Male Speaker: Hey! I Don T Want Anybody Laughing. Indiscernible 0:00:18

File Name: CRJ570_1 Transcriber: I-Source Speakers aren’t clear making it hard to discern. Screams, shouts, group conversation, music QA/QC Comments: makes the speakers indecipherable at certain places. Length of Interview: 00:29:14 Audio Category List volume, accent, background noise, ESL speakers. Any Comments [e.g. times of recording not needing transcription, accents, etc.] Any Problems with Recording [e.g. background noise, static, etc] Unusual Words or Terms: Must be completed [e.g. Abbreviations, Company Names, Names of people or places, technical jargon] Number of Speakers: Multiple [Music]Stanford Prison ExperimentPrisoner 8612: I was the first one to be picked out so they put me in a cell. They locked me in there in this degrading little outfit.Male Speaker: Hey! I don’t want anybody laughing. [Indiscernible] [0:00:18]…Prisoner 8612: Fuck that! It’s a simulation. [Phonetic]... I got to go to a doctor, anything. Jesus Christ, I’m burning up inside. Don’t you know? [Indiscernible] [0:00:30] Let me out now! I never screamed so loud in my life. I’ve never been so upset in my life. It was an experience of being out of control… This is fucking, I can’t take it.Narrator: Stanford University, Northern California, one of America’s most prestigious academic institutions, and in 1971, the scene of one of the most notorious experiments in the history of psychology.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: I was interested in what happens if you put good people in an evil place. Does the situation outside of you, the institution, could come to control your behavior or does the things inside of you, your attitude, your values, your morality allow you to rise above a negative environment.Narrator: The negative environment Zimbardo chose to test his ideas was a prison. He would convert the basement of the university’s psychology department into a subterranean jail.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: We put prison doors on each of three office cells. In the cells, there was nothing but three beds and there’s very- actually very little room if anything else because they were very small. And here we had solitary confinement which we call the Hole. And in the Hole was the place where prisoners would be put for punishment. It was a very, very small area. When you close the door, it was totally dark.All the guards wore military uniforms and we had them wear these silver reflecting sunglasses. And what it does is you can’t see someone’s eyes and so that loses some of the humanness, the humanity. And generally we wanted to create a sense of power that is the guards as a category are people who have power over others. In this case, power over the prisoners.Narrator: A decade earlier, psychologist Stanley Milgram had also looked at how we respond to authority. In order to understand how people were induced to obey unjust regimes and participate in atrocities such as the Holocaust, he set up an experiment. Volunteers were told they were taking part in scientific research to improve memory.Male Speaker 2: Will you open those and tell me which of you is which please?Male Speaker 3: Teacher. Male Speaker 4: Learner.Narrator: Separated by a screen, the teacher would ask the learner questions in a word game and administer an electric shock when the answer was incorrect. He was told to increase the voltage with each wrong answer.Male Speaker 3: Cloud, horse, rock, house. Answer? Wrong. 150 volts. Answer, horse.Actor: Oh! [Indiscernible] [0:03:36], that’s wrong. Get me out of here. Get me out of here please.Male Speaker 2: Continue please. Go right on.Actor: [Overlap] I refuse to [Indiscernible] [0:03:42]. Let me out.Male Speaker 3: He refused to go ahead.Male Speaker 2: The experiment requires you continue teacher. Please continue.Narrator: Participants didn’t know that the learner was really an actor and the so called shocks, harmless.Male Speaker 3: You know you had a shock, 180 volts.Actor: Oh! I can’t stand the pain! Let me out of here.Male Speaker 3: He can’t stand it. I’m not going to kill that man in there. I mean who’s going to take the responsibility if anything happens to that gentleman?Male Speaker 2: I’m responsible for anything that happens here. Continue please.Male Speaker 3: All right. Next is slow, love, dance, truck, music. Answer [Overlap]Narrator: Two thirds of volunteers were prepared to administered potentially fatal electric shock when encouraged to do so by what they perceive as a legitimate authority figure. In this case, a man in a white coat.Male Speaker 3: 375 volts. I think something’s happened to that fellow in there. I get no answer. He was hollering at less voltage. Can’t you check it and see if he’s all right please?Narrator: Milgram’s findings horrified America. They showed that decent American citizens were as capable of committing acts against their conscience as the Germans had been under the Nazis. Like Milgram, Zimbardo was interested in the power of social situations to overwhelm individuals. His experiment would test people’s responses to an oppressive regime. Would they accept it or act against it? Zimbardo’s experiment was conducted against a backdrop of civil rights activism and protest against the Vietnam War.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: There was a sense of student power, student dominance and student rebellion against authority in general.Narrator: It was from the student body that Zimbardo selected his participants. After passing tests to screen out anyone with a psychological abnormality, they were paid 15 dollars a day. Each was randomly assigned to the role of guard or prisoner.Clay Ramsay: It was a prison to me. It’s still is a prison to me. I don’t look on it as an experiment or a simulation. It’s just a prison that was run by psychologists instead of run by the state.I was 20 and that September I was going to college and it would be nice to have a summer job but there isn’t sure was a lot of time left. And I looked at the want ads and I found this thing which was just going to fit. It was just two weeks.Dave Eshleman: That’s it. You put a uniform on and are given a job to keep these people in line. You really become that person once you put on that khaki uniform. You put on the glasses, you take the nightstick…I was on summer break from my first year in college and I was looking for a job. I had to choose between that and making pizzas. That sounded like a lot more fun.Narrator: As well as running the experiment, Zimbardo took on the role of prison superintendant. He began by briefing the guards.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: I said you have to maintain law and order. If a prisoner has escaped, the study is over. And you can’t use physical violence.You have to creates a sense of fear in them. You can create a notion that their life is totally controlled by us and that there’ll be constant surveillance. We have total power in the situation and they have none.Narrator: Prisoners were brought to the basement prison blindfolded to confuse them about their whereabouts. They were stripped and deloused.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: Of course the guards started making fun of their genitals and humiliating them. And really it’s the start of what’s known as a degradation process which not only in prisons but lots of military type outfits use that process.Prisoner 1037: When I first got here, even though like I had to strip and they would call me names, I still didn’t feel at all angry or [Indiscernible] [0:07:31]. I was just looking at it as a job. Dave Eshleman: I recalled sort of walking up and down the very short hallway which was the prison hall and looking in on the prisoners and they’re basically lounging around on their beds. I felt it was like a day in summer camp.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: The first day I said this might be a very long and very boring experiment because it’s conceivable nothing will happen.Dave Eshleman: I arrived independently at the conclusion that this experiment must have been put together to prove a point about prisons being a cruel and inhumane place, and therefore I would do my part to help those results come about. I was a confrontational and arrogant 18- year-old at the time and I said somebody ought to stir things up a bit here.Prisoner 8612: Fuck this experiment! And fuck that Zimbardo! [Indiscernible] [0:08:28]Narrator: On the second morning, the prisoners had decided to stir things up as well.Guard: Face the wall.Narrator: The guards found some of them have used their beds to barricade their cell. Prisoner 8612 was one of the ringleaders of the rebellion.Prisoner 8612: Fuck that simulation! It’s a fucking simulated experiment. There’s no prison. Barricade your beds and your [Indiscernible] [0:08:51]Prof. Philip Zimbardo: Initially I was stunned. I didn’t expect a rebellion because not much happened. I mean it wasn’t clear what they were rebelling against. But they were rebelling against the status, rebelling against being anonymous, against having to follow orders from these other students.Narrator: As punishment for the rebellion, Prisoner 8612 was put in the hole and the guards turned on the other prisoners.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: The guards felt that they now have to up the ante of being tough. The prisoners made the mistake of beginning to use profanity against the guards in a very personalized way. So not against the guards but no, you little punk, you big shit and stuff. And the guards got furious.Guard: [Whistles] Everybody out in the hallway. Come on. Up, up.Guard 2: Well gentlemen, here it is, time for count.Narrator: Prisoners were repeatedly woken in the middle of the night. The guards made them do menial, physical tasks and clean out toilets with their bare hands.Dave Eshleman: We made it a point to not give them any sense of comfort of what to expect. You know anything could happen to them at any time including being rousted from their sleep at any hour and forced to stand up in a line and have me hurl insults at them and then make them do exercises. When you interrupt people’s sleep, they tend to become a little disoriented and since there was no daylight in the prison, they had no idea whether it was night or day. I think that I was the instigator of this whole schedule of harassment.Narrator: The harassment of the guards took its toll on rebellion leader 8612. He tells Zimbardo he wanted to leave the experiment. Zimbardo responded not as a psychologist but as a prison superintendent.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: I said, “Well, I can see to it the guards don’t hassle you personally and in return all I would like is some information from time to time about what the prisoners are doing.” So essentially I’m saying I’d like you to be a snitch, an informer. And I said, “Think it over and if you still want to leave, fine.”Narrator: Confused, Prisoner 8612 returned to his cell and told the other prisoners that no one could leave.Prisoner 8612: They won’t let me out. You can’t get out of here.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: He believed that we wouldn’t let him go although we never said that. But the fact that he was the ringleader of the rebellion and he told the other prisoners they won’t let you leave, and that really transformed the experiment into a prison.Prisoner 1037: I was told that I couldn’t quit. And at that point, I just felt totally helpless, more helpless than I’ve ever felt before.Narrator: Soon after returning to his cell, Prisoner 8612 started showing signs of severe distress.Prisoner 8612: God damn it. You fucked up. You don’t know- You don’t know. I mean God. I mean Jesus Christ I’m burning up inside. Don’t you know? I hate this. I fucking can’t take it.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: He came up with a plan that if he acted crazy, we would have to release him.Prisoner 8612: I feel fucked up inside. I feel really fucked up inside. You don’t know. I got to go. I need to go to a doctor, anything. I can’t [Indiscernible] [0:12:07]. I fucked up. I don’t know how to explain it. I’m all fucked up inside! I want out! I want out now!Prof. Philip Zimbardo: It starts with make believe and then he’s doing and cursing and screaming and whatever that little boundary is that- He moved across, not that he became really crazy but he became excessively disturbed. I mean so much so that we immediately said we have to release him.Doug Korpi (Prisoner 8612): As an experience, it was unique. I never screamed so loud in my life. I’ve never been so upset in my life. And it was an experience of being out of control. Narrator: The boundary between reality and make believe was to become blurred even for Zimbardo. A rumor circulated that released Prisoner 8612 would return with friends to liberate the remaining prisoners.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: I quickly convinced myself that my most important function was not to allow this prison liberation to occur and what can I do to keep my prison going, not the experiment going.Narrator: The prison was dismantled and the prisoners moved to another part of the building. Zimbardo waited in the empty corridor preparing to tell 8612 and his friends that the study was over when a colleague appeared and began asking questions about the scientific basis of the research.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: I’m trying to get rid of him then he says, “What’s the independent variable?” I got furious because he doesn’t understand that this riot about to take place, that this prison is about to erupt. I had totally lost this whole other identity of scientist, research, psychologist.Narrator: The rumored jailbreak never materialized. The guards had dismantled the prison for nothing and had to rebuilt it. They took their frustration out on the prisoners.Guard: [Whistles] Everybody out in the hallway. Come on. Up!Prof. Philip Zimbardo: They escalated again the level of control, the level of dominance, the level of humiliating behavior.Narrator: 819 was the next prisoner to rebel against the harassment of the guards. He barricaded himself in his cell and refused to take part in the count.Guard: You know you’re not getting a cigarette. For as long as the cell is blockaded, you’re going to be in solitary when you get out.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: For 819’s disobedience, the guards made his cellmates do mindless work. This undermined any vestige of solidarity amongst the prisoners who now chose to accept the tyranny of the guards rather than risk further harassment.Dave Eshleman: That was one of the surprising things to me is that there was so little that the prisoners did to support one another after we started our campaign of divide and conquer.Narrator: Isolated and distraught, Prisoner 819 told Zimbardo he wanted to leave.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: While I’m interviewing 819 and saying “Okay, it’s all over. Thank you for your participation. I’ll give you money for the whole two weeks even though you’re leaving early,” he hears the prisoners “819 did a bad thing.” Prisoners: 819 did a bad thing. Prisoner 819 did a bad thing. Prisoner 819 did a bad thing. Prisoner 819 did a bad thing.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: And he said I can’t leave. And he’s crying and he says I can’t leave. So what do you mean you can’t leave? And he said, “No, I have to go back. Because I don’t want them to think that I’m a bad prisoner.” And that’s when I really flipped out. And in such a short time, you know college students’ thinking could become so distorted. I said, “You’re not a bad prisoner. You’re not a prisoner. And this is not a prison.” And it was this thing where he opened his eyes and [Indiscernible] [0:15:48] really like a cloud being lifted.Narrator: Seeing things clearly, Prisoner 819 reverted to his original request and was released. To replace him, the experimenters called in one of their reserves from the standby list.Clay Ramsay: I got a phone call saying “Are you still available as an alternate?” A kind of cheery, female secretary voice. I said, “Yeah sure.” And so she said, “Could you start this afternoon?” And I said, “Yeah sure.” And my role in the experiment really began.I was blindfolded and then stripped and supposedly deloused.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: He came into a madhouse full-blown. All of us had gradually acclimated to increasing level of aggression, to increasing powerlessness of the prisoners, increasing dominance of the guards. And he comes in and says, “What’s happening here to the other prisoners?” And I said, “Yeah, you better not make trouble. It’s really terrible. It’s a real prison.” And he says “I’m out of here. I don’t want-” And they said “No, you can’t leave. Once you’re here, you’re stuck. This is a real prison.”Dave Eshleman: 416, put your hands in the air. Why don’t you play Frankenstein? 2093, you’ll be the bride of Frankenstein. You stay in here.Narrator: Prisoner 416 was soon subjected to the harassment of Dave Eshleman, nicknamed John Wayne because of his macho attitude.Dave Eshleman: 416, I want you to walk over here like Frankenstein and say that you love 2093. That’s not a Frankenstein walk.I made the decision that I would be as intimidating, as cold, as cruel as possible.Clay Ramsay (Prisoner 416): I love you 2093.Dave Eshleman: Get up close! Get up close!Clay Ramsay: I love you 2093. I love you 2093.Dave Eshleman: You’re a bride 2093! You get down here and do ten pushups! Two, three, four… Dave Eshleman: I just watched a movie called Cool Hand Luke and the mean and intimidating Southern prison warder character in that film really was my inspiration for the role that I created for myself.Dave Eshleman: Why is it that you try to be obedient so much?Prisoner: It’s my nature to be obedient Mr. Correctional Officer.Dave Eshleman: You’re a liar. You’re a stinking liar.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: He was creative in his evil. He would think of very ingenious ways to degrade, to demean the prisoners.Dave Eshleman: What if I told you to get down on that floor and fuck the floor? What would you do then?Prof. Philip Zimbardo: One of the best guards was also on that shift and instead of confronting this bad guard, the sadistic guard, essentially because he didn’t want to see what was happening, he became the gofer. He would go out to get the food and things of this kind, and that left the John Wayne [Indiscernible] [0:18:41] guard and another guard on that shift to be dominant.Experimental guard: We were continually called upon to act in a way that just is contrary to what I really feel inside, just continually giving out shit. It’s just really one of the most oppressive you can do.Guard: 416, while they do pushups, you sing Amazing Grace. Ready, down.416: Amazing Grace…Guard: Keep going… Keep doing pushups on your own.Narrator: The madness of the experiments started to affect Prisoner 416.Clay Ramsay: …saved a wretch like me.Guard: Keep going.Clay Ramsay: I began to feel that I was losing my identity and so finally I wasn’t Clay, I was 416. I was really my number. And 416 was going to have to decide what to do.Narrator: Prisoner 416 decided to go on a hunger strike.Clay Ramsay: They were pushing my limits but here was a thing that I could do that could push their limits. After I had missed a couple of meals, I saw that this was not a matter of indifference to the guards. I was making headway. They were upset. Dave Eshleman: I thought how dare this newcomer come in and try to change everything that we had worked for the first three days to set up and by God, he’s going to suffer for that.Dave Eshleman: Get in that [Indiscernible] [0:20:15]Narrator: Frustrated by his continued defiance, John Wayne threw Prisoner 416 into the hole. After punishing the other prisoners for his disobedience, John Wayne encouraged them to vent their anger at 416 directly.Prisoner: Thank you 416!Guard: Okay 2093, stand up.Dave Eshleman: Thank you 416…Dave Eshleman: We would use our nightsticks to bang on the door and we would kick the door so hard that you know, it must have shaken him very seriously inside. It scared the life out of him.Clay Ramsay: He yelled at me and threatened me and actually sort of smashed a sausage into my face to try to get me to open up. But I didn’t have any intention of eating until I was out.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: 416 should have been at some level a hero because he’s willing to oppose the authority of the system. In fact, the prisoners accept the guards definition of him as a troublemaker.Dave Eshleman: I remember somebody was saying, “Would you eat God damn it? We’re sick and tired of this!” And that was proof that there was no solidarity. There was no support between the prisoners.Narrator: While 416 was still in the hole, John Wayne made a final attempt to break him by giving his fellow prisoners a choice. They could vote to release him by making a small sacrifice.Dave Eshleman: You can give me your blankets and sleep on the bare mattress, or you can keep your blankets and 416 will stay in another day. Now what would it be.Prisoner: I’m going to keep my blanket.Dave Eshleman: What will be over here?Prisoner 2: I’ll keep my blankets.Dave Eshleman: How about 546?Prisoner 546: I’ll give you my blanket Mr. Correctional Officer. Guard: You don’t want [Indiscernible] [0:22:06]. We got three in favor of keeping their blankets.Dave Eshleman: We got three against one. Keep your blankets. 416, you’re going to be in there for a while so just get used to it.Dave Eshleman: The study showed that power corrupts and how difficult it is for people who are the victims of abuse to stand up and defend themselves. Why doesn’t anybody who is being abused by a spouse or something like that just say stop it, and we realized now that that’s not as easy as it sounds.Narrator: By the end of the 5th day, four prisoners had broken down and being released. 416 was on the second day of his hunger strike and the experiment still had another nine days to run. At this point, a fellow psychologist visited Zimbardo’s basement prison and would witness the brutality of the experiment first hand.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: The guards had lined up the prisoners to go to the toilet, had bags over their head, chains on their feet, and were marching by, and I looked up and I saw this circus, this parade, and I said, “Hey Chris, look at that.”Prof. Christina Maslach: I looked up and I just began to feel sick to my stomach. I had this feeling, sickening feeling of watching this and I just you know, I just turned away, and I just let loose in this emotional tirade. I just lost it. I was angry, scared. I was in tears.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: And I’m furious. I’m saying, “You’re supposed to be-“ And we had a big argument. You’re supposed to be a psychologist, this interesting dynamic behavior and such [Indiscernible] [0:23:40] but I’m going through this whole thing, the power of this situation. She said, “No, no.” She said, “Young boys are suffering and you are responsible for letting it happen.” I said, “Oh my God, of course you’re right.”Narrator: The next day, Zimbardo ended the experiment. Studies like his stimulated heated debate about the ethics of using human subjects.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: Clearly young men suffered verbally, physically. Prisoners felt shame in their role. Guards felt guilt. So in that sense, it’s unethical that is nobody has the right, the power, the privilege to do that to other people.Narrator: In the wake of experiments like Zimbardo’s and Milgram’s, ethical guidelines changed introducing greater safeguards to protect participants. In the Stanford experiment, Zimbardo might have spared his volunteers’ distress had he not taken on a dual role in the study.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: If I was going to be the prison superintendent, I should have had a colleague who was overseeing the experiment, who was in a position to stop it at any point. Or I should have been the principal investigator and get somebody who is going to be the prison superintendent. I realized that was a big mistake to play both those roles and shifting back and forth. Narrator: After the experiment, Zimbardo brought all the participants together to talk about their experiences. John Wayne would now come face-to-face with the hunger striker he had tormented.Dave Eshleman: I was a little worried. I said, “Oh my God, he’s really going to come down on me hard now. Now that we’re on equal footing.”Clay Ramsay: It harms me.Dave Eshleman: How did it harm you? How does it harm you? Just to think about how mean the people can be like that?Clay Ramsay: Yeah. It let me on some knowledge that I’ve never experienced first hand because I know what you can turn into. I know what you’re willing to do.Dave Eshleman: When I looked back on it now, I behaved appallingly. You know, it was just horrid to look at. I think I tried to explain to him at the time that you know, what you experienced and what you hated so much was a role that I was playing, that that’s not me at all.Clay Ramsay: He was trying to dissociate himself from what he had done. That did make me angry. Everyone was acting out a part and playing a role. Prisoners, guards, staff, everyone was acting out a part. It’s when you start contributing the script, that’s you and thus it’s something you should take responsibility for.Dave Eshleman: I didn’t see where it was really harmful. It was degrading and that was part of my particular little experiment to see how I could [Overlap]Clay Ramsay: Your particular little experiment. Why are you telling me about that?Dave Eshleman: Yes. I was running little experiments of my own.Clay Ramsay: Tell me about your little experiment. I’m curious.Dave Eshleman: Okay. I wanted to see just what kind of verbal abuse that people can take before they start rejecting, before they start clashing back.Dave Eshleman: If I had any regret right now it’s that you know, I made that decision because it would have been interesting to see what would have happened had I not decided to force things. It could be that I only accelerated them, that the same things would have happened but we’ll never know.Narrator: If the extreme nature of Dave Eshleman’s behavior tested the prisoners, it also presented the other guards with a choice, to intervene or not. Dave Eshleman: It’s surprising that no said anything to stop me. They just accepted what I said. And no one questioned my authority at all. And it really shocked me. Why didn’t people say- When I started to get abusive of someone, I started to get profane and still people didn’t say anything.Prof. Philip Zimbardo: There were a few guards who hated to see the prisoners suffer. They never did anything which would be demeaning of the prisoners. The interesting thing is none of the good guards ever intervened in the behavior of the guards who gradually became more and more sadistic over time. We like to think there is this core of human nature that good people can’t do bad things and that good people will dominate over bad situations. In fact, one way to look at the Stanford Prison Studies is that we put good people on an evil place and we saw who won. Well the sad message is in this case, the evil place won over the good people.Dave Eshleman: It did show some very interesting and maybe some unpleasant things about human behavior. It seems like every century, every decade we would go through, we’re suffering the same kind of atrocities. You need to understand why these things happen. You need to understand why people behave like this.[00:29:14][Audio Ends]

Male Speaker: Hey! I Don T Want Anybody Laughing. Indiscernible 0:00:18

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