Hindsight is always 20/20. A few weeks back, I mentioned and discussed how the Rahway Prison experiment “Scared Straight” had the opposite effect of increased criminal behavior by those who participated.

This week, I discuss Philip Zimbardo’s 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment.

In the study, Zimbardo and a team of Stanford graduate students created a mock prison in the basement of the Department of Psychology building. Some two dozen participants – young, healthy college-aged men – were recruited to spend two weeks in the prison as either prisoners or guards, decided by a coin toss. Local police “arrested” the prisoners to be.

What did this study reveal?

Inmates and guards adapted to their roles very quickly. The guards were abusive and the inmates accepted the guards’ behaviors. The experiment was shut down after six days due to the psychological abuses that transpired. (Stanford Report). It was in fact Zimbardo’s girlfriend, whom he later married, insisting he stop the experiment as she saw him becoming too invested in his warden role.

Zimbardo saw aspects of prison behavior mirrored in other areas of life such as how shyness can lead people to follow the leader or how the bystander effect will prevent individuals from stepping in to help someone in need. Zimbardo became a leading expert in these theories during his tenure at Stanford. These theories are relevant today when we consider two examples in the killings of Tyre Nichols by police officers in Memphis and of George Floyd by Officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis.

Michigan Professor Eastman said if Chauvin was the only officer with George Floyd with only one bystander observing, the chances are much more likely that the bystander would have taken action. However, with a large crowd, people hope someone else takes action, but for one individual, they know the responsibility rests solely with them to act.

Adolf Eichmann followed the common plea of Nazi perpetrators that he was only “following the orders of others.” Eichman’s defense at the Nuremburg trials of “just following orders,” also known as the “Nuremberg defense,” is a legal defense that claims defendants are not responsible for their crimes because they were “only following orders.”

Standing by doing nothing is a common excuse for onlookers’ noninvolvement in American society. This noninvolvement is relevant to increased violence from the point of view of those who are part of the criminal environment, because they have no concern they will be stopped.

The time for involvement is now or the next time someone may be watching us as the victim.

Next week, I will share the results of Stanley Milgram Conformity Experiment.

Bob Kronick is professor emeritus University of Tennessee. Bob welcomes your comments or questions to rkronick@utk.edu.