Talk:Stanford prison experiment
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A Wikipedian removed Stanford prison experiment from the good article list. There are suggestions below for improving areas to satisfy the good article criteria. Once the objections are addressed, renominate the article as a good article. If you disagree with the objections, you can seek a review. |
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This article is considered to fall outside the scope of the Version 0.5 test release, which is of limited size. It is now being held ready for a later version. |
Question: Does this article by Carlos Prescott have any relevance? http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=content&id=17075&repository=0001_article
Are the additions by MK (questioning Zimbardo's methodology, starting with "It can be argued...") appropriate for the article, or are they an example of the kind of editorializing that should generally be avoided? It struck me as rather tangential to the main article body. --141.20.103.68 10:31, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
- There are obviously different interpretations possible. One interpretation was already included in the article before I edited it. As there are other possible interpretations, I think they should be presented. All of the facts I used in what I wrote came directly from Professor Zimbardo's own reports. MK 21:33, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It's more NPOV to say "Some have argued that" or "critics contend that" followed by criticism from actual relevant authorities. There's no shortage of criticism of the experiment from relevant authorities, so there's no excuse not to use it and cite where it's coming from.
This site is about reporting specific facts, not hypothetical conjectures like "It can be argued"
--Taak 00:40, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Note: This article contains a few misguided facts. A few of them I list here:
- The abuse was not initiated by Zimbardo himself, as the article suggested. It was initiated by the guards. Zimbardo, also played no part in the abuse. Although there were many times he overlooked the activities undertaken within the prison.
- Zimbardo did not take an overly active role in the experiment. He had both roles of psychologist, and Prision Superintendant. Although he admits he should not have taken on this dual role, because he did indeed become absorbed into it.
- It is also worth noting that the participants underwent "Normality Screening" to establish their stability. It is written that they were checked for normality, but this was the phrase used.
- It should also be noted that everyone was paid for the whole 14 days, despite the experiment being called off after the 6th day.
Should we be linking to Abu Ghraib? Is it at all relavant to this article? →Raul654 23:40, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC)
- Well, I thought it was similar... a bunch of soldiers were made prison guards with no training in that area, left to their own devices with no guidelines and no supervision, and ended up humiliating the prisoners to absurdity. Seemed like a pretty clear-cut example of what happened in the SPE to me. --Taak 03:08, 1 May 2004 (UTC)
Ok, but put that instead of "see also" and letting the reader guess what the relavance is. Btw - just so you know, 'see also' is depricated. →Raul654 03:27, May 1, 2004 (UTC)
- where does it say that? --Taak 14:55, 1 May 2004 (UTC)
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- I'm also curious, Raul. "See also" is of course second-best to working the applicable reference into the article text, but are you saying that in situations where that's not appropriate, there's something other than "See also" which should be used? -- Antaeus Feldspar 18:06, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think it's entirely applicable.
It applies to any situation where one human is strongly in control of another, or groups respectively thereof. Examples abound, particularly in sitations where force or significant coersion can be applied by the party in charge without reasonable fear or assumption of punishment for their actions. Usual examples are: Police vs. Suspect (police generally are given immense powers, such as to recommend charges be filed, have the authority to legally use deadly force with less justification than the layman, act without asking questions, and let a prosecutor sort out the issues), Prison Guard vs. Convict.
Less extreme examples would be Judge vs. Defendent in a criminal trial (Judge has full jurisdiction to act in his courtroom, relief may only be found after a punishment immediately begins), Large corporation with (pragmatically) unlimited assets suing an individual (the normal kind, not a rich one), or a Professor vs. Student (the professor can deny reasonable grades, good job references, other opportunities), and Boss vs. Worker (the boss can fire a worker for any reason, particularly in an "Employment at will" area).
--JD 01:19, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
just a short question. am i allowed to use this images in the german wiki? thank you --84.168.195.244 19:04, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] Novelization?
Does anyone else remember a book about a high school classroom situation/experiment in which some were made to wear arm bands and hall passes were strictly controlled (or something) and it was all related to Nazis (or something)? There was a book in my childhood library that, knowing what I know now, seems to be very much based on the Stanford Prison Experiment. jengod 01:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I saw the movie based on the book - I believe it was called "The Wave." Not sure if the book had the same title but a google search should tell you pretty quickly. Very good movie and really makes one think!
- It was "The Third Wave". There was a TV movie based on it, and a condensed version appeared in The Whole Earth Catalog, circa 1980.
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- I recently (within the last year or so) read an article on CNN.com about a school that actually did that. You should be able to do a search and find it. ONUnicorn 20:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
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- Apparently the book was also just called *The Wave* (or they changed the name). I found it at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Wave-Laurel-Leaf-Books/dp/0440993717/sr=8-1/qid=1169694733/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-8861222-8165501?ie=UTF8&s=books), and according to that site it's based on actual events in 1969 at a Palo Alto High School. KathL 03:14, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
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"It was a variation of the Milgram experiment" - while both are often used in psychological discussion as examples of poor ethics and questionable risk/benefit ratio experiements, the two are not similar in many ways beyond the obvious ethical problems present in both and the acquiantanship of the two researchers. The Stanford Prison Experiment was not meant to be a continuation or follow-up to Milgram's work, and this line should be removed. 69.118.247.101 19:46, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Ethics
Should there be more discussion of the reasons it was considered unethical? I learned about this in a weekend course, and the instructor quoted some arguments I hadn't thought about. Rachel 23:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] General Principles
It is a grave error to think that an experiment will reveal a 'general principle'. A truly 'general principle' can be revealed by any activity or event in life - real life. The truth of any explanation of an event should be judged against a general series of events rather than one individual isolated event.
Too often isolated explanations are given for events which only explain that particular event rather than trying to get to the fundamental understanding which caused that event. In most cases the explanation of human behaviour is the simple one - HUMAN NATURE and not any isolated EXCUSE - ie the usual explanation is that the person is acting UNUSUALLY - brought on by some outside force rather than the simple explanation - it is natural.
Or to put it another way: why conduct an experiment to discover an explanation of human behaviour when we have a few thousand years of actual real life? General principles controlling human behaviour do not change over time.
See http://homepage.eircom.net/~utinstinct1/index.htm
[edit] Clarification of Contract/etc.
Were the volunteers contractually obliged/etc. to stay for the entire two weeks? I'm assuming so, based on the 'parole' offer, but I'm not sure. Zetetic Apparatchik 14:30, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
- No, they weren't. According to Zimbardo's report, they could have left at any time, and would simply not recieve the $15.00 per day compensation. Several of the "prisoners" did this after a few days, because of the psychological stress, before the "parole" factor was introduced.~e.o.t.d~ 08:15, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] 0.5 nom
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This article is considered to fall outside the scope of the Version 0.5 test release, which is of limited size. It is now being held ready for a later version. |
Jaranda wat's sup 21:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Picture of 416
What exactly does the picture of Prisoner 416 show? I can't make it out at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Spe-deloused.jpg
- A person with a bag (box?) over his head, holding both hands against a wall (he's facing right); the picture title would indicate he is being deloused. Raul654 10:20, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Origins of Abuse
Reading the article implies, somewhat indirectly but without any real clarification, that the abusive tactics of the guards arose from the guards, and argues that they thus came from the "situation" that the guards and prisoners were put into. Much of the analysis of the experiment comes directly with the description of facts, in the form of "the experimenters argued..." However, if you take a look at the articles crossreferenced at the bottom (specifically, the "Lie of the Stanford Prison Experiment" and "Stuationist Ethics" articles), you get a very different view of the entire experiment, in which the organizers of the experiment are blamed much more for bringing the abusive ideas to the guards' minds. In this case, the prison feels much more like the [Milgram Experiment] than some novel "descent into brutality" experiment that it is frequently seen as.
So the question: is the article NPOV? Is saying "they argued that..." good enough to imply that there are significant (and well researched, the Slate article referenced extensively) criticisms of the experiment's conclusions? I think the article needs a good bit of re-writing and some inclusion of point by point argumentation in the experiment results section. In this case, the objective facts of the experiment do not seem clear and should not be presented as such.
Apologies for any Wiki mistakes, I don't edit here often.
--192.35.35.35 16:54, 27 June 2006 (UTC) Alex Baxter
[edit] GA Re-Review and In-line citations
Note: This article has a very small number of in-line citations for an article of its size and currently would not pass criteria 2b.
Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. Agne 23:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
PS: I would also work on converting the "Popular culture" reference into a prose format, instead of bullet points. Agne 23:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Reasons for GA Delisting
This article's GA status has been revoked because it fails criterion 2. b. of 'What is a Good Article?', which states;
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- (b) the citation of its sources using inline citations is required (this criterion is disputed by editors on Physics and Mathematics pages who have proposed a subject-specific guideline on citation, as well as some other editors — see talk page).
LuciferMorgan 08:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
