Voices
summer school in local colleges,
chosen from among 75 who had
answered an ad for a psychology
study of prison life to run for up to
two weeks. By random assignment,
half became prisoners who lived
in our simulated jail 24/7, while
the others were guards working
each of three eight-hour shifts. The
sad sack prisoner uniforms, with
their new identity numbers prominently displayed on their smocks,
contrasted with the military-style
uniforms of the guards who also
displayed their various symbols of
power. The situation created was a
functional simulation of American
prisons in many ways; in short, it
was an “Evil Barrel” into which we
put a bunch of “Good Apples,” at
least on day one.
Would an evil place that was
populated with only good people
dominate and corrupt them, or
would humanity win out and keep
them decent and caring despite
such a situation? Within 36 hours,
one of the normal, healthy college
students had a severe emotional
breakdown and had to be released
from his prisoner role. On each of
the next five days and nights, other
prisoners broke down in similarly disturbing ways. I was forced
to terminate this experiment, to
DR. PHILIP
ZIMBARDO
HUFFINGTON
03.17.13
shut down my prison after only six
days; it had spun out of control.
Bad news in this particular contest between good and evil: evil 1,
humanity 0.
My situation was a setting
where institutionalized evil dominated. Rules, roles, uniforms,
policies, group dynamics, arbitrary
power differentials — all within
a physical context that gave le-
Even good people are
vulnerable to subtle, pervasive
situational forces when they
are in new circumstances
where usual, habitual ways of
behaving are not relevant.”
gitimacy to the treatment of other
people in dehumanizing ways. This
metaphor of powerful guards dominating powerless prisoners is not
limited to either my mock prison
or real prisons, but can be seen in
many settings: traditional marriages, mental hospitals, schools,
military and business settings.
So the findings of the Milgram
obe Y[