Dressed to oppress

Be careful what you pretend to be

In his novel Mother

Night, Kurt Vonnegut wrote that “we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be”. Nowhere has this been more graphically demonstrated than in a psychological study known as the Stanford Prison Experiment.

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo, a professor at Stanford University, decided to investigate how social environment and the roles we adopt influence our behaviour. He created a mock prison, and advertised for volunteers willing to take on roles of prisoners or guards as part of a twoweek study. He selected 21 students and randomly assigned each to be either a prisoner or a guard.

Guards were issued with uniforms, whistles, handcuffs and sunglasses, while prisoners were stripped of personal possessions, fingerprinted, issued prison clothes and assigned a number as their identification. The prisoners were taken to cells.

Within only a few hours, the guards began to bully, mock, and torment prisoners. The prisoners found themselves taking the rules seriously and obeying guards’ orders to the letter. These behaviours intensified and polarised, the guards became more aggressive, the prisoners more submissive. After 36 hours, one prisoner had to be excused because of uncontrollable crying and shouting. Three more were soon excused.

By the end of the sixth day, Zimbardo was forced to terminate the experiment because of the increasing danger to participants’ psychological and physical wellbeing. In the debriefing, “guards” and “prisoners” alike were shocked at the way they had behaved.

Zimbardo’s experiment demonstrates how powerfully outward appearance can influence behaviour and the judgments we make, about ourselves and others. And of course, the way we appear affects the way other people think and behave towards us, thus reinforcing our “role”. His experiment raises questions about a number of psychological issues, for example, whether the gender differences we assume to be innate are actually learned.

In a study by Carol Seavey and Phyllis Katz at New York University, researchers dressed a baby – the same baby, a girl – as a girl or a boy. When the baby was thought to be a boy, adults offered more masculine toys and described the baby using words such as “strong”. When the baby appeared as a girl, she was offered more feminine toys and was described using words such as “soft”.

The lessons? When you choose how you wish to appear, remember that this may influence the way others evaluate you. And if you judge others by appearance alone, you’re liable to form stereotyped and inaccurate assumptions. Look beyond external trappings, and instead base your evaluation of others on what they say and do.