Psychology of Imprisonment

1. Psychology of Imprisonment • By: Amanda Campbell, Pioshani Wijesinghe and Chantelle Norris-Lue

2. Key Concepts • Attribution Theory: theory of how people explain other’s behaviour • Dispositional Attribution • Attributing behaviour to the person’s disposition and traits • Situational Attribution • Attributing behaviour to the environment • The Fundamental Attribution Error • The tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences on other’s behaviour

3. The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) Purpose: • To determine what was responsible for the brutality and violence in American Prisons • Was it the dispositional characteristics of the prison population (i.e. sociopathic prisoners and sadistic guards) • Or was it the prison environment itself

4. SPE (continued) Results: • The SPE showed that the same maladaptive behaviours present in real prisons could be replicated in a simulation • The college students were all given psychological tests that showed they were normal healthy males • Therefore, behaviour was role-dependent and not attributable to pre-existing traits

5. The Power of the Situation • Participants had there vision tested prior to participating in a flying simulation exercise • During the simulation, participants took the same test and their vision had improved during the experiment • The situation (needing good vision to be a pilot) impacted the participants response • Video Clip: http://www.learner.org/resources/series138.html#

6. Situational Factors that Influence Behaviour • Rules • Role-playing • Anonymity and Deindividualization • Cognitive dissonance • Social approval

7. Power of Rules to Shape Reality • Rules: • Formal, simplified ways of controlling informal, complex behaviour • Externalized regulations that establish what is acceptable (rewarded) and what is unacceptable (punished) • Essential for effective coordination of social behaviour • Possible screens for dominance by those who make/enforce them

8. Power of Rules to Shape Reality (continued) • Rules in Stanford Prison Experiment: • Arbitrary rules were imposed on and memorized by the prisoners • Guards justified most of the harm they did to the prisoners by referring to rules • Visiting parents abided by the rules imposed on them, ignoring the destructive and hostile environment • Guards counted on prisoners/parents playing the role of law-abiding citizens who respect and rarely challenge authority

9. Anonymity and Deindividualization • Anonymity and Deindividualization: • Separates people from their identity, limiting personal accountability • Enables people to function in an anti-social manner • Grants individuals permission to act in a way they might otherwise disdain

10. Anonymity and Deindividualization • Guards: • Silver reflective sunglasses made them seem remote and impersonal • Uniforms disguised appearance: • Promoted anonymity • Reduced personal accountability • Uniforms created group identity, marginalizing individualism • Were referred to as “correctional officer” only

11. Anonymity and Deindividualization • Prisoners: • Wore standard uniform consisting of smocks • Wore chains around their ankles to symbolize their status • Were referred to by their prison number only • Were dehumanized through: • Loss of personal identity • Loss of control over situation • Uncontrollable Bad Events + Perceived Lack of Control = Learned Helplessness

12. Cognitive Dissonance • An internal state of conflict that results from playing a role publicly that contradicts one’s private beliefs • Is strongest when: • There is a large discrepancy between the individual’s behavior and personal beliefs • There is little justification for the behaviour • Powerfully motivates change either in one’s public behaviour or in one’s private views in an effort to reduce the dissonance

13. Cognitive Dissonance (continued) Methods of reconciling behaviours and beliefs: • Rationalizing • Explains away discrepancies between private morality and actions to the contrary • Convinces people that rational considerations guided their decisions • Allows people to be insensitive to their motivation to maintain consistency in the face of dissonance • Compartmentalization • Allows people to mentally blind conflicting aspects of their beliefs and experiences into separate chambers that prevent interpretation or cross-talk

14. Cognitive Dissonance (continued) Factors influencing dissonance level in guards: • They had volunteered • They were paid a small wage ($2/hr) • They were given minimal direction • They were only required to role-play for 8 hours each day • Their behaviour became worse as the prisoners became more submissive

15. Power of Social Approval • Social Approval • Desire to be accepted, liked, and respected • Desire to seem normal and appropriate • People are often unaware of the effect the need for social approval has on their behaviour • People are primed to conform to even the most foolish and outlandish behaviours if others tell them is the right way to act

16. Power of Social Approval (continued) • The guards developed their own set of norms that demanded the dehumanization of prisoners • Pressure to conform was felt by all of the guards • Good guard  Group deviant outside rewarding social circle • Tough guard  Group leader at centre of rewarding social circle

17. When Role-Playing Turns to Reality • Role Behaviour: • Starts out as a role requirement distinct from individual • Can become internalized in the presence of situational factors previously discussed

18. When Role-Playing Turn to Reality (continued) • Participants had experiences that went beyond the surface demand of role-playing and penetrated the deep structure of the psychology of imprisonment Guards: • Treated prisoners worse when they thought no one was watching • Became increasingly abusive despite the prisoners nonresistance and obvious signs of deterioration • Did not tell jokes, laugh, or reveal personal emotions to their peers  could have distanced themselves from their role but chose not to do so

19. When Role-Playing Turn to Reality (continued) Prisoners: • Did not attempt to socialize even when alone • Obsessed about their current situation instead of talking about other things to try and distance themselves from it Zimbardo: • Lost himself in his role as prison superintendent • Believed that his full adoption of role made prison work  blinded him • Failed to appreciate the need to terminate the experiment after the second prisoner went “over the edge”

20. When Role-Playing Turns to Reality (continued) • Participants initially felt awkward in new roles, but slipped into them once positions of superior and subordinate became clear • Roles were not clearly defined  participants based them on previous perceptions gained from: • Observations • Experiences (i.e. bosses, teachers) • Culture (i.e. movie accounts of prison life)

21. Imprisonment in America: • Questions raised about conditions of prisons • Overcrowding a dominant problem • Determinate sentencing - - >greater increase in prison population

22. Overcrowding in Canadian Prisons • Between 1991 & 1996 the incarceration rate rose about 30% • Why is incarceration over used? • Incarceration is seen as the norm • The best “public protection” • Over incarceration of Aboriginal offenders • Declining numbers of offenders on full and day parole

23. A look at special populations: Young/Youth Offenders: • JDA (Juvenile Delinquent Act) of 1908 • 7-16 years of age • Distinction between youth and adult • Punishment must be consistent with typical parental discipline of child

24. Youth /Young Offenders: • YOA (Young Offender’s Act) • Replaced JDA in 1984 • Youth held accountable for actions • YOA permitted diversion • Criticisms: • serious violent offences not given adequate punishment • Age or responsibility changed from 11-12 years

25. Which brings us to today: • YCJA (The Youth Criminal Justice Act): 2003 • Objectives of YCJA: • Prevent youth crime • Provide meaningful consequences and encourage responsibility of behaviour • Improve rehabilitation and integration of youth into the community

26. Increased sentencing options: • Judges have the options of providing some of the following sentences: • Reprimand • An intensive support and supervision order • Deferred custody and supervision order • Intensive rehabilitative custody and supervision order

27. Aboriginal Offenders: • Aboriginal offenders account for a bout 3% of the general population in Canada but make up approximately 17% of the federal prison inmates • Overrepresentation seen across Canada (e.g. in Atlantic and Prairie populations) • What accounts for this overrepresentation?

28. Alternatives to incarceration: Correctional Programs: • Culture specific correctional programs • Spiritual practices • Substance abuse treatment • Aboriginal literacy classes • Cultural skills • Sweat lodge ceremonies and family violence programs • Federal Government adjustments: Bill C-41

29. Healing Lodges: • Section 81 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act • The Okimaw Ohci healing lodge

30. Lessons from SPE: Showed the powerfulness and damaging situations of prisons The power of social contexts If situations matter and how people can be transformed by them Ability to predict individual behaviours Institutional settings can develop a life of their own

31. Revisiting the Stanford prison Experiment: Could the Participant Self-Selection Have Led to the Cruelty? • Carnahan and McFarland discuss the issue of self-selection and the personality traits that both contribute towards volunteering and not volunteering for a psychological prison study • Interactionism: behaviour is a product of the interaction of the person and the situation • Personal dispositions exert less influence on behaviour for those in “strong” situations, situations that place powerful constraints on behaviour • Individuals respond to situations proactively as well as reactively by choosing to place themselves in some situations and to avoid others • Emmons, Diener, and Larsen found that patterns of choice and avoidance are predictable from personality trait scores • Group polarization-those who self-select for any situation are likely attuned to its permitted behaviours and requirements, and often reinforce one another in the direction of their common inclinations

32. Revisiting the Stanford prison Experiment: Could the Participant Self-Selection Have Led to the Cruelty?Continued… • Individuals selectively volunteer for psychological studies that appear to fit their personalities • If the traits that draw them to the study are associated with abusive behaviour, the abuse in the simulation may have been due: • To the combination of the personal qualities of the volunteers with the force of the situation • The mutual reinforcement of the other volunteers, and not just the situation alone.

33. Revisiting the Stanford prison Experiment: Could the Participant Self-Selection Have Led to the Cruelty?Continued… • Volunteering appeared likely to be positively related to the following five qualities: • Aggression • Right-Wing Authoritarianism • Machiavellianism • Narcissism • Social Dominance Orientation • Volunteering appeared likely to be negatively related with the following qualities: • Dispositional Empathy • Altruism

34. The Experiment • Procedure: • There were two groups, one was the control group that was randomly selected to receive the prison study ad and the second group received the control ad Male college students needed for a psychological study of prison life. $70 per day for 1-2 weeks beginning May 17th. For further information and applications, e-mail: [e-mail address]. *the ad for the control group omitted the phrase “of prison life” • Each participant who responded to the ad was sent a questionnaire via e-mail that contained the seven personality scales • They were told that regardless of whether they were asked to participate in the study, by completing the application materials would place them in a drawing to win one of six $50 prizes.

35. Results: • Volunteers for the psychological study of prison life were significantly higher than volunteers for the psychological study in aggressiveness, authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and social dominance and significantly lower on dispositional empathy and altruism

36. Self-Presentation • Carnahan and McFarland suggest that self-presentation could have produced the significant differences on the personality scales. • They suggest that participants may have tried to present themselves as psychologically fit for either the prison study or the psychological study • This self-presentation hypothesis was tested using a role-playing study using a separate group of students • 26 men and 54 women read the following same ad as the original study with this additional information: Imagine that you have read the following advertisement: (original ad here) You have e-mailed your interest in participating. In a return e-mail, you are told that to be selected for this study you first need to complete a questionnaire. Please respond to each statement as you would if you were applying for this study. *they were being told to respond as though they were a male responding to the ad

37. Results • Two other groups were tested, one was given the same ad as the first group but with the words “prison life”, and the third group was simply given the questionnaire without being told to imagine a situation • Overall, men were significantly higher than women in social dominance, and authoritarianism, and were lower in empathy. • The differences in personality traits between the prison group and the control group were not seen to be attributable to self-presentation

38. Revisiting the Stanford prison Experiment: Could the Participant Self-Selection Have Led to the Cruelty?Continued… Discussion • Carnahan and McFarland discussed whether the SPE could be replicated in 2004, but argued that social concerns have changed significantly since 1971 and that factors than influence volunteering have changed as well. • They also argue that American society is far more punitive today

39. On the ethics of intervention in human psychological research: With special reference to the Stanford prisonexperiment • Ethical concerns: • Treatment of participants • The ends don’t justify the means • No new, worthwhile knowledge was gained from the study; which in turn does not justify harming the volunteers • Zimbardo was too involved in the study which created serious bias and lack of judgment • In 1973 the APA concluded that all existing ethical guidelines had been followed. • In The Lucifer Effect, Professor Zimbardo wrote: "I was guilty of the sin of omission -- the evil of inaction -- of not providing adequate oversight and surveillance when it was required... the findings came at the expense of human suffering. I am sorry for that and to this day apologize for contributing to this inhumanity." (pp. 181, 235) • no lasting trauma to participants.

40. The BBC Prison Study • 2001, Reicher and Haslam conducted an 8 day prison simulation • Replicated many details of the SPE, but it was intended to test hypotheses that came from social identity theory and self-categorization theory • One key difference was that in one condition prisoners and guards were told that one prisoner could be promoted to a guard on the 3rd day of the study • They developed ingroup identification, joint group actions against the guards and trust that other prisoners would support the group after they could no longer become a guard • Guards never became abusive

41. Self-Categorization Theory • Self-Categorization theory • Turner,Oakes, Haslam, & McGarty (1994)- people do notautomatically act in terms of group memberships (or roles) ascribed by others • Whether or not they do so depends if they internalize these memberships aspart of the self-concept • This act of self-definition interms of group membership (social identification) forms the psychological basis ofgroup behaviour and that the character of such behaviour dependson the norms,values, and understandings that characterize the particular category in question • Social Categorization Schemas-Duckitt (2001) • Motivation to avoid threatening social situations for values and in-group norms • underlie a schema to consider out-groups as deviant, bad, and as threatening to conventional rules • Linked to a motivation for competition and social dominance • underlie a schema to consider out-groups along an inferior-superior dimension

42. Guard Abuse at Abu Ghraib • General interpretation of events was that the Americans were normal young men and women who were seduced to behave as they did by the power of the prison situation • Situationist account used to explain acts performed by the soldiers • Major General Antonio Taguba focused on the personalities of the abusers and noted that some individuals are likely to be drawn to these types of situations • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp5f5y0fdC4&feature=related

43. Waving the Flag: National Symbolism, SocialIdentity, and Political Engagement • Schatz & Lavine (2007) • Expressions of national sentiment are directed toward national symbols rather than to the nation itself and that such symbolism is infused with unique psychological meaning and political import • National symbols and ritualistic-ceremonial activities arouse powerful, emotional expressions of national sentiment primarily because they uniquely accentuate citizens’ identification as national members • Group symbols direct the identification process and accentuate reflexive awareness of group identity. • National symbols essentialize the group as a transcendent psychological entity • It connects the individual to larger meaning and purpose, superceding the individual’s personal existence and inevitable mortality, thereby reducing anxiety • Provide individualswith social identity and vehicles for identity expression

44. An Exploratory Investigation into Institutional Mistreatment • Data collected from files of a large southwesternstate agency that investigates allegations of mistreatment ofcustody juveniles in state-operated facilities or juveniles who are in thecustody of the state and placed in private facilities. • Based on 609 cases on juveniles residing in mental health, child welfare and juvenilecorrectional institutions • Important to describe victim characteristics which are associatedwith mistreatment in institutions as well as types of mistreatment occurringin institutional settings. • National incidence of institutional mistreatmentis not known due, in part, to a lackof uniform definitions of mistreatment. • Most states have not developedseparate programs for monitoring care in institutions and investigationsmay be conducted by staff with little or no training to understand thisproblem in institutional settings.

45. Inappropriate Abuse Sex Abuse Neglect Mean Age of Victim 15 14.5 15 14 Age categories (years) 2.1 Thru 13.9 (24.5%) 23.5% (77) 26.6% (34) 23.1% (9) 28.7% (27) 14.0 Thru 15.5 (25.4%) 23.9% (78) 28.1% (36) 17.9% (7) 30.9% (29) 15.6 Thru 16.5 (23.9%) 24.5% (80) 21.2% (27) 35.9% (14) 20.2 (19) 16.6 Thru 18.0 (25.9%) 28.1% (92) 24.2% (3 1) 23.1% (9) 20.2 (19) Sex Of Victim Male (79%) 83.8% (280) 88.6% (117) 27.5% (11) 64.8% (57) Female (21%) 16.2% (54) 11.4% (15) 72.5% (29) 35.2% (31) Race Of Victim White (66%) 61.1% (193) 63.0% (80) 80.0% (28) 84.7% (61) Nonwhite (34%) 38.9% (123) 37.0% (47) 20.0% (7) 15.3% (11) Did Injury Occur? Yes (34%) 35.7% (111) 32.8% (40) 7.4% (2) 33.7% (29) No (66%) 64.3% (200) 67.2% (82) 92.6% (25) 66.3% (57) Victim Characteristics For Allegations Of Mistreatment

46. The Link Between RecurrentMaltreatment and Offending Behaviour • Hamilton, Falshaw, & Browne (2002) looked at recurrent maltreatment and offending behaviour. • Suggest other causes for violent behaviour other than personality • Information was collected on 79 young people (60 males, 19 females) who were resident within a secure centre for young people between December 1994and May 1996. • (N = 77), 20.8% had experienced no maltreatment, 5.2% had experienced a single incident (singlevictimisation), and 1.3% a single incident of abuse by multiple perpetrators(multiple victimisation). • 11.7% of the sample were repeat victims of abuse (i.e., incidents ofabuse by the same person), 6.5% were revictimised (i.e., incidents ofabuse by different perpetrators), and more than half (54.5%) of the young peoplehad suffered both repeat and revictimisation during theirchildhood. • Studies have proposed that experiencing a particular typeof maltreatment will be most likely to result in the exhibition of the same kind ofoffending behaviour. • Dutton and Hart (1992) suggested that thosewith a history of physical abuse will be more likely to progress to violentoffending in comparison to other types of criminal activity.

47. The Effects of Education as an Institution • Meyer (1977)-Education is seen as an allocating institution-operating under societal rules which allow the schools to directly confer success and failure in society quite apart from any socializing effects • Allocation Theory- education both constructs and alters roles in society and and authoritatively allocates personnel to these roles • Modern educational systems involve large-scale public classification systems defining new roles for both elites and members • Newly defined persons are expected to act, and be treated by others in specific ways • Meyer states that education is a system of of institutionalized rites transforming social roles through powerful initiation ceremonies and as an agent transforming society by creating new classes of personnel with new types of authoritative knowledge

48. Between Deference and Distinction:Interaction Ritual Through Symbolic Power in an EducationalInstitution • Metz(1978, 1986) authority flows from a“moral order” to which everyone owes allegiance.In this view, super-ordinates gain theright to command (“moral authority”) by followingthe moral order • Goffman (1967) • Deference • Demeanor • Hallett (2007)-studied social order, symbolic power and deference in an elementary school. • He looks at the interactional-institutional link • He observed the faculty for 2 years • Looked at the different types of power that exist within schools

49. Between Deference and Distinction:Interaction Ritual Through Symbolic Power in an EducationalInstitution • Negotiated Order approach- examines how social order is generated by and generates social interaction (or negotiations) • critics argue that the negotiated order approach slights social structure • Hallett(2007)- the approach examines how interactions are enabled and constrained by distal social pressures (the “structural context”), local social pressures (the “organizational context”), and the features of the immediate situation (the “negotiation context) • Institutional theory- holds that people are the “carriers” of larger institutional forces • Assumes a close correspondence between institutional forces (like accountability reforms) and local action. • This view has been criticized for depicting people as institutional “dopes” • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYJJEnTn9P0&feature=user