Stanford Prison Experiment : Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience

Conformity, compliance, and obedience are all founded on the concepts of social influence. Social influence in this context can be defined as the influence of other people. Conformity is the changes in behavior or actions that are caused or influenced by other people (Dolinski, 2015). Conformity is confined mainly to the changes in behavior influenced by other people but not the internal concepts such as belief systems and attitudes. A good example of conformity in the Stanford experiment is the staging of a rebellion for the prisoners. The prisoners try to conform to a given behavior in an attempt to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome. Compliance, on the other hand, refers to a requested change in behavior by another person or a group (Dolinski, 2015). It is notable that the person can decide to decline or refuse to act in the requested way. For example, the guards in the prison experiment were forced to work out a rewards and punishment system to remedy the growing rebellion. This shows some level of compliance. In the same context, the prisoners are required to keep the prison rules; whether they follow these rules or not are their choice however good behavior is requested. Lastly, there is obedience which refers to a change in behavior due to an order by another person. These changes are not presented as an option (Dolinski, 2015). A good example of obedience is needed for prisoners such as the Stanford Prison experiment prisoners to behave or change their behaviors to comply with the prison environment.

Persuasion is always a difficult activity and task. This is because convincing a group of to comply or agree to requests or a given viewpoint is not only a challenge but sometimes impossible depending on the belief systems of these people. In my opinion compliance techniques offer a critical solution to persuasion dilemmas. A good example of a compliance technique is the “foot-in-the-door technique which involves making a smaller request that a person is likely to agree with than making a larger request”. The “rationale behind this technique is that a “yes” in the first request can compel a yes in the second request”. However, this technique is based on deception and trickery (Kulig et al., 2017). For example, a salesman who asks a client if they mind telling them who provides water to their region before asking them to switch to their company. The first request tricks the client into thinking that they are doing the salesman a favor. In the same context, there is another technique called the “door-in-the-face technique” where one makes an unreasonable request so that the respondent will refuse. For example in a car sales business where a salesman offers to buy a car from a seller in a trade in the transaction by offering the client a small fraction of the actual car’s worth (Kulig et al., 2017). The client will refuse and revert to the original arrangement of buying a new car at a reasonable price set by the salesman. The problem with these techniques is that they are never win-win situations for both parties.

There are several ethical and moral implications of compliance techniques based on the methodologies used. This is because compliance requires the use of deception and techniques that do not demand honest opinions or willingness. Majority of the compliance techniques trick the respondents into situations where they can only get out by doing what is needed. In other words, they confine an individual it limits or cages that only benefit the asking party. It is also notable that as much as the requests are planned, the respondent is treated unfairly since they do not get time to plan their answers. Their answers to these requests are left at the mercy of their instincts. This form of trickery can affect the abilities of individuals to give their honest opinion about an issue (Dolinski, 2015).

The study simulating the prison environment or the Stanford prison experiment as it is popularly known did not follow the required ethical guidelines. Firstly Zambardo the psychologist behind the experiment did not receive fully informed consent considering that he did not know what would happen during the experiment.

Secondly, all prisoners did not consent to get arrested in their homes. This is based on the fact that the approval from the police was given minutes to the participants agreeing to participate. The arrests came as a surprise. This was a breach of the contract that the participants had all signed (Dolinski, 2015).

Most importantly the prisoners who assumed the roles of prisoners were not fully “protected or shielded from possible psychological harm, incidents of humiliation and distress”. For instance, “a prisoner was released after 36 hours due to depression and uncontrollable behavior of anger and crying” (Kulig et al., 2017). As much as such behaviors could not have been predicted from the outset, it is still reasonable to infer that some of the behaviors were predictable. In the same context, measures and safeguards should have been in place to ensure that such participants were released earlier (Kulig et al., 2017).

In conclusion, it is difficult to justify that the suffering of the prisoners to trade for the knowledge gained is a stable argument. This is because as much as the knowledge is useful, human suffering that could be prevented was experienced. In my opinion, the suffering was not worth the knowledge considering that the simulation could have been done in a controlled environment.

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