Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment

Philip Zimbardo is a prominent American psychologist who investigates the character trait of evil and how people turn to evil. Zimbardo was a professor at Stanford University as well as a past president of the American Psychological Association. He conducted the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment. In the experiment, mentally healthy college students were randomly selected as prisoners and guards. The experiment was ultimately a failure as two prisoners left midway through the experiment because the guards had psychologically abused the prisoners under the warden of the prison, Zimbardo. After the test, Zimbardo came to the conclusion that the situation over personal characteristics had caused the ruthless behavior of the guards. Group pressure also caused the dictatorial activity of the guards, as each member of the group pressured each other to harass the seemingly weak prisoners. Zimbardo’s idea that the doers of evil consists of people who support

each other to do and enjoy wicked tasks, and a group that pressures each other to do the task is relevant to literature and history. The consequences of being in the group is the outcast or rebel will be expelled from the group.
Breaking down Zimbardo’s idea, he first describes the doers of evil as an in-group, or a group of people all pressuring each other to do do evil crimes. Zimbardo describes humans as “cooperative” (Aron) and “altruistic” (Aron) when in a group environment. In The Lottery, the leader, Mr. Summers conducts the stoning of the winner of the lottery, “All right, folks. Mr. Summers said. Let's finish quickly.” (Jackson 7). He calls the villagers to come together and dispose of the outcast. Each member of the group follows as, “Mr. Dunbar had small stones” and “The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles.” (Jackson 7). Zimbardo explains that “we are willing to cooperate… by the leaders we trust” (Aron), in this case Mr. Summers is the leader which the town trusts as everyone “is eager to join and support” (Aron) the leader to stone the loser. In the story, there is a natural human tendency to cooperate with the group as the villagers stone Teresa Hutchinson. Another example of group effects is in The Crucible as the witches are a group of people who together gain credibility for their accusations. Abigail is the group leader as she claims, “I saw Goody Sibber with the Devil!” and then everyone else follows these charges, “BETTY: I saw Alice Barrow with the Devi1!” (Miller 52). As Abigail starts off with the accusations, Betty follows as she does not want to be “uncooperative” and “cowardly” (Aron) to Abigail if she does not follow with the group. Another factor in group power is the numbers in the group, which means the allegations grow stronger as “Abigail:Why do you come, yellow bird?...Susanna Walcott: Her claws, she’s stretching her claws!... Girls: I’m here, I’m here!” (Miller 118). Because three girls are all cooperating to accuse Mary Warren, Danforth believes the three girls and reacts, “Danforth, horrified: Mary Warren! Draw back your spirit out of them!” (Miller 119). As more and more come together to engage in these assertions there is a “strength in unity” (Aron) and “authority” asserted by the in-group.
Zimbardo declares that the group “enjoys each other's support in their tasks” (Aron), the tasks that Zimbardo describes are the social and physical abuse that the group conducts. In The Lottery, the elders command the townspeople to start the ritual as, “Old Man Warner was saying, Come on, come on, everyone. Steve Adams was in the front of the crowd of villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.” (Jackson 7). There is a subtleness of pleasure from the townspeople, which means there doesn’t always have to be an evil smile on everyone's faces. The tendency to “fit in, conform, and especially to cooperate.” (Aron) brings the “pleasing” (Aron) experience of the evildoers. Similar to this, the witches in The Crucible accuse the townspeople of being with the Devil when “Betty, calling out hysterically and with great relief: I saw Martha Bellows with the Devil!” (Miller 52). Betty feels relief and pleasure from completing her task, along with comfort because Abigail was with her. Adding on to this point, Zimbardo also describes how being in a group “diffuses responsibility, so people don’t feel individually accountable” (Wargo), which explains how in The Scarlet Letter the women harass Hester, who is an adulterer in the strict rules of the Puritan community. There is a chain reaction when one woman says “they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead.” (Hawthorne 2), which is continued by a different women saying “This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die” (Hawthorne 2). When one woman is bold enough to start the spark, Zimbardo calls this the “one ingredient in the potion” (Wargo) which leads to other women continuing with the bullying. Separating the blame between the women creates courage as they do not feel individually accountable and changes them from “ordinary” (Wargo) people to villains. This reason is specifically present in The Scarlet Letter, but is also in The Lottery and The Crucible, which is a cause of the pleasure and subtle happiness displayed by the villains.
Sometimes in the group there is an outsider in the group, or a group member that does not want to conform to the evil deeds.

Zimbardo states “we may fear standing out and being seen as weird yet again.” (Aron) as a primary reason for there hardly being any outsiders who rebel against the group norms in our day-to-day lives. Zimbardo describes how there is a certain “great length of heroism of not going along with the group” (Aron) which Mary Warren exhibits in The Crucible. Mary Warren goes to the court, exhibiting bravery by claiming that the witchcraft was “pretense, sir” (Miller 92) and that she “never saw no spirits.” (Miller 109). Mary Warren has the nerve to go against the group and stand for her opinion which is classified as a heroic act in Zimbardo’s eyes. Alike, in The Lottery, when Teresa gets selected for stoning Mrs. Hutchinson claims “It isn't fair, it isn't right, Mrs. Hutchinson screamed” (Jackson 7) which shows her courage “to take action, to go the other direction and do the heroic thing.”

(Wargo).
Ultimately though, Zimbardo declares that the outcast ideas will be “ashamed or totally banished” (Aron) which means that the heroism experienced by Mrs. Hutchinson and Mary Warren will be opposed by the group members. The hero is the “deviant” (Zimbardo) who if is too weak, will lose against the group as the group is too powerful. In The Crucible, Mary Warren backs down her heroic claims as she feels scared from being banished from the group, “Mary Warren, screaming it out at the top of her lungs, and raising her fists: Stop it!! Girls, raising their fists: Stop it!!” (Miller 119). Zimbardo perfectly describes Mary’s situation, as “having experienced enough shame already” from her rebellion against the group and Mary fears “standing out and being seen as weird yet again.” (Aron). The girls intimidation makes Mary be ashamed of her anti-group stance and eventually makes her move back into the group. In The Lottery, the act of heroism where Mrs. Hutchinson stands up for Tessa is counteracted by the strength of the large group as the townspeople start stoning her too, “and then they were upon her.” (Jackson 7) Mrs. Hutchinson ends up being banished from the group because of her act of heroism which is her will to stand up against the group, but it fails because of the strength of the group. Heroism is “much more difficult to achieve” (Aron) than originally thought because the outcast is too weak to go against the group and the group is too strong against the outcast.
Throughout literature and history, Zimbardo’s idea is prevalent that the doers of evil are an in-group who enjoy each other’s support in their duties. The effects of being in that group is that there is fear that if they do not obey to group tasks they will be expelled from the group. The leader of the group usually controls the main activities of the group. When the leader leaves the group, the rest of the group will follow because the leader is a highly respected individual and is essential to the operations of the group. In other cases, when the leader leaves the group, and the rest of the group does not follow it is because the leader is not needed for the operation of the group. The leader can be either be thought of the heart of the group, when cut off, every other part of the group dies or can be thought of just a finger in the group, another functioning part that is not very significant to the continuing operation of the whole body.