Game Theory and the Stanford Prison Experiment

1

Horey

A Brutal Game to Play:

Game Theory and the Stanford Prison Experiment

By Megan Horey

October 27th, 2014

Game Theory and Democracy

Introduction

The Stanford Prison Experiment started as a typical investigation into the behavior of prisoners and prison guards. The experiment, however, ended abruptly, as the volunteers quickly became absorbed in their assigned roles of either guard or inmate (McLeod). “Guards” harassed and psychologically tortured “prisoners” in order to establish and maintain authority, while many inmates complacently accepted the torture in order to avoid additional punishments (BBC Prison Study).

Although mainly analyzed from a psychological standpoint, the research gives valuable insight into the game theory going on behind the concrete walls and iron bars of prisons. In other words, it demonstrates the strategies guards will assume to maximize their authority as well as showing the approaches of convicts take to minimize punishment (A History).

The Setup

In 1971, Stanford professor Philip Zimbardo and a team of researchers placed an ad in a local newspaper asking for volunteers to participate in a psychological study. The ad promised $15 a day to those chosen to partake (McLeod). Zimbardo received over seventy volunteers, of which he selected twenty-four. The chosen group consisted entirely of males, most of them white and middle class, and all of them mentally stable and lacking any sort of criminal background. The participants were then randomly split into two groups – guards and prisoners (The Stanford Prison Experiment). Later, when asked why he picked the volunteers he did Zimbardo stated that he wanted to know if “those good people, put in that bad, evil place – would their goodness triumph?”(A History). Over the next six days, Zimbardo would find the answer to his question.

Once the subjects had been selected and assigned a group, the researchers began constructing a mock prison in the basement of Stanford’s Psychology Department. The “prison” had three six by nine foot prison cells with steel bars, a two by two foot closet used for solitary confinement, and a room known as “the Yard” where the prisoners ate and exercised (A History). In addition, there were several rooms dedicated to guards and other authority figures, which they used as offices and leisure rooms. The prison lacked windows and clocks, and prisoners were monitored with hidden cameras and microphones. The Stanford County Jail “was ready to receive its first prisoners” (The Stanford Prison Experiment).

Day 1

Before they arrived at their new home – the Stanford County Jail – the twelve inmates were abruptly arrested in front of their houses, in full view of their neighbors and family and formally charged with a fictitious offense of either burglary or armed robbery (Zimbardo). They were taken to the Palo Alto Police Department, where the participants spent hours blindfolded in a holding cell before being transferred to the mock prison (The Stanford Prison Experiment).

When the unlucky volunteers arrived, one by one, at the jail,the warden, a man named David Jaffe, greeted each inmate and impressed upon him his new status as a prisoner (The Stanford Prison Experiment). The guards then stripped, searched, and finally deloused each convict (McLeod). After, a guard gave the prisoner a uniform consisting of a dress with his unique prison number, an ankle chain, rubber flip-flops, and a nylon stocking cap to cover his hair. The prisoner was not given underwear (Zimbardo).

Following the initial humiliation and dehumanization of the inmates, three guards escorted nine prisoners to their cells – three prisoners per cell. The original groups of twelve guards and twelve inmates had been broken down into three groups of three guards with each group having one eight hour shift per day and one nine person group on inmates. The other six volunteers were effectively “substitutes” in case an emergency arose (McLeod). The rest of the first day was largely uneventful as each volunteer attempted to adapt to his role (The Stanford Prison Experiment).

Day 2

In the beginning, the inmates, not yet adjusted to prison life, remained independent and defiant and early on the second day revolted against the guards and other authority figures. They tore off their prison numbers from their clothes and ripped off their stocking caps – to them, symbols of oppression (Zimbardo). Using the cots in their cells, the prisoners barricaded themselves inside their prison cells and openly mocked and insulted the guards (The Stanford Prison Experiment).

The guards, initially at a loss for what to do, eventually called in reinforcements (the three extra guards and some guards from the night shift). Together, the guards forced prisoners away from their cell doors by spraying them with a fire extinguisher, broke into the cells, stripped all of the inmates, and threw the instigators of the rebellion into solitary confinement. Realizing that they needed to utterly obliterate the feeling unanimity between theinmates, the guards decided to “use psychological tactics instead of physical ones” (Zimbardo).

The guards isolated the three prisoners least involved in the uprising and moved them to the “privilege cell,” where they were allowed to put their uniforms back on, wash, and eat. The other six inmates watched as three own enjoyed these basic comforts while they remained naked, dirty, and starved (The Stanford Prison Experiment). Suddenly, the guards demoted some of the privileged inmates and elevated some of the disadvantaged prisoners. Fully perplexed, the prisoners ultimately reached the conclusion that the inmates in the privilege cell must be informants. This conclusion created an atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion and abolished any feelings of camaraderie between the inmates, as each prisoner did not know he could trust and whom he could not (Zimbardo). The guards’ psychological tactics worked – the prisoners felt isolated from one another, which made them much easier for the guards to control.

In addition to the privilege cell, the guards became much more aggressive. The humiliation of the rebellion incited the guards to begin to abuse the prisoners with increasing frequency (BBC Prison Study). Inmates were not allowed to use the bathroom after 10 p.m. and were forced to use a bucket in the corner of their cell if they needed to relieve themselves. In addition, guards started tripping and pushing prisoners in order to establish their authority. One prisoner, #8612, began to act unstably – he screamed and raged and sobbed hysterically (McLeod). The guards, the warden, and even Zimbardo believed that #8612 “was fooling, so to say, trying to “con” [them]” (Zimbardo). They leaders of the project eventually accepted that #8612 was indeed “suffering from acute emotional disturbance” (Zimbardo)and released him from the experiment (The Stanford Prison Experiment). Thirty-six hours had passed (A History).

Day 3

On day three of the experiment – Tuesday – family and friends were welcomed into the jail to visit their loved ones. Before being presented to their mothers, fathers, and girlfriends, however, the guards forced the prisoners to wash, shave, and clean their cells. The warden, on the other hand, gave visitors strict instructions to follow: they had to register in order tovisit their loved one, only two people could call on any one inmate, and visitation lasted ten minutes. The guests followed every rule, subconsciously adapting to authoritative environment of the prison (Zimbardo).

Early Tuesday morning, one convict told the guards of an escape plan several other prisoners had concocted. According to this inmate, prisoner #8612, the convict that had been released the day before, had actually faked his emotional breakdown, and planned to use visiting hours to break into the jail with several friends from the outside and release all of the inmates (The Stanford Prison Experiment). By Tuesday, the authority figures of the prison and even the researchers were wholly engrossed in the situation they had created, and instead of simply observing the course of events, actively worked to prevent the apparent mass escape (A History).

At the end of visiting hours, all inmates were chained and shepherded into an elevator. The inmates had cloth bags placed over their heads and were taken to a storage room on the fifth floor of the Stanford Psychology Building (Zimbardo). They stayed there several hours while Zimbardo sat alone in the disassembled jail waiting for the “rescuers” in order to tell them that the experiment had concluded. The only person that arrived was one of Zimbardo’s colleagues – the escape plot had only been a rumor (The Stanford Prison Experiment).

Day 4

Furious that the prisoners had fooled them, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the guards once again intensified their mistreatment of the inmates. They began using push-ups as a physical form of punishment (McLeod). Researchers laughed at what they thought was a light punishment, but then learned that Nazi’s forced concentration camp prisoners to preform push-ups. In addition to physical abuse, the guards psychologically tortured and humiliated the convicts, forcing prisoners to clean toilets with their bare hands and extending roll call by hours – despite the fact that there were only nine inmates (Zimbardo).

One inmate. #819, completely broke down under the heightened abuse and Zimbardo escorted removed his chain and stocking cap and escorted him to a “leisure room” with the intention of releasing him. While the volunteer waited in the leisure room, the guards rounded up the remaining inmates and coerced them to chant over and over how #819 was a bad prisoner (Zimbardo). #819 could hear everything the inmates were staying and, through his tears, told Zimbardo that he could not leave – the man wanted to show that he was not a bad prisoner. Zimbardo managed to distance himself from the experiment for a period, and convinced #819 to leave and return home (The Stanford Prison Experiment).

Day 5

Some prisoners believed they had a valid reason for being paroled and were allowed to apply for parole. The parole board met on Thursday morning. During each meeting, Carlo Prescott, the head of the parole board, asked the inmate whether he would sacrifice all of the money he had made up unto this point (approximately $75) in exchange for parole. Only two inmates stated that they would not relinquish the money in trade for parole – the others readily affirmed that they would take this deal if offered (Zimbardo).

When the parole requests came back the prisoners reacted in varying ways. One broke out in a rash that covered every inch of his body and had to be released. Four prisoners suffered a mental and emotional breakdown, as they believed their one legal way of being released had been denied. Others reacted by becoming completely complacent, obedient prisoners. All of the inmates felt isolated and disheartened (The Stanford Prison Experiment). By the fifth day, the “guards had won total control of [the] prison” (Zimbardo)

A second round of visitations took place on Thursday night. This time, however, parents began requesting a lawyer for their children. Zimbardo, feeling trapped in his role as superintendent, actually called a lawyer who came to Stanford to interview the prisoners (Zimbardo). It was this that finally made Zimbardo realize that the project had progressed far beyond an experiment and had, for the volunteers, the researchers, and Zimbardo, himself, become reality (A History).

Day 6

After six days, Zimbardo finally ended the experiment (BBC Prison Study). To give some finality to the project, he assembled all of the guards to discuss the study, then he met with all of the prisoners, even the ones who had been released, and finally, he gathered everyone together – guards, inmates, and staff – to relate their experience. The experiment concluded on August 20th, 1971 (The Stanford Prison Experiment).

Game Theory of the Guards

The main objective of the guards during this experiment was to establish and maintain authority over the prisoners. During the first twenty-four hours the guards followed standard procedure, and while they were not overtly nice to the inmates, they did not cause the prisoners’ undue suffering (Zimbardo). This strategy ended in rebellion (A History).

The guards realized that they had erred and that sustaining power over the prisoners would require them to find a new approach. They decided that the best way to control the inmates would be to make them feel isolated and then pit them against one another. This is a common tactic in actual prisons: guards promoteracism in order to keep the convicts from uniting and spread rumors of homosexuality to prevent inmates from making close alliances. The privilege cell allowed the guards to create an air of suspicion and their unpredictable mix up of which prisoners were “good” and which were “bad” prevented the inmates from re-establishing solidarity (Zimbardo). Additionally, the guards reinforced their power through mental and physical punishments and dehumanization of the inmates – mainly referring to them and forcing them to refer to themselves only by number. By the end of the experiment, they had crushed all of the prisoners’ independence (A History).

The guards’ new strategy proved to be highly effective – the prisoners’ were so submissive they unquestioningly turned on their own rather than face punishment. After Zimbardo removed prisoner #8612 from the experiment, he introduced one of the alternate inmates to the experiment, prisoner #416 (Zimbardo). Almost from the start of his incarceration, #416 refused to eat. Guards attempted to force feed him and had other prisoners attempt to do the same. Still #416 refused to eat and was thrown into solitary confinement. The guards gave the prisoners a deal - #416 would be released from solitary confinement if each inmate gave up his blanket. By this point, the prisoners were completely isolated from one another and nearly all of them refused to reduce their own comfort for the sake of another inmate (The Stanford Prison Experiment).

A combination of unpredictableness, physical and psychological abuse, and dehumanizing tactics proved to be the most effective strategy for controlling prisoners and establishing the guards’ power.

The Game Theory of Prisoners

The prisoners’ wanted to find a strategy that minimized their suffering. Originally, they stuck together, bonded by their shared predicament, and rebelled against the guards (A History). This approach backfired – the revolt increased guard solidarity as well as causing an escalation in the frequency and intensity of harassment. After reaching the conclusion that the “good” inmates were informers, each prisoner adopted a new strategy – himself before anyone else. The prisoners adhered to all of the guards’ orders in order to reduce their own punishments (The Stanford Prison Experiment).

Placing one’s self interest above all others might sound logical to a group of beaten, dirty, starved men, but the prisoners’ approach to their dilemma did not save them from beatings. The strategy the inmates played increased their beatings, if anything (The Stanford Prison Experiment). Had they remained united, it is possible they could’ve gotten the upper hand against the guards. The “prison” could not afford to have nine guards on duty at all time and, as they demonstrated during the rebellion, nine prisoners could easily overwhelm three guards if they stayed united (Zimbardo). This, however, was not that case, and the prisoners’ tactics only opened them up to more abuse.

Conclusion

Using twenty-four student volunteers, a team of researchers attempted to study the relationships between guards and prisoners in order to isolate sources of conflict between the two groups. The experiment, known today as the Stanford Prison Experiment, endured for six days out of its intended run time of two weeks (McLeod).

The project greatly affected all of the participants, including the researchers and the man running the simulation, Philip Zimbardo. The volunteers became completely absorbed in their roles (A History). Guards used harsh tactics, including physical and psychological punishment, to keep prisoners in line. Consequently, many inmates suffered emotional breakdowns. The experiment ended after Zimbardo realized that his experiment had become twenty-four young men’s reality (Zimbardo).

Summary

Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford professor, started an experiment in 1971 that attempted to isolate the sources of conflict between prison guards and inmates. He selected twenty-four male college students to participate in his study. The volunteers were split into two groups of equal size – a group of guards and a group of inmates. A stimulated prison had been constructed in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Building and the participants were placed there in order for researchers to observe their behavior.