Quick links within this webpage:
- Introduction to Stanford Prison Experiment: The Musical
- A message from Dr. Philip Zimbardo
- History of the Stanford Prison Experiment
- History of Stanford Prison Experiment: The Musical
So what exactly is Stanford Prison Experiment: The Musical?
Fifty-some years after the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, a participant recounts the background and experience of that event, through first-person narrative and new lyrics to popular songs that were playing on the radio during the week in which it took place.
HISTORICAL DRAMA | ONE-PERSON SHOW | MUSICAL | AUDIO DRAMA
Alternating between retrospective narration and parodies of popular songs, Stanford Prison Experiment: The Musical (SPE:TM) tells the story of the landmark social-psychology study to investigate the behavioral effects of perceived imbalance of power. In this simulation, conducted by a team led by psychology professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University in August 1971, college-age volunteers were assigned randomly to be either “guards” or “prisoners” in a mock prison. Due to deteriorating psychosocial conditions, some prisoners were removed early, and the entire study – planned to run for two weeks – was abandoned after only six days.
(We’ve assembled a playlist of those popular songs, so you can listen to them in their original form.)
The ten-song story-arc begins with well-intentioned scientific curiosity from Phil, who seeks experimental insight into the causation and prevention of troubling social phenomena. Christina appears as the voice of caution & reason, initially quietly but eventually forcefully when drastic intervention becomes needed. However, the focus and build of the storyline are around the prisoners and guards who sink ever more deeply into their respective roles – eventually threatening the identity, individuality, and morality of all involved.
The interstitial narration comes from the perspective of a participant in the actual Experiment. The musical parodies include new lyrics to popular songs that played on Bay-area radio as the Experiment took place: two of the songs were chart-toppers from earlier years, while the other eight were “Top 40” singles during that specific week (August 15-20, 1971). This juxtaposition invites the listener to consider how different a society might be, if the lessons from the Stanford Prison Experiment – which are even more critically relevant today – were as received, retained, and recounted as are the hook lines and catchy refrains of popular music.
SPE:TM is not a documentary. Rather, it is an interpretative retelling that employs composite characters & events: partly to make it easier for listeners to identify characters and to follow the unfolding story, especially in an audio-only format; and partly to allow each song to capture and to explore a distinct stage in the progression of the overall story.
Finally and importantly, SPE:TM is not a parody of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and it is neither a veneration nor a demonization of the individuals who were involved in it. Rather, it aspires to be a respectful, faithful, yet novel messenger of the tremendously important lessons from the Experiment. To that end – and for purposes of social commentary and criticism – SPE:TM parodies the trivial, superficial, and/or egocentric focus of popular songs in general, by re-imagining a few as agents of that higher calling and objective.
A message from Dr. Philip Zimbardo
There is something about songs, about setting words against rhythm and melody that helps us to remember and internalize the message. Songs have “staying power” in our minds because they speak into our hearts as well as to our beliefs.
That is what excites me about Stanford Prison Experiment: The Musical.
This series of songs retells the story of what happened in August 1971, down in a psychology department basement, in a way that is memorable, evocative, and inviting of further inquiry. While the words are new, the music itself comes from songs that were playing on the radio during the week our experiment was taking place – a reminder of how popular culture both reflects and shapes a society’s collective wisdom.
Stanford Prison Experiment: The Musical is a brilliant, creative vision for welcoming a new contemporary audience to explore how situational forces can have a powerful influence over the behavior of individuals, often beginning with someone simply getting “lost in playing his or her assigned role”.
I look forward to multiple interpretations and productions of this masterpiece as part of the discussion of where we want our society to go collectively and how best to get there.
Sincerely,
Dr. Philip Zimbardo
[San Francisco, CA — January 21, 2021]
History of the Stanford Prison Experiment
(Note that August 14th was when the “guards” received their orientation and uniforms; the actual experiment, starting with the “arrests” of the “prisoners”, began on August 15th.)
The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was a social-psychology experiment that attempted to investigate the psychological effects of perceived power, focusing on the struggle between prisoners and prison officers. It was conducted at Stanford University for six days, August 15–20, 1971, by a research group of college students led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. In the study, volunteers were assigned to be either “guards” or “prisoners” (by the flip of a coin) in a mock prison, with Zimbardo himself serving as the superintendent. Several “prisoners” left mid-experiment, and the whole experiment was abandoned after six days. Early reports on experimental results claimed that students quickly embraced their assigned roles, with some guards enforcing authoritarian measures and ultimately subjecting some prisoners to psychological torture, while many prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, by the officers’ requests, actively harassed other prisoners who tried to stop it. [from Wikipedia]
Detailed information (including backstory, timeline, and pictures) can be found on the Stanford Prison Experiment website.
History of Stanford Prison Experiment: The Musical
In the spring of 2015, the pre-release publicity for the film, The Stanford Prison Experiment, renewed general interest in the actual Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). Knowing that I had written many song parodies – new lyrics to familiar music – on a range of topics over the years, a friend challenged me to write one such song about the SPE. I then began some research to refresh my vague recollection of the event.
I encountered many cautionary themes that are commonly extracted from the SPE: man’s capacity for inhumanity to man, savagery lurking just beneath a veneer of civilization, the corrupting nature of power. While I recognized their relevance, I didn’t find them to be particularly unique or insightful, as they are found widely throughout literature and history. Similarly, the SPE seemed to supply more illustration than illumination on the issue of bullying, examples of which already abound in everyday life.
Contemplating how SPE participants became “lost in a role”, I recalled that organized sports were historically understood as disciplined pursuit of excellence in athleticism and character, wherein competitors functioned as complementary teammates with whom to collaborate towards those ends in a spirit of playful camaraderie. However, as unilateral winning eclipses bilateral excellence and fun, opponents are often recast as enemies, and make-believe battles can degenerate into actual physical violence among players, spectators, and officials.
Further insight came from polarity thinking: truth and wisdom can be found on more than one side of a complex issue; the greater good of a bigger picture depends upon complementary contributions from all sides (“both-and”); and over-emphasis of one side over another is counterproductive toward that bigger picture. For example, a correctional facility should provide respect and safety, both for its guards and for its prisoners (respecting both collective and individual needs), since big-picture objectives ostensibly include someday restoring rehabilitated prisoners back into society as healthy, functional, contributing members.
I then examined the SPE through the lens of systems thinking, an approach to understanding and navigating complexity through focus on relationships and interactions within a whole – holism, not reductionism. When participants or advocates in a polarity become too invested in “their side”, “their cause”, their role, each side then views the other as the enemy in an either-or, win-lose battle. Imbalance (real or perceived) on one side often triggers over-compensatory imbalance from another side, and so forth. In the SPE, volunteer prisoners initially took their roles and situation far less seriously than did the volunteer guards. The guards responded harshly, the prisoners then responded to that response, and the cycle escalated destructively as the perceived roles (particularly those of the guards) eclipsed the larger objectives – the means became the ends.
In systems’ language, reinforcing feedback (between the actions of the prisoners, of the guards, and of those conducting the SPE) produced unintended consequences that were counterproductive to the stated purposes. Furthermore, systems that include people are complex adaptive systems that evolve or reconfigure themselves in response to internal and external feedback. Although most human-activity systems begin with some degree of intentional design, even the slightest failure to anticipate and manage such feedback leads to ad-hoc emergence of behaviors and evolution that are unintentional, even counterproductive – thereby producing dysfunctional systems that present dysfunctional situations that influence dysfunctional people.
I began to wonder what social phenomena – even those as subtle as poor sportsmanship – might influence individuals and make it easier for them to get “lost in a role”, easier for polarities to become destructive instead of constructive. Might these eventually escalate tribalism, impasse, and outrage in complex social issues, causing difficult situations to become intractable and unstable situations to become dangerous? Could the Stanford Prison Experiment, its failures, and its lessons inform actionable discourse on a far larger scale?
Suddenly, the implications and applications of what transpired in August of 1971 caught my imagination. What began as an impulsive lark became serious inquiry, then a full-blown project. Eventually, I wrote not one parody song but ten, which together outlined the events of the Stanford Prison Experiment in music. However, that skeletal concept was unable to generate much receptivity or enthusiasm among the people with whom I shared it, so I eventually and regretfully moved on to other endeavors.
Several years later, I decided to revisit the project, initially not as its writer but as its audience. I came to see that the lessons from the SPE reach beyond its own failures, even beyond the problematic structures and systems in culture and in society to which it pointed. Ultimately, the SPE is a cautionary parable to all who would aspire to inform, conform, deform, reform, or transform those problematic structures and systems, lest they forget that they themselves are both parts and products of imperfect structures and metasystems.
Particularly and spectacularly, both critics and crusaders are susceptible to getting “lost in a role” under the influence of one or more intoxicants: unwavering confidence in the nobility of their cause; dehumanization of opponents into foes to be vanquished, even exterminated; and pursuit, acquisition, exercise, and celebration of power to coerce others. Those behind the SPE failed to recognize that they were subject to the same systemic influences and degradation as were those whom they were studying – and tragedy ensued.
With widened vision and renewed enthusiasm, I set out to translate Stanford Prison Experiment: The Musical from paper to this proof of concept: having the songs produced professionally; writing and recording interstitial narration; then assembling all into a one-person, musical, audio drama. It is my sincere hope that, someday, it will be expanded into a modest stage and/or screen presentation – the process of which could be an interdisciplinary, project-based collaboration of a university’s Media, Theatre, Dance, Music, Psychology, Sociology, and possibly even Athletic departments.
Although the Stanford Prison Experiment took place more than fifty years ago, its lessons still can equip and encourage us: to be wary of blanket assessments, convenient characterizations, and simplistic solutions to complex problems; to maintain mindful resistance against getting “lost in a role”; and to seek the truth and wisdom of “the other side” as we pursue shared objectives for desperately needed systemic change in society.
Contact: SPE-TM (at) SugarCreekSolutions (dot) com