Class Discussion Information — Week 14

I. Bystander Effect

A. The Murder of Kitty Genovese

You can read more about Kitty’s murder here.

B. Bystander Effect – Early Studies

C. Bystander Effect – Demonstration

D. Internal Versus External Validity

Internal validity—extraneous variables carefully controlled in order to test specific hypotheses.

External validity—control of extraneous variables is minimal in order to determine the generalizability of results (especially to real-life situations).

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II. The Stanford Prison Study (1971)

Stanford Prison Experiment Official Website

The principal investigator was Philip Zimbardo, a psychology professor at Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA).

Research Question: What are the behavioral and psychological consequences of being a prisoner or a prison guard?

Hypothesis: The negative/maladaptive behaviors and psychological characteristics of prisoners and prison guards are caused primarily by the social situations found in prisons, especially the social roles of being a prisoner or guard.

In other words, Zimbardo claimed that the personalities of prisoners and guards are not important causes of their behaviors and psychological characteristics. Thus, Zimbardo needed to (a) observe prisoners and guards in a prison environment while, at the same time, (b) reduce or eliminate average personality differences between prisoners and guards.

Zimbardo and his colleagues tried to meet these two requirements by doing the following:

1. They created a simulated prison environment by using “experts” to help them create a relatively realistic prison environment in the basement of the psychology building.
2. They selected people who were not prisoners or guards to participate in the study. They decided to use male college students (18-24 years old) to play the roles of prisoners or guards. A personal ad was placed in a local newspaper in which male college students were offered $15 per day (almost $90 today) to participate in a two-week study (a total of about $1200 today);
3. They gave 70+ applicants diagnostic interviews, questionnaires, and personality tests, Based on the results of these measures, they selected 24 students who had no “psychological abnormalities,” medical disabilities, criminal convictions, or history of drug use. All but one of the students were white (i.e., of European descent); the other student was Asian-American.
4. They randomly assigned 12 students to be prisoners and 12 students to be guards.
5. They began the study and observed the participants’ behavior in the simulated prison environment.

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III. The Stanford Prison Study and Abu Ghraib Prison

In 2003, photographs released by news organizations and Amnesty International documented the physical and psychological abuse of Iraqi prisoners (including torture, rape, and murder) by United States Army personnel and CIA agents at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq.

Not long after, researchers and particpants involved in the Stanford Prison Study were interviewed [REFERENCE] because the results and conclusions of that study were so relevant to the events that occurred at Abu Ghraib.

In the edited video posted below, I included excerpts from interviews of the following people:

• Philip Zimbardo—he was the principal investigator of the study and took on the role of  the “prison superintendent”;
• Craig Haney—in August, 1971, he was a graduate student at Stanford University and co-investigator in the study;
• David Eshelman—he was the “guard” nicknamed “John Wayne” by the prisoners in the study;
• Richard Yacco–he was “Prisoner 1037” in the study;
• Christina Maslach—in August 1971, she had just been awarded her Ph.D. from Stanford University and was dating Philip Zimbardo, eventually becoming his wife (she was not involved in the study).

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