Experiment Overview

The report focuses on the essential analysis and evaluation of a video in the context of organizational or social leadership. The video that has been considered for the report is a documentary recording of the Stanford Prison Experiment carried out under the supervision of Dr. Zimbardo. The experiment was initiated to find out the effect of strong authority on the masses and the psychological aspects related to obedience and authority. A group of students were given the roles of prisoners and prison guards for the supposed two week long experiment. Dr. Zimbardo took up the role of a prison supervisors. The experiment subjects were asked to act just like prisoners and guards would do in an actual prison situation. The experiment began to affect the psychological frame of mind of the students. The students began to actually think of themselves as prisoners or guards. Moreover, the guards started to implement severe oppression over the prisoners. The report is focused towards finding out the implications derived from the video. 

The video focused on the experiment where a prison simulation was supposed to be enacted. Dr. Zimbardo took up the role of the prison superintendent. A group of students took up the roles of guards and another group enacted the roles of prisoners. The trait that was exhibited by Dr. Zimbardo was that of and authoritative prison superintendent that wanted to establish his control over the prison inmates. The guards displayed traits of arrogance, abusiveness and many time displayed traits of bullies. Moreover, into the experiment the guards displayed the traits of aggressive dominance. The prisoners were quite vocal and displayed traits of protesting individuals at first but shortly after became very much submissive and strangely obedient. A very unfair power structure was established where the guards became very abusive towards the prisoners and even displayed marked sadistic tendencies. The prisoners lost any form of voice and became totally controlled by the authoritative forces of the supposed superintendent and the prison guards.

The traits displayed by the participants were definitely not ideal considering the given situation of the experiment. The experiment brought forward a negative environment where the people in power tried to establish an unfair dominance over the people that were under their authority. The unfair treatment of the prisoners displayed a darker side of an authoritative environment (Online.seu.edu).It can be said that the participants that imagined themselves as prison authorities should have displayed more responsible behaviors. Thus, Dr. Zimbardo as the prison superintendent should have displayed the traits of an effective leader exhibiting both control and welfare of the prisoners. The guards displaced some of the most negative traits concerning the misuse of power. They should have shown leniency and responsible disposition towards the prisoners. On the contrary they became abusive and grossly mistreated the prisoners. The prisoners should have kept up their protesting nature and should never have become submissive.

Role of Leadership and Power

Power was the biggest factor that was witnessed through the experiment. The perception of power and the role of power towards establishing dominance of one group over the other was essentially seen through the events that occurred. Power provides an individual with increased sense of authority over others. Especially, this happens in regards to the people that are the immediate subordinates of the person in power. This can enhance certain negative aspects of leadership that can lead to the establishment and further growth of autocratic power (Courtney, Telisa, and Battye). The contingency leadership theory states that a leader takes essential decisions with regards to the situations that are present in a given scenario. Moreover, the responses of the subordinates also guide the decisions of a leader to a great extent. Power is greatly associated with the role of leadership. It is the significance of power and the perception of power that provides a leader with the effective force to act accordingly. Autocratic leadership refers to leadership trait that based on the notion of complete control (Fairhurst and Connaughton). In this type of leadership the leader is the supreme authority and makes decisions at his/her discretion. There is little to no participation of the followers in the decision making process.

The perception of power not only affects the leaders. This significantly affects the followers. Some research have found that majority of people can provide unquestioned support to an authoritative leader if he appears to be influential. Most people can follow the instructions of a leader even if it breaches ethics, morality and even humanity at certain times. Thus, people can lose the mentality to question the moral grounds of decision making and blindly follow the leaders under the influence of situational pressure (Tdktech.com).  This was witnessed in the attitudes of the prisoners. After initially protesting against the mistreatment of the guards the prisoners succumbed to submissive attitudes as one of the prisoners were punished. The guards showed autocratic representation of power and the superintendent became the supreme autocratic figure and did little to contain the attitudes of the guards.

The ocean model is used to assess leadership based on five essential traits of personality. They are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism (Fairhurst and Connaughton).

Openness- Concerning openness the superintendent showed very little traits of intellectual capabilities or curiosity. This is mostly because he was unable to control the situation and it went out of hand. He became trapped in his role and became a character in his own experiment. The people playing the role of the guards did show openness to some extent. They began to test their own researches and became highly autocratic (Online.lewisu.edu).  The prisoners will score the least on openness. They were unable to question the autocratic behavior of the guards and lost their intellectual capabilities and were strongly controlled.

Trait Assessment through Ocean Model

Conscientiousness- This trait refers to the responsibilities and self-disciplined attitudes towards ones duties. The superintendent completely failed to control the guard. Hence, he failed in regards to this trait. The guards were completely unable to establish self-discipline towards their work. They became autocratic and abusive towards the prisoners. The prisoners however were strangely able to establish self-discipline and worked according to their daily prison requirements.

Extraversion- The superintendent did not show marked traits of extraversion. Extraversion refers to more energy and sociability. The prison guards remarkably showed high levels of extraversion. This is because they became more dominating over the prisoners (Fairhurst and Connaughton). They were also attention seeking as they regularly bullied the prisoners in order to get their attention and establish control. The prisoners were not united and quite inactive. Hence they will score the lowest in regards to extraversion. The initial prisoners however showed extraversion to a certain extent.

Agreeableness- In the context of the experiment, neither the superintendent nor the guards were agreeable. They were suspicious and antagonistic towards the prisoners from the beginning. They never did anything to help the prisoners. Moreover, the situations also did not had any agreeable position.

Neuroticism- The superintendent Dr. Zimbardo showed neuroticism to a certain extent as he lost confidence and separated the troublesome prisoner. The guards were less neurotic as they were quite confident of their positions. They became more autocratic in their behaviors and continued the attitude. The prisoners were highly neurotic. They broke down to pressure created by the guards. Moreover, a prisoner did not want to leave the experiment thinking that the other prisoners will have a low impression of him.

Dr. Zimbardo, could have been a better leader than he portrayed himself to be throughout the experiment. However, the fact that a certain amount of control was established over the prisoners point that the leadership was effective to a certain extent. In the context of establishing a strong followership Dr. Zimbardo has garnered success through the experiment. This is particularly true in case of the transformation of the prisoners from hurling personal abuses to the guards to becoming silent and conforming prison inmates. Contingency theory refers to an organizational theory in which there is no definite system of establishing leadership in an organization (Bolman and Deal). Leadership is established by understanding a given position and situation and making decisions that suit the exact requirement of leadership in that situation (Fairhurst and Connaughton). Here, the theory was used by Dr. Zimbardo, playing the role of the prison superintendent. When the prisoners began to protest and start a rebellion he took the decision to separate the leader of the rebellion. He showed effective skills towards tackling the rebellion. Making the leader wake up at night and shocking him to an extent that he was not able to gather the mental strength to lead the rebellion. The superintendent used the tool of harassment in order to make the prisoners obey. Fiedler’s contingency theory has been used in the experiment. In this theory leaders use punishments and rewards or any one of them to establish authority. The control held over the situation is also majorly responsible in this case in accordance with the theory.

Contingency Theory and Fiedler’s Contingency Theory

In regards to ethics and values the experiment and the various things that transpired within it can be said to be highly unethical. Dr. Zimbardo wanted to initially establish an ideal prison and wanted to understand if power can be used ethically. However, he developed a significantly different perspective of power when he was able to crush the initial prisoner rebellion. The ethical values related to power changed and a more control oriented attitude towards power was established. The experiment can be said to be unethical as the actual psychological functions of the subjects were challenged. The experiment resulted in the creation of extreme psychological pressure upon the subjects. Dr. Zimbardo himself lost his true identity in the course of the experiment and started to unintentionally behave as a prison superintendent. The guards developed negative psychological tendencies despite being otherwise normal people. The most badly affected were the subjects that took up the role of the prisoners. These people were psychologically much tormented. The most unethical dimension of the experiment was that it totally disregarded humanistic values and made human subjects go through severe levels of psychological stress. Hence, the ethical values were disregarded to a certain extent. It can also be said that at the beginning there were some ethical considerations that were disregarded as the experiment progressed (Otley). The subjects became trapped in the roles that were assigned to them. The experiment can be said to be unethical as unintentional psychological damage was provided to the human subjects. This severely breached the ethical limitations of conducting experiments with humans.

The experiment and its implications helped greatly towards the essential understanding of leadership and the elements of control. The findings of the experiment can be applied to everyday life. The essence of power on both the person in power and the people on whom power is being utilized was effectively understood through the study. The fact that people can respond to certain situations in ways that are otherwise not deemed to be normal can help towards forming better perceptions of situations in the future. The impact of power and the situational aspects that can enhance the negative qualities of being a leader have been noted. This will help towards enhancing the positive leadership traits (Akhtar). However, some essential aspects were understood about how very difficult situations concerning the disobedience of the subordinates can be effectively controlled. The most important lessons learnt were concerning the ethical sides of leadership. As a leader or as a follower the situational characteristics can never be underestimated and a person have to question and stand his ground at all times in situations that begin to demand unethical compliance. The psychological factors that affect leadership and followership need to be kept in mind at corporate environments for better situational analysis.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it can be said that the experiment pointed towards several aspects of leadership that were not known previously. Despite breaching ethical grounds if a number of factors are considered, the experiment did establish very importantly that the reaction of most people to situations can be easily manipulated by power. Leadership and followership can easily breach ethical ground given the strength of the situation that can be established. Historically, some of the worst humanitarian disasters occurred due to this pre-existing characteristic of power. Hence, it was essentially found that the impact of situations can turn the powerful into autocratic leaders and the followers into submissive and psychologically deprived beings. Power can thus be used for making people do things that they might otherwise deem to be unethical.

Akhtar, Reece, et al. “The engageable personality: Personality and trait EI as predictors of work engagement.” Personality and Individual Differences 73 (2015): 44-49.

Courtney, Telisa, and John Battye. “Investigating Processes of Internalisation of Values Through Theatre for Development.” Journal of Social and Political Psychology 6.1 (2018): 27-48.

Fairhurst, Gail T., and Stacey L. Connaughton. “Leadership: A communicative perspective.” Leadership 10.1 (2014): 7-35.

Online.lewisu.edu. “Top 5 Organizational Leadership Skills Leaders Need”. Lewis University Online Degrees, 2018, https://online.lewisu.edu/maol/resources/top-5-organizational-leadership-skills-leaders-need. Accessed 1 Nov 2018.

Online.seu.edu. “What Is Organizational Leadership?”. Southeastern University, 2018, https://online.seu.edu/online-degrees/business/what-is-organizational-leadership/. Accessed 1 Nov 2018.

Tdktech.com. “Key Components Of Organizational Leadership | TDK Technologies”. Tdktech.Com, 2018, https://www.tdktech.com/tech-talks/key-components-of-organizational-leadership. Accessed 1 Nov 2018.