond and his demoralising tale of Easter Island. And, of course, Philip Zimbardo, the world’s best-known living psychologist.
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