stanford prison experiment legal action

Demonstrating the Power of Social Situations via a Simulated Prison Experiment

A person-centered analysis of human behavior attributes most behavior change, in positive or negative directions, to internal, dispositional features of individuals. The factors commonly believed to direct behavior are to be found in the operation of genes, temperament, personality traits, personal pathologies and virtues. A situation-centered approach, in contrast, focuses on factors external to the person, to the behavioral context in which individuals are functioning. Although human behavior is almost always a function of the interaction of person and situation, social psychologists have called attention to the attributional biases in much of psychology and among the general public that overestimates the importance of dispositional factors while underestimating situational factors. This "fundamental attribution error" they argue, leads to a misrepresentation of both causal determinants and means for modifying undesirable behavior patterns. Research by social psychologist Stanley Milgram, PhD, (1974; see also Blass, 1999) was one of the earliest demonstrations of the extent to which a large sample of ordinary American citizens could be led to blindly obey unjust authority in delivering extreme levels of shock to an innocent "victim."

The Stanford Prison Experiment extended that analysis to demonstrate the surprisingly profound impact of institutional forces on the behavior of normal, healthy participants. Philip Zimbardo, PhD, and his research team of Craig Haney, Curtis Banks, David Jaffe, and ex convict consultant, Carlo Prescott (Zimbardo, Haney, Banks, & Jaffe, 1973) designed a study that separated the usual dispositional factors among correctional personnel and prisoners from the situational factors that characterize many prisons. They wanted to determine what prison-like settings bring out in people that are not confounded by what people bring into prisons. They sought to discover to what extent the violence and anti-social behaviors often found in prisons can be traced to the "bad apples" that go into prisons or to the "bad barrels" (the prisons themselves) that can corrupt behavior of even ordinary, good people.

The study was conducted this way: College students from all over the United States who answered a city newspaper ad for participants in a study of prison life were personally interviewed, given a battery of personality tests, and completed background surveys that enabled the researchers to pre-select only those who were mentally and physically healthy, normal and well adjusted. They were randomly assigned to role-play either prisoners or guards in the simulated prison setting constructed in the basement of Stanford University's Psychology Department. The prison setting was designed as functional simulation of the central features present in the psychology of imprisonment (Zimbardo, Maslach, & Haney, 1999). Read a full description of the methodology, chronology of daily events and transformations of human character that were revealed.

The major results of the study can be summarized as: many of the normal, healthy mock prisoners suffered such intense emotional stress reactions that they had to be released in a matter of days; most of the other prisoners acted like zombies totally obeying the demeaning orders of the guards; the distress of the prisoners was caused by their sense of powerlessness induced by the guards who began acting in cruel, dehumanizing and even sadistic ways. The study was terminated prematurely because it was getting out of control in the extent of degrading actions being perpetrated by the guards against the prisoners - all of whom had been normal, healthy, ordinary young college students less than a week before.

Significance

Practical application.

The lessons of the Stanford Prison Experiment have gone well beyond the classroom (Haney & Zimbardo, 1998). Zimbardo was invited to give testimony to a Congressional Committee investigating the causes of prison riots (Zimbardo, 1971), and to a Senate Judiciary Committee on crime and prisons focused on detention of juveniles (Zimbardo, 1974). Its chair, Senator Birch Bayh, prepared a new law for federal prisons requiring juveniles in pre-trial detention to be housed separately from adult inmates (to prevent their being abused), based on the abuse reported in the Stanford Prison Experiment of its juveniles in the pre-trial detention facility of the Stanford jail.

A video documentary of the study, "Quiet Rage: the Stanford Prison Experiment," has been used extensively by many agencies within the civilian and military criminal justice system, as well as in shelters for abused women. It is also used to educate role-playing military interrogators in the Navy SEAR program (SURVIVAL, EVASION, and RESISTANCE) on the potential dangers of abusing their power against others who role-playing pretend spies and terrorists (Zimbardo, Personal communication, fall, 2003, Annapolis Naval College psychology staff).

The eerily direct parallels between the sadistic acts perpetrator by the Stanford Prison Experiment guard and the Abu Ghraib Prison guards, as well as the conclusions about situational forces dominating dispositional aspects of the guards' abusive behavior have propelled this research into the national dialogue. It is seen as a relevant contribution to understanding the multiple situational causes of such aberrant behavior. The situational analysis of the Stanford Prison Experiment redirects the search for blame from an exclusive focus on the character of an alleged "few bad apples" to systemic abuses that were inherent in the "bad barrel" of that corrupting prison environment.

Cited Research

Blass, T. (Ed.) ( 1999). Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Haney, C. & Zimbardo, P.G., (1998). The Past and Future of U.S. Prison Policy. Twenty-Five Years After the Stanford Prison Experiment. American Psychologist, Vol. 53, No. 7, pp. 709-727.

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to Authority. New York: Harper & Row.

Zimbardo, P. G. (1971). The power and pathology of imprisonment. Congressional Record. (Serial No. 15, October 25, 1971). Hearings before Subcommittee No. 3, of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Ninety-Second Congress, First Session on Corrections, Part II, Prisons, Prison Reform and Prisoner's Rights: California. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Zimbardo, P. G. (1974). The detention and jailing of juveniles (Hearings before U. S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, 10, 11, 17, September, 1973). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 141-161.

Zimbardo, P. G., Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Jaffe, D. (1973, April 8). The mind is a formidable jailer: A Pirandellian prison. The New York Times Magazine, Section 6, pp. 38, ff.

Zimbardo, P. G., Maslach, C., & Haney, C. (1999). Reflections on the Stanford Prison Experiment: Genesis, transformations, consequences. In T. Blass (Ed.), Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm. (pp. 193-237). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

American Psychological Association, June 8, 2004

Stanford Prison Experiment: Zimbardo’s Famous Study

Saul McLeod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

• The experiment was conducted in 1971 by psychologist Philip Zimbardo to examine situational forces versus dispositions in human behavior.
• 24 young, healthy, psychologically normal men were randomly assigned to be “prisoners” or “guards” in a simulated prison environment.
• The experiment had to be terminated after only 6 days due to the extreme, pathological behavior emerging in both groups. The situational forces overwhelmed the dispositions of the participants.
• Pacifist young men assigned as guards began behaving sadistically, inflicting humiliation and suffering on the prisoners. Prisoners became blindly obedient and allowed themselves to be dehumanized.
• The principal investigator, Zimbardo, was also transformed into a rigid authority figure as the Prison Superintendent.
• The experiment demonstrated the power of situations to alter human behavior dramatically. Even good, normal people can do evil things when situational forces push them in that direction.

Zimbardo and his colleagues (1973) were interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards (i.e., dispositional) or had more to do with the prison environment (i.e., situational).

For example, prisoners and guards may have personalities that make conflict inevitable, with prisoners lacking respect for law and order and guards being domineering and aggressive.

Alternatively, prisoners and guards may behave in a hostile manner due to the rigid power structure of the social environment in prisons.

Zimbardo predicted the situation made people act the way they do rather than their disposition (personality).

To study people’s roles in prison situations, Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison.

He advertised asking for volunteers to participate in a study of the psychological effects of prison life.

The 75 applicants who answered the ad were given diagnostic interviews and personality tests to eliminate candidates with psychological problems, medical disabilities, or a history of crime or drug abuse.

24 men judged to be the most physically & mentally stable, the most mature, & the least involved in antisocial behaviors were chosen to participate.

The participants did not know each other prior to the study and were paid $15 per day to take part in the experiment.

Participants were randomly assigned to either the role of prisoner or guard in a simulated prison environment. There were two reserves, and one dropped out, finally leaving ten prisoners and 11 guards.

Prisoners were treated like every other criminal, being arrested at their own homes, without warning, and taken to the local police station. They were fingerprinted, photographed and ‘booked.’

Then they were blindfolded and driven to the psychology department of Stanford University, where Zimbardo had had the basement set out as a prison, with barred doors and windows, bare walls and small cells. Here the deindividuation process began.

When the prisoners arrived at the prison they were stripped naked, deloused, had all their personal possessions removed and locked away, and were given prison clothes and bedding. They were issued a uniform, and referred to by their number only.

The use of ID numbers was a way to make prisoners feel anonymous. Each prisoner had to be called only by his ID number and could only refer to himself and the other prisoners by number.

Their clothes comprised a smock with their number written on it, but no underclothes. They also had a tight nylon cap to cover their hair, and a locked chain around one ankle.

All guards were dressed in identical uniforms of khaki, and they carried a whistle around their neck and a billy club borrowed from the police. Guards also wore special sunglasses, to make eye contact with prisoners impossible.

Three guards worked shifts of eight hours each (the other guards remained on call). Guards were instructed to do whatever they thought was necessary to maintain law and order in the prison and to command the respect of the prisoners. No physical violence was permitted.

Zimbardo observed the behavior of the prisoners and guards (as a researcher), and also acted as a prison warden.

Within a very short time both guards and prisoners were settling into their new roles, with the guards adopting theirs quickly and easily.

Asserting Authority

Within hours of beginning the experiment, some guards began to harass prisoners. At 2:30 A.M. prisoners were awakened from sleep by blasting whistles for the first of many “counts.”

The counts served as a way to familiarize the prisoners with their numbers. More importantly, they provided a regular occasion for the guards to exercise control over the prisoners.

The prisoners soon adopted prisoner-like behavior too. They talked about prison issues a great deal of the time. They ‘told tales’ on each other to the guards.

They started taking the prison rules very seriously, as though they were there for the prisoners’ benefit and infringement would spell disaster for all of them. Some even began siding with the guards against prisoners who did not obey the rules.

Physical Punishment

The prisoners were taunted with insults and petty orders, they were given pointless and boring tasks to accomplish, and they were generally dehumanized.

Push-ups were a common form of physical punishment imposed by the guards. One of the guards stepped on the prisoners” backs while they did push-ups, or made other prisoners sit on the backs of fellow prisoners doing their push-ups.

Asserting Independence

Because the first day passed without incident, the guards were surprised and totally unprepared for the rebellion which broke out on the morning of the second day.

During the second day of the experiment, the prisoners removed their stocking caps, ripped off their numbers, and barricaded themselves inside the cells by putting their beds against the door.

The guards called in reinforcements. The three guards who were waiting on stand-by duty came in and the night shift guards voluntarily remained on duty.

Putting Down the Rebellion

The guards retaliated by using a fire extinguisher which shot a stream of skin-chilling carbon dioxide, and they forced the prisoners away from the doors. Next, the guards broke into each cell, stripped the prisoners naked and took the beds out.

The ringleaders of the prisoner rebellion were placed into solitary confinement. After this, the guards generally began to harass and intimidate the prisoners.

Special Privileges

One of the three cells was designated as a “privilege cell.” The three prisoners least involved in the rebellion were given special privileges. The guards gave them back their uniforms and beds and allowed them to wash their hair and brush their teeth.

Privileged prisoners also got to eat special food in the presence of the other prisoners who had temporarily lost the privilege of eating. The effect was to break the solidarity among prisoners.

Consequences of the Rebellion

Over the next few days, the relationships between the guards and the prisoners changed, with a change in one leading to a change in the other. Remember that the guards were firmly in control and the prisoners were totally dependent on them.

As the prisoners became more dependent, the guards became more derisive towards them. They held the prisoners in contempt and let the prisoners know it. As the guards’ contempt for them grew, the prisoners became more submissive.

As the prisoners became more submissive, the guards became more aggressive and assertive. They demanded ever greater obedience from the prisoners. The prisoners were dependent on the guards for everything, so tried to find ways to please the guards, such as telling tales on fellow prisoners.

Prisoner #8612

Less than 36 hours into the experiment, Prisoner #8612 began suffering from acute emotional disturbance, disorganized thinking, uncontrollable crying, and rage.

After a meeting with the guards where they told him he was weak, but offered him “informant” status, #8612 returned to the other prisoners and said “You can”t leave. You can’t quit.”

Soon #8612 “began to act ‘crazy,’ to scream, to curse, to go into a rage that seemed out of control.” It wasn’t until this point that the psychologists realized they had to let him out.

A Visit from Parents

The next day, the guards held a visiting hour for parents and friends. They were worried that when the parents saw the state of the jail, they might insist on taking their sons home. Guards washed the prisoners, had them clean and polish their cells, fed them a big dinner and played music on the intercom.

After the visit, rumors spread of a mass escape plan. Afraid that they would lose the prisoners, the guards and experimenters tried to enlist help and facilities of the Palo Alto police department.

The guards again escalated the level of harassment, forcing them to do menial, repetitive work such as cleaning toilets with their bare hands.

Catholic Priest

Zimbardo invited a Catholic priest who had been a prison chaplain to evaluate how realistic our prison situation was. Half of the prisoners introduced themselves by their number rather than name.

The chaplain interviewed each prisoner individually. The priest told them the only way they would get out was with the help of a lawyer.

Prisoner #819

Eventually, while talking to the priest, #819 broke down and began to cry hysterically, just like two previously released prisoners had.

The psychologists removed the chain from his foot, the cap off his head, and told him to go and rest in a room that was adjacent to the prison yard. They told him they would get him some food and then take him to see a doctor.

While this was going on, one of the guards lined up the other prisoners and had them chant aloud:

“Prisoner #819 is a bad prisoner. Because of what Prisoner #819 did, my cell is a mess, Mr. Correctional Officer.”

The psychologists realized #819 could hear the chanting and went back into the room where they found him sobbing uncontrollably. The psychologists tried to get him to agree to leave the experiment, but he said he could not leave because the others had labeled him a bad prisoner.

Back to Reality

At that point, Zimbardo said, “Listen, you are not #819. You are [his name], and my name is Dr. Zimbardo. I am a psychologist, not a prison superintendent, and this is not a real prison. This is just an experiment, and those are students, not prisoners, just like you. Let’s go.”

He stopped crying suddenly, looked up and replied, “Okay, let’s go,“ as if nothing had been wrong.

An End to the Experiment

Zimbardo (1973) had intended that the experiment should run for two weeks, but on the sixth day, it was terminated, due to the emotional breakdowns of prisoners, and excessive aggression of the guards.

Christina Maslach, a recent Stanford Ph.D. brought in to conduct interviews with the guards and prisoners, strongly objected when she saw the prisoners being abused by the guards.

Filled with outrage, she said, “It’s terrible what you are doing to these boys!” Out of 50 or more outsiders who had seen our prison, she was the only one who ever questioned its morality.

Zimbardo (2008) later noted, “It wasn’t until much later that I realized how far into my prison role I was at that point — that I was thinking like a prison superintendent rather than a research psychologist.“

This led him to prioritize maintaining the experiment’s structure over the well-being and ethics involved, thereby highlighting the blurring of roles and the profound impact of the situation on human behavior.

Here’s a quote that illustrates how Philip Zimbardo, initially the principal investigator, became deeply immersed in his role as the “Stanford Prison Superintendent (April 19, 2011):

“By the third day, when the second prisoner broke down, I had already slipped into or been transformed into the role of “Stanford Prison Superintendent.” And in that role, I was no longer the principal investigator, worried about ethics. When a prisoner broke down, what was my job? It was to replace him with somebody on our standby list. And that’s what I did. There was a weakness in the study in not separating those two roles. I should only have been the principal investigator, in charge of two graduate students and one undergraduate.”

According to Zimbardo and his colleagues, the Stanford Prison Experiment revealed how people will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles are as strongly stereotyped as those of the prison guards.

Because the guards were placed in a position of authority, they began to act in ways they would not usually behave in their normal lives.

The “prison” environment was an important factor in creating the guards’ brutal behavior (none of the participants who acted as guards showed sadistic tendencies before the study).

Therefore, the findings support the situational explanation of behavior rather than the dispositional one.

Zimbardo proposed that two processes can explain the prisoner’s “final submission.”

Deindividuation may explain the behavior of the participants; especially the guards. This is a state when you become so immersed in the norms of the group that you lose your sense of identity and personal responsibility.

The guards may have been so sadistic because they did not feel what happened was down to them personally – it was a group norm. They also may have lost their sense of personal identity because of the uniform they wore.

Also, learned helplessness could explain the prisoner’s submission to the guards. The prisoners learned that whatever they did had little effect on what happened to them. In the mock prison the unpredictable decisions of the guards led the prisoners to give up responding.

After the prison experiment was terminated, Zimbardo interviewed the participants. Here’s an excerpt:

‘Most of the participants said they had felt involved and committed. The research had felt “real” to them. One guard said, “I was surprised at myself. I made them call each other names and clean the toilets out with their bare hands. I practically considered the prisoners cattle and I kept thinking I had to watch out for them in case they tried something.” Another guard said “Acting authoritatively can be fun. Power can be a great pleasure.” And another: “… during the inspection I went to Cell Two to mess up a bed which a prisoner had just made and he grabbed me, screaming that he had just made it and that he was not going to let me mess it up. He grabbed me by the throat and although he was laughing I was pretty scared. I lashed out with my stick and hit him on the chin although not very hard, and when I freed myself I became angry.”’

Most of the guards found it difficult to believe that they had behaved in the brutal ways that they had. Many said they hadn’t known this side of them existed or that they were capable of such things.

The prisoners, too, couldn’t believe that they had responded in the submissive, cowering, dependent way they had. Several claimed to be assertive types normally.

When asked about the guards, they described the usual three stereotypes that can be found in any prison: some guards were good, some were tough but fair, and some were cruel.

A further explanation for the behavior of the participants can be described in terms of reinforcement.  The escalation of aggression and abuse by the guards could be seen as being due to the positive reinforcement they received both from fellow guards and intrinsically in terms of how good it made them feel to have so much power.

Similarly, the prisoners could have learned through negative reinforcement that if they kept their heads down and did as they were told, they could avoid further unpleasant experiences.

Critical Evaluation

Ecological validity.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is criticized for lacking ecological validity in its attempt to simulate a real prison environment. Specifically, the “prison” was merely a setup in the basement of Stanford University’s psychology department.

The student “guards” lacked professional training, and the experiment’s duration was much shorter than real prison sentences. Furthermore, the participants, who were college students, didn’t reflect the diverse backgrounds typically found in actual prisons in terms of ethnicity, education, and socioeconomic status.

None had prior prison experience, and they were chosen due to their mental stability and low antisocial tendencies. Additionally, the mock prison lacked spaces for exercise or rehabilitative activities.

Demand characteristics

Demand characteristics could explain the findings of the study. Most of the guards later claimed they were simply acting. Because the guards and prisoners were playing a role, their behavior may not be influenced by the same factors which affect behavior in real life. This means the study’s findings cannot be reasonably generalized to real life, such as prison settings. I.e, the study has low ecological validity.

One of the biggest criticisms is that strong demand characteristics confounded the study. Banuazizi and Movahedi (1975) found that the majority of respondents, when given a description of the study, were able to guess the hypothesis and predict how participants were expected to behave.

This suggests participants may have simply been playing out expected roles rather than genuinely conforming to their assigned identities.

In addition, revelations by Zimbardo (2007) indicate he actively encouraged the guards to be cruel and oppressive in his orientation instructions prior to the start of the study. For example, telling them “they [the prisoners] will be able to do nothing and say nothing that we don’t permit.”

He also tacitly approved of abusive behaviors as the study progressed. This deliberate cueing of how participants should act, rather than allowing behavior to unfold naturally, indicates the study findings were likely a result of strong demand characteristics rather than insightful revelations about human behavior.

However, there is considerable evidence that the participants did react to the situation as though it was real. For example, 90% of the prisoners’ private conversations, which were monitored by the researchers, were on the prison conditions, and only 10% of the time were their conversations about life outside of the prison.

The guards, too, rarely exchanged personal information during their relaxation breaks – they either talked about ‘problem prisoners,’ other prison topics, or did not talk at all. The guards were always on time and even worked overtime for no extra pay.

When the prisoners were introduced to a priest, they referred to themselves by their prison number, rather than their first name. Some even asked him to get a lawyer to help get them out.

Fourteen years after his experience as prisoner 8612 in the Stanford Prison Experiment, Douglas Korpi, now a prison psychologist, reflected on his time and stated (Musen and Zimbardo 1992):

“The Stanford Prison Experiment was a very benign prison situation and it promotes everything a normal prison promotes — the guard role promotes sadism, the prisoner role promotes confusion and shame”.

Sample bias

The study may also lack population validity as the sample comprised US male students. The study’s findings cannot be applied to female prisons or those from other countries. For example, America is an individualist culture (where people are generally less conforming), and the results may be different in collectivist cultures (such as Asian countries).

Carnahan and McFarland (2007) have questioned whether self-selection may have influenced the results – i.e., did certain personality traits or dispositions lead some individuals to volunteer for a study of “prison life” in the first place?

All participants completed personality measures assessing: aggression, authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, narcissism, social dominance, empathy, and altruism. Participants also answered questions on mental health and criminal history to screen out any issues as per the original SPE.

Results showed that volunteers for the prison study, compared to the control group, scored significantly higher on aggressiveness, authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and social dominance. They scored significantly lower on empathy and altruism.

A follow-up role-playing study found that self-presentation biases could not explain these differences. Overall, the findings suggest that volunteering for the prison study was influenced by personality traits associated with abusive tendencies.

Zimbardo’s conclusion may be wrong

While implications for the original SPE are speculative, this lends support to a person-situation interactionist perspective, rather than a purely situational account.

It implies that certain individuals are drawn to and selected into situations that fit their personality, and that group composition can shape behavior through mutual reinforcement.

Contributions to psychology

Another strength of the study is that the harmful treatment of participants led to the formal recognition of ethical  guidelines by the American Psychological Association. Studies must now undergo an extensive review by an institutional review board (US) or ethics committee (UK) before they are implemented.

Most institutions, such as universities, hospitals, and government agencies, require a review of research plans by a panel. These boards review whether the potential benefits of the research are justifiable in light of the possible risk of physical or psychological harm.

These boards may request researchers make changes to the study’s design or procedure, or, in extreme cases, deny approval of the study altogether.

Contribution to prison policy

A strength of the study is that it has altered the way US prisons are run. For example, juveniles accused of federal crimes are no longer housed before trial with adult prisoners (due to the risk of violence against them).

However, in the 25 years since the SPE, U.S. prison policy has transformed in ways counter to SPE insights (Haney & Zimbardo, 1995):

• Rehabilitation was abandoned in favor of punishment and containment. Prison is now seen as inflicting pain rather than enabling productive re-entry.
• Sentencing became rigid rather than accounting for inmates’ individual contexts. Mandatory minimums and “three strikes” laws over-incarcerate nonviolent crimes.
• Prison construction boomed, and populations soared, disproportionately affecting minorities. From 1925 to 1975, incarceration rates held steady at around 100 per 100,000. By 1995, rates tripled to over 600 per 100,000.
• Drug offenses account for an increasing proportion of prisoners. Nonviolent drug offenses make up a large share of the increased incarceration.
• Psychological perspectives have been ignored in policymaking. Legislators overlooked insights from social psychology on the power of contexts in shaping behavior.
• Oversight retreated, with courts deferring to prison officials and ending meaningful scrutiny of conditions. Standards like “evolving decency” gave way to “legitimate” pain.
• Supermax prisons proliferated, isolating prisoners in psychological trauma-inducing conditions.

The authors argue psychologists should reengage to:

• Limit the use of imprisonment and adopt humane alternatives based on the harmful effects of prison environments
• Assess prisons’ total environments, not just individual conditions, given situational forces interact
• Prepare inmates for release by transforming criminogenic post-release contexts
• Address socioeconomic risk factors, not just incarcerate individuals
• Develop contextual prediction models vs. focusing only on static traits
• Scrutinize prison systems independently, not just defer to officials shaped by those environments
• Generate creative, evidence-based reforms to counter over-punitive policies

Psychology once contributed to a more humane system and can again counter the U.S. “rage to punish” with contextual insights (Haney & Zimbardo, 1998).

Evidence for situational factors

Zimbardo (1995) further demonstrates the power of situations to elicit evil actions from ordinary, educated people who likely would never have done such things otherwise. It was another situation-induced “transformation of human character.”

• Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research unit of the Japanese army during WWII.
• It was led by General Shiro Ishii and involved thousands of doctors and researchers.
• Unit 731 set up facilities near Harbin, China to conduct lethal human experimentation on prisoners, including Allied POWs.
• Experiments involved exposing prisoners to things like plague, anthrax, mustard gas, and bullets to test biological weapons. They infected prisoners with diseases and monitored their deaths.
• At least 3,000 prisoners died from these brutal experiments. Many were killed and dissected.
• The doctors in Unit 731 obeyed orders unquestioningly and conducted these experiments in the name of “medical science.”
• After the war, the vast majority of doctors who participated faced no punishment and went on to have prestigious careers. This was largely covered up by the U.S. in exchange for data.
• It shows how normal, intelligent professionals can be led by situational forces to systematically dehumanize victims and conduct incredibly cruel and lethal experiments on people.
• Even healers trained to preserve life used their expertise to destroy lives when the situational forces compelled obedience, nationalism, and wartime enmity.

Evidence for an interactionist approach

The results are also relevant for explaining abuses by American guards at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

An interactionist perspective recognizes that volunteering for roles as prison guards attracts those already prone to abusive tendencies, which are intensified by the prison context.

This counters a solely situationist view of good people succumbing to evil situational forces.

Ethical Issues

The study has received many ethical criticisms, including lack of fully informed consent by participants as Zimbardo himself did not know what would happen in the experiment (it was unpredictable). Also, the prisoners did not consent to being “arrested” at home. The prisoners were not told partly because final approval from the police wasn’t given until minutes before the participants decided to participate, and partly because the researchers wanted the arrests to come as a surprise. However, this was a breach of the ethics of Zimbardo’s own contract that all of the participants had signed.

Protection of Participants

Participants playing the role of prisoners were not protected from psychological harm, experiencing incidents of humiliation and distress. For example, one prisoner had to be released after 36 hours because of uncontrollable bursts of screaming, crying, and anger.

Here’s a quote from Philip G. Zimbardo, taken from an interview on the Stanford Prison Experiment’s 40th anniversary (April 19, 2011):

“In the Stanford prison study, people were stressed, day and night, for 5 days, 24 hours a day. There’s no question that it was a high level of stress because five of the boys had emotional breakdowns, the first within 36 hours. Other boys that didn’t have emotional breakdowns were blindly obedient to corrupt authority by the guards and did terrible things to each other. And so it is no question that that was unethical. You can’t do research where you allow people to suffer at that level.”

“After the first one broke down, we didn’t believe it. We thought he was faking. There was actually a rumor he was faking to get out. He was going to bring his friends in to liberate the prison. And/or we believed our screening procedure was inadequate, [we believed] that he had some mental defect that we did not pick up. At that point, by the third day, when the second prisoner broke down, I had already slipped into or been transformed into the role of “Stanford Prison Superintendent.” And in that role, I was no longer the principal investigator, worried about ethics.”

However, in Zimbardo’s defense, the emotional distress experienced by the prisoners could not have been predicted from the outset.

Approval for the study was given by the Office of Naval Research, the Psychology Department, and the University Committee of Human Experimentation.

This Committee also did not anticipate the prisoners’ extreme reactions that were to follow. Alternative methodologies were looked at that would cause less distress to the participants but at the same time give the desired information, but nothing suitable could be found.

Withdrawal 

Although guards were explicitly instructed not to physically harm prisoners at the beginning of the Stanford Prison Experiment, they were allowed to induce feelings of boredom, frustration, arbitrariness, and powerlessness among the inmates.

This created a pervasive atmosphere where prisoners genuinely believed and even reinforced among each other, that they couldn’t leave the experiment until their “sentence” was completed, mirroring the inescapability of a real prison.

Even though two participants (8612 and 819) were released early, the impact of the environment was so profound that prisoner 416, reflecting on the experience two months later, described it as a “prison run by psychologists rather than by the state.”

Extensive group and individual debriefing sessions were held, and all participants returned post-experimental questionnaires several weeks, then several months later, and then at yearly intervals. Zimbardo concluded there were no lasting negative effects.

Zimbardo also strongly argues that the benefits gained from our understanding of human behavior and how we can improve society should outbalance the distress caused by the study.

However, it has been suggested that the US Navy was not so much interested in making prisons more human and were, in fact, more interested in using the study to train people in the armed services to cope with the stresses of captivity.

Discussion Questions

What are the effects of living in an environment with no clocks, no view of the outside world, and minimal sensory stimulation?

Consider the psychological consequences of stripping, delousing, and shaving the heads of prisoners or members of the military. Whattransformations take place when people go through an experience like this?

The prisoners could have left at any time, and yet, they didn’t. Why?

After the study, how do you think the prisoners and guards felt?

If you were the experimenter in charge, would you have done this study? Would you have terminated it earlier? Would you have conducted a follow-up study?

Frequently Asked Questions

What happened to prisoner 8612 after the experiment.

Douglas Korpi, as prisoner 8612, was the first to show signs of severe distress and demanded to be released from the experiment. He was released on the second day, and his reaction to the simulated prison environment highlighted the study’s ethical issues and the potential harm inflicted on participants.

After the experiment, Douglas Korpi graduated from Stanford University and earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. He pursued a career as a psychotherapist, helping others with their mental health struggles.

Why did Zimbardo not stop the experiment?

Zimbardo did not initially stop the experiment because he became too immersed in his dual role as the principal investigator and the prison superintendent, causing him to overlook the escalating abuse and distress among participants.

It was only after an external observer, Christina Maslach, raised concerns about the participants’ well-being that Zimbardo terminated the study.

What happened to the guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment?

In the Stanford Prison Experiment, the guards exhibited abusive and authoritarian behavior, using psychological manipulation, humiliation, and control tactics to assert dominance over the prisoners. This ultimately led to the study’s early termination due to ethical concerns.

What did Zimbardo want to find out?

Zimbardo aimed to investigate the impact of situational factors and power dynamics on human behavior, specifically how individuals would conform to the roles of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison environment.

He wanted to explore whether the behavior displayed in prisons was due to the inherent personalities of prisoners and guards or the result of the social structure and environment of the prison itself.

What were the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment?

The results of the Stanford Prison Experiment showed that situational factors and power dynamics played a significant role in shaping participants’ behavior. The guards became abusive and authoritarian, while the prisoners became submissive and emotionally distressed.

The experiment revealed how quickly ordinary individuals could adopt and internalize harmful behaviors due to their assigned roles and the environment.

Banuazizi, A., & Movahedi, S. (1975). Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison: A methodological analysis. American Psychologist, 30 , 152-160.

Carnahan, T., & McFarland, S. (2007). Revisiting the Stanford prison experiment: Could participant self-selection have led to the cruelty? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 603-614.

Drury, S., Hutchens, S. A., Shuttlesworth, D. E., & White, C. L. (2012). Philip G. Zimbardo on his career and the Stanford Prison Experiment’s 40th anniversary.  History of Psychology ,  15 (2), 161.

Griggs, R. A., & Whitehead, G. I., III. (2014). Coverage of the Stanford Prison Experiment in introductory social psychology textbooks. Teaching of Psychology, 41 , 318 –324.

Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison . Naval Research Review , 30, 4-17.

Haney, C., & Zimbardo, P. (1998). The past and future of U.S. prison policy: Twenty-five years after the Stanford Prison Experiment.  American Psychologist, 53 (7), 709–727.

Musen, K. & Zimbardo, P. (1992) (DVD) Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment Documentary.

Zimbardo, P. G. (Consultant, On-Screen Performer), Goldstein, L. (Producer), & Utley, G. (Correspondent). (1971, November 26). Prisoner 819 did a bad thing: The Stanford Prison Experiment [Television series episode]. In L. Goldstein (Producer), Chronolog. New York, NY: NBC-TV.

Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). On the ethics of intervention in human psychological research: With special reference to the Stanford prison experiment.  Cognition ,  2 (2), 243-256.

Zimbardo, P. G. (1995). The psychology of evil: A situationist perspective on recruiting good people to engage in anti-social acts.  Japanese Journal of Social Psychology ,  11 (2), 125-133.

Zimbardo, P.G. (2007). The Lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil . New York, NY: Random House.

Further Information

• Reicher, S., & Haslam, S. A. (2006). Rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC prison study. The British Journal of Social Psychology, 45 , 1.
• Coverage of the Stanford Prison Experiment in introductory psychology textbooks
• The Stanford Prison Experiment Official Website

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The Stanford Prison Experiment

• Participants
• Setting and Procedure

In August of 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues created an experiment to determine the impacts of being a prisoner or prison guard. The Stanford Prison Experiment, also known as the Zimbardo Prison Experiment, went on to become one of the best-known studies in psychology's history —and one of the most controversial.

This study has long been a staple in textbooks, articles, psychology classes, and even movies. Learn what it entailed, what was learned, and the criticisms that have called the experiment's scientific merits and value into question.

Purpose of the Stanford Prison Experiment

Zimbardo was a former classmate of the psychologist Stanley Milgram . Milgram is best known for his famous obedience experiment , and Zimbardo was interested in expanding upon Milgram's research. He wanted to further investigate the impact of situational variables on human behavior.

Specifically, the researchers wanted to know how participants would react when placed in a simulated prison environment. They wondered if physically and psychologically healthy people who knew they were participating in an experiment would change their behavior in a prison-like setting.

Participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment

To carry out the experiment, researchers set up a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University's psychology building. They then selected 24 undergraduate students to play the roles of both prisoners and guards.

Participants were chosen from a larger group of 70 volunteers based on having no criminal background, no psychological issues , and no significant medical conditions. Each volunteer agreed to participate in the Stanford Prison Experiment for one to two weeks in exchange for $15 a day.

Setting and Procedures

The simulated prison included three six-by-nine-foot prison cells. Each cell held three prisoners and included three cots. Other rooms across from the cells were utilized for the jail guards and warden. One tiny space was designated as the solitary confinement room, and yet another small room served as the prison yard.

The 24 volunteers were randomly assigned to either the prisoner or guard group. Prisoners were to remain in the mock prison 24 hours a day during the study. Guards were assigned to work in three-man teams for eight-hour shifts. After each shift, they were allowed to return to their homes until their next shift.

Researchers were able to observe the behavior of the prisoners and guards using hidden cameras and microphones.

Results of the Stanford Prison Experiment

So what happened in the Zimbardo experiment? While originally slated to last 14 days, it had to be stopped after just six due to what was happening to the student participants. The guards became abusive and the prisoners began to show signs of extreme stress and anxiety .

It was noted that:

• While the prisoners and guards were allowed to interact in any way they wanted, the interactions were hostile or even dehumanizing.
• The guards began to become aggressive and abusive toward the prisoners while the prisoners became passive and depressed.
• Five of the prisoners began to experience severe negative emotions , including crying and acute anxiety, and had to be released from the study early.

Even the researchers themselves began to lose sight of the reality of the situation. Zimbardo, who acted as the prison warden, overlooked the abusive behavior of the jail guards until graduate student Christina Maslach voiced objections to the conditions in the simulated prison and the morality of continuing the experiment.

One possible explanation for the results of this experiment is the idea of deindividuation , which states that being part of a large group can make us more likely to perform behaviors we would otherwise not do on our own.

Impact of the Zimbardo Prison Experiment

The experiment became famous and was widely cited in textbooks and other publications. According to Zimbardo and his colleagues, the Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrated the powerful role that the situation can play in human behavior.

Because the guards were placed in a position of power, they began to behave in ways they would not usually act in their everyday lives or other situations. The prisoners, placed in a situation where they had no real control , became submissive and depressed.

In 2011, the Stanford Alumni Magazine featured a retrospective of the Stanford Prison Experiment in honor of the experiment’s 40th anniversary. The article contained interviews with several people involved, including Zimbardo and other researchers as well as some of the participants.

In the interviews, Richard Yacco, one of the prisoners in the experiment, suggested that the experiment demonstrated the power that societal roles and expectations can play in a person's behavior.

In 2015, the experiment became the topic of a feature film titled The Stanford Prison Experiment that dramatized the events of the 1971 study.

Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

In the years since the experiment was conducted, there have been a number of critiques of the study. Some of these include:

Ethical Issues

The Stanford Prison Experiment is frequently cited as an example of unethical research. It could not be replicated by researchers today because it fails to meet the standards established by numerous ethical codes, including the Code of Ethics of the American Psychological Association .

Why was Zimbardo's experiment unethical?

Zimbardo's experiment was unethical due to a lack of fully informed consent, abuse of participants, and lack of appropriate debriefings. More recent findings suggest there were other significant ethical issues that compromise the experiment's scientific standing, including the fact that experimenters may have encouraged abusive behaviors.

Lack of Generalizability

Other critics suggest that the study lacks generalizability due to a variety of factors. The unrepresentative sample of participants (mostly white and middle-class males) makes it difficult to apply the results to a wider population.

Lack of Realism

The Zimbardo Prison Experiment is also criticized for its lack of ecological validity. Ecological validity refers to the degree of realism with which a simulated experimental setup matches the real-world situation it seeks to emulate.

While the researchers did their best to recreate a prison setting, it is simply not possible to perfectly mimic all the environmental and situational variables of prison life. Because there may have been factors related to the setting and situation that influenced how the participants behaved, it may not truly represent what might happen outside of the lab.

Recent Criticisms

More recent examination of the experiment's archives and interviews with participants have revealed major issues with the research method , design, and procedures used. Together, these call the study's validity, value, and even authenticity into question.

These reports, including examinations of the study's records and new interviews with participants, have also cast doubt on some of its key findings and assumptions.

Among the issues described:

• One participant suggested that he faked a breakdown so he could leave the experiment because he was worried about failing his classes.
• Other participants also reported altering their behavior in a way designed to "help" the experiment .
• Evidence suggests that the experimenters encouraged the guards' behavior and played a role in fostering the abusive actions of the guards.

In 2019, the journal American Psychologist published an article debunking the famed experiment. It detailed the study's lack of scientific merit and concluded that the Stanford Prison Experiment was "an incredibly flawed study that should have died an early death."

In a statement posted on the experiment's official website, Zimbardo maintains that these criticisms do not undermine the main conclusion of the study—that situational forces can alter individual actions both in positive and negative ways.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is well known both inside and outside the field of psychology . While the study has long been criticized for many reasons, more recent criticisms of the study's procedures shine a brighter light on the experiment's scientific shortcomings.

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Stanford Prison Experiment. Philip Zimbardo's response to recent criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment .

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment

On the morning of August 17, 1971, nine young men in the Palo Alto area received visits from local police officers. While their neighbors looked on, the men were arrested for violating Penal Codes 211 and 459 (armed robbery and burglary), searched, handcuffed, and led into the rear of a waiting police car. The cars took them to a Palo Alto police station, where the men were booked, fingerprinted, moved to a holding cell, and blindfolded. Finally, they were transported to the Stanford County Prison—also known as the Stanford University psychology department.

They were willing participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment, one of the most controversial studies in the history of social psychology. (It’s the subject of a new film of the same name—a drama, not a documentary—starring Billy Crudup, of “Almost Famous,” as the lead investigator, Philip Zimbardo. It opens July 17th.) The study subjects, middle-class college students, had answered a questionnaire about their family backgrounds, physical- and mental-health histories, and social behavior, and had been deemed “normal”; a coin flip divided them into prisoners and guards. According to the lore that’s grown up around the experiment, the guards, with little to no instruction, began humiliating and psychologically abusing the prisoners within twenty-four hours of the study’s start. The prisoners, in turn, became submissive and depersonalized, taking the abuse and saying little in protest. The behavior of all involved was so extreme that the experiment, which was meant to last two weeks, was terminated after six days.

Less than a decade earlier, the Milgram obedience study had shown that ordinary people, if encouraged by an authority figure, were willing to shock their fellow-citizens with what they believed to be painful and potentially lethal levels of electricity. To many, the Stanford experiment underscored those findings, revealing the ease with which regular people, if given too much power, could transform into ruthless oppressors. Today, more than forty-five years later, many look to the study to make sense of events like the behavior of the guards at Abu Ghraib and America’s epidemic of police brutality. The Stanford Prison Experiment is cited as evidence of the atavistic impulses that lurk within us all; it’s said to show that, with a little nudge, we could all become tyrants.

And yet the lessons of the Stanford Prison Experiment aren’t so clear-cut. From the beginning, the study has been haunted by ambiguity. Even as it suggests that ordinary people harbor ugly potentialities, it also testifies to the way our circumstances shape our behavior. Was the study about our individual fallibility, or about broken institutions? Were its findings about prisons, specifically, or about life in general? What did the Stanford Prison Experiment really show?

The appeal of the experiment has a lot to do with its apparently simple setup: prisoners, guards, a fake jail, and some ground rules. But, in reality, the Stanford County Prison was a heavily manipulated environment, and the guards and prisoners acted in ways that were largely predetermined by how their roles were presented. To understand the meaning of the experiment, you have to understand that it wasn’t a blank slate; from the start, its goal was to evoke the experience of working and living in a brutal jail.

From the first, the guards’ priorities were set by Zimbardo. In a presentation to his Stanford colleagues shortly after the study’s conclusion, he described the procedures surrounding each prisoner’s arrival: each man was stripped and searched, “deloused,” and then given a uniform—a numbered gown, which Zimbardo called a “dress,” with a heavy bolted chain near the ankle, loose-fitting rubber sandals, and a cap made from a woman’s nylon stocking. “Real male prisoners don't wear dresses,” Zimbardo explained, “but real male prisoners, we have learned, do feel humiliated, do feel emasculated, and we thought we could produce the same effects very quickly by putting men in a dress without any underclothes.” The stocking caps were in lieu of shaving the prisoner’s heads. (The guards wore khaki uniforms and were given whistles, nightsticks, and mirrored sunglasses inspired by a prison guard in the movie “Cool Hand Luke.”)

Often, the guards operated without explicit, moment-to-moment instructions. But that didn’t mean that they were fully autonomous: Zimbardo himself took part in the experiment, playing the role of the prison superintendent. (The prison’s “warden” was also a researcher.) /Occasionally, disputes between prisoner and guards got out of hand, violating an explicit injunction against physical force that both prisoners and guards had read prior to enrolling in the study. When the “superintendent” and “warden” overlooked these incidents, the message to the guards was clear: all is well; keep going as you are. The participants knew that an audience was watching, and so a lack of feedback could be read as tacit approval. And the sense of being watched may also have encouraged them to perform. Dave Eshelman, one of the guards, recalled that he “consciously created” his guard persona. “I was in all kinds of drama productions in high school and college. It was something I was very familiar with: to take on another personality before you step out on the stage,” Eshelman said. In fact, he continued, “I was kind of running my own experiment in there, by saying, ‘How far can I push these things and how much abuse will these people take before they say, ‘Knock it off?’ ”

Other, more subtle factors also shaped the experiment. It’s often said that the study participants were ordinary guys—and they were, indeed, determined to be “normal” and healthy by a battery of tests. But they were also a self-selected group who responded to a newspaper advertisement seeking volunteers for “a psychological study of prison life.” In a 2007 study, the psychologists Thomas Carnahan and Sam McFarland asked whether that wording itself may have stacked the odds. They recreated the original ad, and then ran a separate ad omitting the phrase “prison life.” They found that the people who responded to the two ads scored differently on a set of psychological tests. Those who thought that they would be participating in a prison study had significantly higher levels of aggressiveness, authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and social dominance, and they scored lower on measures of empathy and altruism.

Moreover, even within that self-selected sample, behavioral patterns were far from homogeneous. Much of the study’s cachet depends on the idea that the students responded en masse, giving up their individual identities to become submissive “prisoners” and tyrannical “guards.” But, in fact, the participants responded to the prison environment in all sorts of ways. While some guard shifts were especially cruel, others remained humane. Many of the supposedly passive prisoners rebelled. Richard Yacco, a prisoner, remembered “resisting what one guard was telling me to do and being willing to go into solitary confinement. As prisoners, we developed solidarity—we realized that we could join together and do passive resistance and cause some problems.”

What emerges from these details isn’t a perfectly lucid photograph but an ambiguous watercolor. While it’s true that some guards and prisoners behaved in alarming ways, it’s also the case that their environment was designed to encourage—and, in some cases, to require—those behaviors. Zimbardo himself has always been forthcoming about the details and the nature of his prison experiment: he thoroughly explained the setup in his original study and, in an early write-up , in which the experiment was described in broad strokes only, he pointed out that only “about a third of the guards became tyrannical in their arbitrary use of power.” (That’s about four people in total.) So how did the myth of the Stanford Prison Experiment—“Lord of the Flies” in the psych lab—come to diverge so profoundly from the reality?

In part, Zimbardo’s earliest statements about the experiment are to blame. In October, 1971, soon after the study’s completion—and before a single methodologically and analytically rigorous result had been published—Zimbardo was asked to testify before Congress about prison reform. His dramatic testimony , even as it clearly explained how the experiment worked, also allowed listeners to overlook how coercive the environment really was. He described the study as “an attempt to understand just what it means psychologically to be a prisoner or a prison guard.” But he also emphasized that the students in the study had been “the cream of the crop of this generation,” and said that the guards were given no specific instructions, and left free to make “up their own rules for maintaining law, order, and respect.” In explaining the results, he said that the “majority” of participants found themselves “no longer able to clearly differentiate between role-playing and self,” and that, in the six days the study took to unfold, “the experience of imprisonment undid, although temporarily, a lifetime of learning; human values were suspended, self-concepts were challenged, and the ugliest, most base, pathological side of human nature surfaced.” In describing another, related study and its implications for prison life, he said that “the mere act of assigning labels to people, calling some people prisoners and others guards, is sufficient to elicit pathological behavior.”

Zimbardo released video to NBC, which ran a feature on November 26, 1971. An article ran in the Times Magazine in April of 1973. In various ways, these accounts reiterated the claim that relatively small changes in circumstances could turn the best and brightest into monsters or depersonalized serfs. By the time Zimbardo published a formal paper about the study , in a 1973 issue of the International Journal of Crim__i__nology and Penology , a streamlined and unequivocal version of events had become entrenched in the national consciousness—so much so that a 1975 methodological critique fell largely on deaf ears.

Forty years later, Zimbardo still doesn’t shy away from popular attention. He served as a consultant on the new film, which follows his original study in detail, relying on direct transcripts from the experimental recordings and taking few dramatic liberties. In many ways, the film is critical of the study: Crudup plays Zimbardo as an overzealous researcher overstepping his bounds, trying to create a very specific outcome among the students he observes. The filmmakers even underscore the flimsiness of the experimental design, inserting characters who point out that Zimbardo is not a disinterested observer. They highlight a real-life conversation in which another psychologist asks Zimbardo whether he has an “independent variable.” In describing the study to his Stanford colleagues shortly after it ended, Zimbardo recalled that conversation: “To my surprise, I got really angry at him,” he said. “The security of my men and the stability of my prison was at stake, and I have to contend with this bleeding-heart, liberal, academic, effete dingdong whose only concern was for a ridiculous thing like an independent variable. The next thing he’d be asking me about was rehabilitation programs, the dummy! It wasn’t until sometime later that I realized how far into the experiment I was at that point.”

In a broad sense, the film reaffirms the opinion of John Mark, one of the guards, who, looking back, has said that Zimbardo’s interpretation of events was too shaped by his expectations to be meaningful: “He wanted to be able to say that college students, people from middle-class backgrounds ... will turn on each other just because they’re given a role and given power. Based on my experience, and what I saw and what I felt, I think that was a real stretch.”

If the Stanford Prison Experiment had simulated a less brutal environment, would the prisoners and guards have acted differently? In December, 2001 , two psychologists, Stephen Reicher and Alexander Haslam, tried to find out. They worked with the documentaries unit of the BBC to partially recreate Zimbardo’s setup over the course of an eight-day experiment. Their guards also had uniforms, and were given latitude to dole out rewards and punishments; their prisoners were placed in three-person cells that followed the layout of the Stanford County Jail almost exactly. The main difference was that, in this prison, the preset expectations were gone. The guards were asked to come up with rules prior to the prisoners’ arrival, and were told only to make the prison run smoothly. (The BBC Prison Study, as it came to be called, differed from the Stanford experiment in a few other ways, including prisoner dress; for a while, moreover, the prisoners were told that they could become guards through good behavior, although, on the third day, that offer was revoked, and the roles were made permanent.)

Within the first few days of the BBC study, it became clear that the guards weren’t cohering as a group. “Several guards were wary of assuming and exerting their authority,” the researchers wrote. The prisoners, on the other hand, developed a collective identity. In a change from the Stanford study, the psychologists asked each participant to complete a daily survey that measured the degree to which he felt solidarity with his group; it showed that, as the guards grew further apart, the prisoners were growing closer together. On the fourth day, three cellmates decided to test their luck. At lunchtime, one threw his plate down and demanded better food, another asked to smoke, and the third asked for medical attention for a blister on his foot. The guards became disorganized; one even offered the smoker a cigarette. Reicher and Haslam reported that, after the prisoners returned to their cells, they “literally danced with joy.” (“That was fucking sweet,” one prisoner remarked.) Soon, more prisoners began to challenge the guards. They acted out during roll call, complained about the food, and talked back. At the end of the sixth day, the three insubordinate cellmates broke out and occupied the guards’ quarters. “At this point,” the researchers wrote, “the guards’ regime was seen by all to be unworkable and at an end.”

Taken together, these two studies don’t suggest that we all have an innate capacity for tyranny or victimhood. Instead, they suggest that our behavior largely conforms to our preconceived expectations. All else being equal, we act as we think we’re expected to act—especially if that expectation comes from above. Suggest, as the Stanford setup did, that we should behave in stereotypical tough-guard fashion, and we strive to fit that role. Tell us, as the BBC experimenters did, that we shouldn’t give up hope of social mobility, and we act accordingly.

This understanding might seem to diminish the power of the Stanford Prison Experiment. But, in fact, it sharpens and clarifies the study’s meaning. Last weekend brought the tragic news of Kalief Browder’s suicide . At sixteen, Browder was arrested, in the Bronx, for allegedly stealing a backpack; after the arrest, he was imprisoned at Rikers for three years without trial . (Ultimately, the case against him was dismissed.) While at Rikers, Browder was the object of violence from both prisoners and guards, some of which was captured on video . It’s possible to think that prisons are the way they are because human nature tends toward the pathological. But the Stanford Prison Experiment suggests that extreme behavior flows from extreme institutions. Prisons aren’t blank slates. Guards do indeed self-select into their jobs, as Zimbardo’s students self-selected into a study of prison life. Like Zimbardo’s men, they are bombarded with expectations from the first and shaped by preëxisting norms and patterns of behavior. The lesson of Stanford isn’t that any random human being is capable of descending into sadism and tyranny. It’s that certain institutions and environments demand those behaviors—and, perhaps, can change them.

The Stanford Prison Experiment: The Power of the Situation

• First Online: 20 January 2024

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• Harry Perlstadt   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0233-0463 3  

Part of the book series: Clinical Sociology: Research and Practice ((CSRP))

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Philip Zimbardo is best known for his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). Early in his career, he conducted experiments in the psychology of deindividualization, in which a person in a group or crowd no longer acts as a responsible individual but is swept along and participates in antisocial actions. After moving to Stanford University, he began to focus on institutional power over the individual in group settings, such as long-term care facilities for the elderly and prisons. His research proposal for a simulated prison was approved by the Stanford University Human Subjects Research Review Committee in July 1971. He built a mock prison in the basement of the University’s psychology building and recruited college-aged male subjects to play prisoners and guards. The study began on Sunday, August 8th, and was to run for 2 weeks but ended on Friday morning August 13th. In less than a week, several of the mock guards hazed and brutalized the mock prisoners, some of whom found ways of coping, while others exhibited symptoms of mental breakdown.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. — attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead

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I wish to thank Chris Herrera, Jonathan K. Rosen, David Segal and Ruth Spivak for their comments on this chapter.

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Perlstadt, H. (2023). The Stanford Prison Experiment: The Power of the Situation. In: Assessing Social Science Research Ethics and Integrity. Clinical Sociology: Research and Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34538-8_8

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The Stanford Prison Experiment 50 Years Later: A Conversation with Philip Zimbardo

In April 1971, a seemingly innocuous ad appeared in the classifieds of the Palo Alto Times : Male college students needed for psychological study of prison life. $15 per day for 1-2 weeks. In no time, more than 70 students volunteered, and 24 were chosen. Thus began the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE), conducted inside Jordan Hall on the Stanford campus. Originally scheduled to last two weeks, it was ended early over concerns regarding the behavior of both “prisoners” and “guards.” Still today, the SPE spikes enormous interest. Movies and documentaries have been made, books published, and studies produced about those six days. It’s clear today the research would never be allowed, but it was motivated by genuine concern over the ethical issues surrounding prisons, compliance with authority, and the evil humans have proved capable of. What was learned and at what cost? What is still being learned?

The Stanford Historical Society sponsors a look back at the controversial study with its leader, social psychologist Philip Zimbardo , Stanford Professor Emeritus of Psychology. Zimbardo is joined in conversation by Paul Costello who served as the chief communications officer for the School of Medicine for 17 years. He retired from Stanford in January 2021.

This program is organized by the Stanford Historical Society and co-sponsored by the Department of Psychology at Stanford University.

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Image credit: Stanford Prison Experiment (Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford Libraries)

What a widely attacked experiment got right on the harmful effects of prisons

Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto

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The Stanford Prison Experiment is one of the few scientific studies to enter the public consciousness through mainstream news , documentaries , popular books , a TED talk and a major motion picture .

Recently, it has been making headlines in a very bad way.

In 1971, Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo sought to evaluate the prison’s impact on human behavior . He randomly assigned normal, healthy, emotionally stable male college students (without criminal records) to be “prisoners” or “guards” in a fake prison.

Within six days, Zimbardo ended the experiment. The “guards” were torturing the “prisoners,” and the “prisoners” were rebelling or experiencing psychological breakdown.

In news articles, the Stanford experiment has been “debunked” and “exposed as a fraud.” Its findings have been declared “very wrong” and “ fake .” It has been further criticized for experimenter interference, faked behaviour from participants and for research design problems, among other things.

These serious critiques have generated much discussion in academic circles and in news articles about what, if anything, we can learn from the experiment.

And yet, as someone who studies prisons, I’m struck by how much the Stanford Prison Experiment got right. A wealth of other research suggests prisons have serious detrimental effects on prisoners and prison workers alike.

What the research says

Living and working in prison is extremely stressful and demoralizing .

Some people are better at repelling these effects than others. Even so, prisoners and prison workers suffer from high rates of depression, anxiety, suicide, PTSD and other devastating conditions. For many prisoners, these conditions continue after prison and can be worsened by the transition into the free world .

We have long known that prisons are damaging places for both prisoners and prison workers. In his 1956 book, Society of Captives , Princeton sociology professor Gresham Sykes explained that incarceration deeply injured prisoners’ dignity and self-concept. He also described how prison officers became “corrupted” by the prison environment with its contradictory imperatives, impossible-to-enforce rules and necessary compromises.

In the 60 years since Sykes’ book, research in diverse prison settings has confirmed and expanded upon many of his findings.

The role of prison design

These insights extend beyond contemporary prisons in the United States. Prisons in Norway , Sweden and Denmark , known for their humaneness, also cause harm.

Indeed, smart designs can lessen , but not destroy, the prison’s negative impacts. But since the 1970s , in many Western countries, the main goal when designing prisons has been containment and security, not prisoners’ physical and mental health.

Popping up in the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s, supermaximum security prisons (Supermaxes), which contain prisoners in solitary confinement in small concrete cells for 23 hours a day , are a particularly harmful design.

Read more: Broken system: Why is a quarter of Canada's prison population Indigenous?

Prisoners react differently to these Supermax prison regimes. Some are able to withstand the conditions, others break down within hours of their arrival. We do not yet fully understand why people react differently, but we do know that Supermax prisons have an array of negative impacts on prisoners’ mental health including hallucinations, self-harm and permanent psychological damage .

Not just prisoners

Prison staff are also affected. The history of American imprisonment is also filled with examples of people with good intentions becoming “corrupted” by the prison.

Pennsylvania’s Eastern State Penitentiary opened in 1829. Progressive Philadelphia penal reformers designed Eastern to be more humane than other prisons, with prisoners’ physical and mental health in mind. They implemented a routine — combining work, education, mentorship and outdoor exercise — to benefit both prisoners and society. Finally, they sought to protect prisoners’ identities so they could reenter society without stigma.

Within five years of the prison’s opening, however, the penal reformers, now prison administrators, had betrayed their humanitarian goals.

They bent the rules , out of necessity or convenience, so the prison functioned smoothly. In the process, they sacrificed the regime’s humanitarian and prisoner-focused elements.

Eastern’s administrators authorized torture , including what we now call waterboarding, held misbehaving prisoners after their sentences had expired until they apologized and justified these actions as beneficial to prisoners.

These gaps between theory and practice, including the use of torture punishments, were common at other American prisons in the 19th century and into the 20th. Other penal reformers–turned-administrators engaged in similar malfeasance despite their apparently genuine commitment to humanitarian values.

The situation was even more dire at prisons that were explicitly designed to be punitive and lacked Eastern’s humanitarian motivations .

Beyond the Stanford experiment

Even including these past failures, modern prisons rarely devolve as quickly and decidedly into a den of overt torture and serious mental breakdown as seen in the “Stanford Prison.”

It does happen — the Abu Ghraib torture scandal and the retaking of Attica Prison following the 1971 riot are graphic illustrations of how prison can unleash the worst of human nature with terrible consequences — but such extreme cases remain rare. Prisons’ negative effects are typically less dramatic and do less to capture the public imagination.

There is something about prisons that is damaging. But what is it?

Even the most humanely designed prisons have negative effects on the people living and working inside. And that is the deep truth we are still seeking to understand and the Stanford Prison Experiment effectively illustrates.

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What the Stanford Prison Experiment Taught Us

In August of 1971, Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo of Stanford University in California conducted what is widely considered one of the most influential experiments in social psychology to date. Made into a New York Times best seller in 2007 ( The Lucifer Effect ) and a major motion picture in 2015 ( The Stanford Prison Experiment ), the Stanford Prison Experiment has integrated itself not only into the psychology community but also popular culture. The events that occurred within this experiment, though disturbing, have given many people insight into just how much a situation can affect behavior. They have also caused many to ponder the nature of evil. How disturbing was it? Well, the proposed two-week experiment was terminated after just six days, due to alarming levels of mistreatment and brutality perpetrated on student “prisoners” by fellow student “guards.”

The study aimed to test the effects of prison life on behavior and wanted to tackle the effects of situational behavior rather than just those of disposition. After placing an ad in the newspaper, Zimbardo selected 24 mentally and physically healthy undergraduate students to participate in the study. The idea was to randomly assign nine boys to be prisoners, nine to be guards, and six to be extras should they need to make any replacements. After randomly assigning the boys, the nine deemed prisoners were “arrested” and promptly brought into a makeshift Stanford County Prison, which was really just the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department building. Upon arrival, the boys’ heads were shaved, and they were subjected to a strip search as well as delousing (measures taken to dehumanize the prisoners). Each prisoner was then issued a uniform and a number to increase anonymity. The guards who were to be in charge of the prisoners were not given any formal training; they were to make up their own set of rules as to how they would govern their prison.

Over the course of six days, a shocking set of events unfolded. While day one seemed to go by without issue, on the second day there was a rebellion, causing guards to spray prisoners with a fire extinguisher in order to force them further into their cells. The guards took the prisoners’ beds and even utilized solitary confinement. They also began to use psychological tactics, attempting to break prisoner solidarity by creating a privilege cell. With each member of the experiment, including Zimbardo, falling deeper into their roles, this “prison” life quickly became a real and threatening situation for many. Thirty-six hours into the experiment, prisoner #8612 was released on account of acute emotional distress, but only after (incorrectly) telling his prison-mates that they were trapped and not allowed to leave, insisting that it was no longer an experiment. This perpetuated a lot of the fears that many of the prisoners were already experiencing, which caused prisoner #819 to be released a day later after becoming hysterical in Dr. Zimbardo’s office.

The guards got even crueler and more unusual in their punishments as time progressed, forcing prisoners to participate in sexual situations such as leap-frogging each other’s partially naked bodies. They took food privileges away and forced the prisoners to insult one another. Even the prisoners fell victim to their roles of submission. At a fake parole board hearing, each of them was asked if they would forfeit all money earned should they be allowed to leave the prison immediately. Most of them said yes, then were upset when they were not granted parole, despite the fact that they were allowed to opt out of the experiment at any time. They had fallen too far into submissive roles to remember, or even consider, their rights.

On the sixth day, Dr. Zimbardo closed the experiment due to the continuing degradation of the prisoners’ emotional and mental states. While his findings were, at times, a terrifying glimpse into the capabilities of humanity, they also advanced the understanding of the psychological community. When it came to the torture done at Abu Ghraib or the Rape of Nanjing in China, Zimbardo’s findings allowed for psychologists to understand evil behavior as a situational occurrence and not always a dispositional one.

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The 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment Showing Authoritarian Abuse Still Relevant Today

by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.

You may not remember the 1971 Stanford University Prison Experiment. Maybe you were not yet born, but the outcome of this infamous study depicted a reality where everyday people, when assigned the role of “jailer,” almost immediately morph into sadistic, power-hungry, conformists who manage to find pleasure in abusing their prisoners. The study is as relevant in analyzing today’s unbridled prison guards or police officers, as it was in a controlled environment nearly 50 years ago.

The experiment was the brainchild of Stanford University psychology professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who provided unequivocal proof that, under the right conditions, power and authority often blur the lines of right and wrong and corrupt the psyche to perform unthinkable acts, including the abuse of our fellow human.

The 1971 study recruited 24 students to participate in a roleplay experiment in which nine would be assigned as “jailers” or “prison guards” and 15 would be assigned as captives. The experiment took place in the basement of one of the Stanford buildings, which was converted into a makeshift jail, complete with impenetrable jail cells. The structure was designed to assure that the “imprisoned” students could not casually discontinue the experiment at their will, and it also assured that the prison guards had complete and utter control over their captives.

The roleplay would be performed over a two-week period but was subsequently shut down after only five days because the student guards became so physically and verbally abusive to student prisoners that irreparable harm seemed likely. Zimbardo was forced to intervene out of fear for the wellbeing of his imprisoned students who displayed signs of extreme stress, anxiety, and helplessness as a result of the excessive force and abuse being levied against them.

Was it the role that each student played when assigned the authority as “guard,” or did these student guards already have a violent and controlling disposition prior to their assignment? The answer was obvious to Zimbardo in that the selection process was entirely random, and the students selected as “jailers” showed no obvious sign of aggression when compared to those selected as “prisoner.” Zimbardo’s findings suggest that it is the role given to the student “guards” that changed their personality and relaxed their sense of conscience. The title of “jailer,” in and of itself it seems, inspired a larger than life, more authoritarian role, and one that seemed to permit them to believe they could act with impunity.

Fast forward to today. As we view the scenes on national news that illuminate from the flat screens in our living room, we become mesmerized by the violence playing out in the streets of cities like Portland, Rochester, Kenosha, or Minneapolis. Suddenly, we find ourselves taking sides with a certain faction of that unrest, and we allow a small part our personality to become enraged even while sitting alone at home. We experience anger, frustration, stress, or helplessness, depending on the social narrative we have adopted for ourselves. The Stanford experiment may actually play out in our life as we view world events from the sidelines. We find ourselves deeply committed to the narrative with which we have aligned. We take sides and often block out the opposition’s perspective as nonsense or doublespeak. Even from our living room, we find ourselves playing the role of protestor, or anti-protestor, or law enforcement, and we fantasize about how we might make a difference. We grow more emotionally vested from the energy that radiates out of our television or computer screen, and we begin to realize that we relate to the role of authoritarian or that of victim, but seldom are we able to appreciate both.

Consider a recent scene involving a group of protesting mothers in Portland, each standing side by side in a show of resistance with interlocked arms. These “moms,” clad in bicycle helmets, took a position in front of other protestors both as a show of solidarity and also as a statement that they wished to protect fellow protestors from police brutality. They believed that their presence, as a group of non-violent, peaceful moms, would likely curtail police from further brutality. The moms were dead wrong. It seems that several military-clad law enforcement officers assigned to contain the protest perceived these particular protestors as no different from any other and, as such, proceeded to spray tear gas in the face of several “moms” in a show of force that suggested, “we have the authority, you don’t.”

What compelled these officers to act with such unnecessary aggression? Was it the uniform? Was it the energy from the street? Was it the sense of camaraderie and loyalty they held for their fellow officers as part of a larger systemic mission? Zimbardo would likely suggest that their sense of authority in that environment devolved into something known as “structural violence.”

Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist at Yale School of Medicine, attests that, much like the Stanford Prison Experiment, it is “about the influence of institutional structure. In defense of such overzealous or authoritarian actions by individuals representing law enforcement, we make the convenient excuse that it is merely the actions of ‘a few bad apples.’” Lee, however, believes that such acts of aggression are a product of “structural violence,” which she describes as “the most lethal form of violence.”

Punishment v. Therapy

“Structural violence” is borne out of an authoritarian regime or a culture of punitive rules and laws. It is the mindset that believes punishment, rather than behavioral therapy, is a more effective means of criminal justice. Consider the prison system. One may simply evaluate a prison system’s record on re-offense and recidivism. The U.S. maintains one of the worst recidivism rates on the world stage yet qualifies as one of the most punitive systems, housing more prisoners per capita and under longer sentences than any other country in the world. Simply put, it is failure on multiple levels.

Societies such as those found in the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland follow a very different criminal justice and penal philosophy. The premise for these advanced countries is to focus on reform rather than retribution. From the moment of entry, the system is designed to focus on re-entry back to society. These penal systems are staffed predominantly by behavioral psychologists and social workers dedicated to behavioral enhancement. The programming is designed to assimilate a prisoner back to his community as a productive member of society. Prisoners are often housed in apartment-style living quarters where they are tasked with maintaining a budget while supporting a work schedule. They are praised for accomplishments rather than condemned for simply having been incarcerated. And, in many of these more advanced penal systems, prisoners are released with a sealed record so that no one in society is aware that the prisoner was ever incarcerated. To brand an individual as a felon for life is considered ludicrous by most advanced countries. Their mission is to give prisoners a true second chance at life.

Unfortunately, the opposite is true for the American penal system. In fact, nearly every aspect of the system is designed to disenfranchise a prisoner in an attempt to assure that he or she remains a “ward of the state” for life. Most prisoners, upon entry, are immediately dehumanized and are identified simply as a file number. Prison guards are instructed to use first names, never to shake hands or interact on a personal level, and they are discouraged from offering compliments or encouragement to even the most productive prisoner. “Correctional officer” is the epitome of oxymoronic, yet it is used throughout the American penal system.

We also must consider the number of prisoners in the U.S., both state and federal, who perish at the hands of violent authoritarian guards. According to another contributor to the authoritarian theory of “structural violence,” Dr. David Reiss, also a professor at Yale, states that, “under certain circumstances, people can act in ways that are very sadistic, that are very authoritarian, that are not part of what they consider their usual personality.”

‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’

We see this every day in America’s prisons. Correctional officers who travel to work from their home in a suburban neighborhood who have families, attend church, volunteer as coaches, and are otherwise good, decent, God-fearing individuals until they arrive “at the office.” Many guards as well as police officers undergo a kind of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” metamorphosis when they begin their shift. Some guards arrive onto the prison yard with a certain vengeance against their captives. They take on the role of disciplinarian driven by a personal crusade to punish those in prison for the prisoner’s previous misdeeds.

We see the same disposition displayed by police officers arriving on scene at a protest. All too often, these are the same individuals who deny that they are cruel, sadistic, or imposing, and they are often the very officers who receive praise and promotion from their superiors after an act of aggression. Reiss goes on to suggest, “it’s a process of first having to get past the denial and acknowledge that there is a problem.”

An observation that came out of the Stanford experiment was gleaned from the students who played the role of prisoner. They each felt powerless at the hands of their captors, and they began to believe that there was nothing they could do or say that would make a difference in those who were given the authority to imprison them. This very sentiment seems to resonate among many of the anti-authoritarian protesters who petition for justice through peaceful protests yet find their plea for change simply falling on deaf ears. Most believe that individual officers are compassionate and have empathy for a system in need of reform, but they play a role during the protest and often find themselves acting as part of a cohesive fighting unit commissioned to “defeat the enemy.”

Once an officer dons the uniform, he or she now represent the “authoritarian rule” of “law and order.” The regime takes on a personality of its own, tasked with the mission of presenting an overwhelming show of force to protect the sanctity of the system. This seems to be the moment when the peaceful protest and the role of peacekeeper breaks down. It is at this boiling point that projectiles are thrown, batons are unleashed, and sometimes bullets fly. It is war with Americans on one side and Americans on the other.

The “authoritarian rule” and the unintended outcome of “structural violence” happens in our prisons and on our streets, and throughout the criminal justice system. Unlike the Stanford experiment, today’s criminal justice system is unfortunately not an experiment. In 1971, the Stanford experiment quickly reached a level of uncontrollable chaos and would have presented catastrophic results had professor Zimbardo not intervened. All that may be needed today is the same level-headed leadership to intervene, to “pull the plug” and to snap everyone back to the reality – a reality that we are all on the same side. 

Source: salon.com

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50 Years On: What We've Learned From the Stanford Prison Experiment

The experiment generated important research into unexplored territories..

Posted August 16, 2021 | Reviewed by Tyler Woods

• What Is Shyness?
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• I developed 3 new areas of research after the Stanford prison experiment (SPE): good and evil, time perspective, and shyness.
• The SPE was closed down after 6 days because the "guards" became so brutal and as Superintendent, I was too caught up in my role.
• The Heroic Imagination Project teaches people how to be Everyday Heroes and take effective actions in challenging situations.

Fifty years ago this month I conducted a research experiment that could have been a blight to my career . Instead, what has become known as the Stanford prison experiment (SPE) drove me to extensively pursue the question: Why do good people do evil things? After three decades of research on this subject, I recorded my findings in The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (Random House, 2007).

But the SPE also led me to research three new topics that hadn’t previously been studied:

1) Heroism: Why, in difficult situations, some people heroically step forward to help others, oftentimes complete strangers, while others stand by and watch.

2) Time Perspective: The psychological time warp experienced by participants of the SPE—not knowing if it was day or night or what day it was—led to my research in people’s individual time perspectives and how these affect our lives.

3) Shyness : Rethinking shyness as a self-imposed psychological prison led me to conduct research on shyness in adults, and then create a clinic in the community designed to cure shyness.

The Experiment in a Nutshell

In August 1971, I led a team of researchers at Stanford University to determine the psychological effects of being a guard or a prisoner. The study was funded by the US Office of Naval Research as both the US Navy and the US Marine Corps were interested in the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners. In the study, 24 normal college students were randomly assigned to play the role of guard or inmate for two weeks in a simulated prison located in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department building. But the guards quickly became so brutal, and I had become so caught up in my role as Superintendent, that I shut down the experiment after only six days.

Challenging the Truth

There seem to be powerful silent barriers to dealing with new truths emanating from psychological laboratories and field experiments that tell us things about how the mind works, which challenge our basic assumptions. We want to believe our decisions are wisely informed, that our actions are rational, that our personal conscience buffers us against tyrannical authorities. Moreover, we want to believe in the dominating influence of our good character despite social circumstances. Yes, those personal beliefs are sometimes true, but often they are not, and rigidly defending them can get us in trouble individually and collectively. Let’s see how.

Denial and Finger Pointing

When we discover two or three ordinary American citizens administered extreme electric shocks to an innocent victim on the relentless commands of a heartless authority, we say, “no way, not me.” Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram’s obedience to authority research has been in the public arena for decades, yet we ignore its message of the power of unjust authority in undercutting our moral conscience. Similarly, the SPE research made vivid the power of hostile situational forces in overwhelming dispositional tendencies toward compassion and human dignity. Still, many who insist on honoring the dominance of character over circumstance reject its situational power message.

In 2004, people around the world witnessed online photos of horrific actions of American Military Police guards in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib Prison against prisoners in their charge. It was portrayed as the work of a “few bad apples” according to military brass and Bush administration spokespeople. I publicly challenged this traditional focus on individual dispositions by portraying American servicemen as good apples that were forced to operate in a Bad Barrel (the Situation) created by Bad Barrel Makers (the System).

I became an expert witness in the defense of the Staff Sergeant in charge of the night shift, where all the abuses took place. In that capacity, I had personal access to the defendant, to all 1,000 photos and videos, to all dozen military investigations, and more. It was sufficient to validate my view of that prison as a replica of the Stanford prison experiment on steroids, and of my defendant, Chip Frederick, as really a Good Apple corrupted by being forced to function for 12 hours every night for many months in the worst barrel imaginable. My situation-based testimony to the military Court Martial hearings helped reduce the severity of his sentence from 15 years down to only four years.

The January 6, 2021 insurrection is a recent example of some Good Apples being corrupted by a Bad Barrel. In this case, the Bad Barrel is the insidiousness of fascism led by the former president and other fraudulent politicians as well as media personalities. These “leaders” have been generously dumping poison in the Barrel and over the Apples with lies that feed the Apples’ deepest fears.

“The Stanford Prison Experiment” Film

In 2015, The Stanford Prison Experiment was made into a film starring Billy Crudup as me and Olivia Thrilby as Christina Maslach, the whistle-blowing graduate student (whom I later married) who pointed out the experiment had gone awry and had changed me to such a degree that she didn’t know who I was anymore. Her personal challenge led me to end the study the next day. The film received two awards at the Sundance Film Festival: best screenwriting and best science feature.

The Stanford Prison Experiment movie enables viewers to look through the observation window as if they were part of the prison staff watching this remarkable drama slowly unfold, and simultaneously observe those observers as well. They are witnesses to the gradual transformations taking place, hour by hour, day by day, and guard shift by guard shift. Viewers see what readers of The Lucifer Effect book account can only imagine. As these young students become the characters inhabited in their roles and dressed in their costumes, as prisoners or guards, a Pirandellian drama emerges.

The fixed line between Good, like us, and Evil, like them, is relentlessly blurred as it becomes ever more permeable. Ordinary people soon slip into doing extraordinarily bad things to other people, who are actually just like them except for a random coin flip. Other healthy people soon get sick mentally, being unable to cope with the learned helplessness imposed on them in that unique, unfamiliar setting. They do not offer comfort to their buddies as they break down, nor do those who adopt a “good guard” persona ever do anything to limit the sadistic excesses of the cruel guards heading their shifts.

Finally, the movie also tracks the emotional changes in the lead character (me) as his compassion and intellectual curiosity get distilled and submerged over time. The initial roles of research creator and objective observer are dominated by power and insensitivity to prisoners' suffering in the new role of Prison Superintendent.

Visit the official Stanford Prison Experiment website to learn more about the experiment.

Heroic Imagination

I should add that, along with continuing research in time perspectives and time perspective therapy , my new mission in life has been to empower everyone to wisely resist negative situational forces and evil by becoming Everyday Heroes in Training. Our non-profit Heroic Imagination Project (HIP) teaches ordinary people how to stand up, speak out and take effective actions in challenging situations in their lives.

Rosemary K.M. Sword and Philip Zimbardo are authors, along with Richard M. Sword, of The Time Cure: Overcoming PTSD with the New Psychology of Time Perspective Therapy.

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The Stanford Prison Experiment was massively influential. We just learned it was a fraud.

The most famous psychological studies are often wrong, fraudulent, or outdated. Textbooks need to catch up.

by Brian Resnick

The Stanford Prison Experiment, one of the most famous and compelling psychological studies of all time, told us a tantalizingly simple story about human nature.

The study took paid participants and assigned them to be “inmates” or “guards” in a mock prison at Stanford University. Soon after the experiment began, the “guards” began mistreating the “prisoners,” implying evil is brought out by circumstance. The authors, in their conclusions, suggested innocent people, thrown into a situation where they have power over others, will begin to abuse that power. And people who are put into a situation where they are powerless will be driven to submission, even madness.

The Stanford Prison Experiment has been included in many, many introductory psychology textbooks and is often cited uncritically . It’s the subject of movies, documentaries, books, television shows, and congressional testimony .

But its findings were wrong. Very wrong. And not just due to its questionable ethics or lack of concrete data — but because of deceit.

• Philip Zimbardo defends the Stanford Prison Experiment, his most famous work 

A new exposé published by Medium based on previously unpublished recordings of Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford psychologist who ran the study, and interviews with his participants, offers convincing evidence that the guards in the experiment were coached to be cruel. It also shows that the experiment’s most memorable moment — of a prisoner descending into a screaming fit, proclaiming, “I’m burning up inside!” — was the result of the prisoner acting. “I took it as a kind of an improv exercise,” one of the guards told reporter Ben Blum . “I believed that I was doing what the researchers wanted me to do.”

The findings have long been subject to scrutiny — many think of them as more of a dramatic demonstration , a sort-of academic reality show, than a serious bit of science. But these new revelations incited an immediate response. “We must stop celebrating this work,” personality psychologist Simine Vazire tweeted , in response to the article . “It’s anti-scientific. Get it out of textbooks.” Many other psychologists have expressed similar sentiments.

( Update : Since this article published, the journal American Psychologist has published a thorough debunking of the Stanford Prison Experiment that goes beyond what Blum found in his piece. There’s even more evidence that the “guards” knew the results that Zimbardo wanted to produce, and were trained to meet his goals. It also provides evidence that the conclusions of the experiment were predetermined.)

Many of the classic show-stopping experiments in psychology have lately turned out to be wrong, fraudulent, or outdated. And in recent years, social scientists have begun to reckon with the truth that their old work needs a redo, the “ replication crisis .” But there’s been a lag — in the popular consciousness and in how psychology is taught by teachers and textbooks. It’s time to catch up.

Many classic findings in psychology have been reevaluated recently

The Zimbardo prison experiment is not the only classic study that has been recently scrutinized, reevaluated, or outright exposed as a fraud. Recently, science journalist Gina Perry found that the infamous “Robbers Cave“ experiment in the 1950s — in which young boys at summer camp were essentially manipulated into joining warring factions — was a do-over from a failed previous version of an experiment, which the scientists never mentioned in an academic paper. That’s a glaring omission. It’s wrong to throw out data that refutes your hypothesis and only publicize data that supports it.

Perry has also revealed inconsistencies in another major early work in psychology: the Milgram electroshock test, in which participants were told by an authority figure to deliver seemingly lethal doses of electricity to an unseen hapless soul. Her investigations show some evidence of researchers going off the study script and possibly coercing participants to deliver the desired results. (Somewhat ironically, the new revelations about the prison experiment also show the power an authority figure — in this case Zimbardo himself and his “warden” — has in manipulating others to be cruel.)

• The Stanford Prison Experiment is based on lies. Hear them for yourself.

Other studies have been reevaluated for more honest, methodological snafus. Recently, I wrote about the “marshmallow test,” a series of studies from the early ’90s that suggested the ability to delay gratification at a young age is correlated with success later in life . New research finds that if the original marshmallow test authors had a larger sample size, and greater research controls, their results would not have been the showstoppers they were in the ’90s. I can list so many more textbook psychology findings that have either not replicated, or are currently in the midst of a serious reevaluation.

• Social priming: People who read “old”-sounding words (like “nursing home”) were more likely to walk slowly — showing how our brains can be subtly “primed” with thoughts and actions.
• The facial feedback hypothesis: Merely activating muscles around the mouth caused people to become happier — demonstrating how our bodies tell our brains what emotions to feel.
• Stereotype threat: Minorities and maligned social groups don’t perform as well on tests due to anxieties about becoming a stereotype themselves.
• Ego depletion: The idea that willpower is a finite mental resource.

Alas, the past few years have brought about a reckoning for these ideas and social psychology as a whole.

Many psychological theories have been debunked or diminished in rigorous replication attempts. Psychologists are now realizing it’s more likely that false positives will make it through to publication than inconclusive results. And they’ve realized that experimental methods commonly used just a few years ago aren’t rigorous enough. For instance, it used to be commonplace for scientists to publish experiments that sampled about 50 undergraduate students. Today, scientists realize this is a recipe for false positives , and strive for sample sizes in the hundreds and ideally from a more representative subject pool.

Nevertheless, in so many of these cases, scientists have moved on and corrected errors, and are still doing well-intentioned work to understand the heart of humanity. For instance, work on one of psychology’s oldest fixations — dehumanization, the ability to see another as less than human — continues with methodological rigor, helping us understand the modern-day maltreatment of Muslims and immigrants in America.

In some cases, time has shown that flawed original experiments offer worthwhile reexamination. The original Milgram experiment was flawed. But at least its study design — which brings in participants to administer shocks (not actually carried out) to punish others for failing at a memory test — is basically repeatable today with some ethical tweaks.

And it seems like Milgram’s conclusions may hold up: In a recent study, many people found demands from an authority figure to be a compelling reason to shock another. However, it’s possible, due to something known as the file-drawer effect, that failed replications of the Milgram experiment have not been published. Replication attempts at the Stanford prison study, on the other hand, have been a mess .

In science, too often, the first demonstration of an idea becomes the lasting one — in both pop culture and academia. But this isn’t how science is supposed to work at all!

Science is a frustrating, iterative process. When we communicate it, we need to get beyond the idea that a single, stunning study ought to last the test of time. Scientists know this as well, but their institutions have often discouraged them from replicating old work, instead of the pursuit of new and exciting, attention-grabbing studies. (Journalists are part of the problem too , imbuing small, insignificant studies with more importance and meaning than they’re due.)

Thankfully, there are researchers thinking very hard, and very earnestly, on trying to make psychology a more replicable, robust science. There’s even a whole Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science devoted to these issues.

Follow-up results tend to be less dramatic than original findings , but they are more useful in helping discover the truth. And it’s not that the Stanford Prison Experiment has no place in a classroom. It’s interesting as history. Psychologists like Zimbardo and Milgram were highly influenced by World War II. Their experiments were, in part, an attempt to figure out why ordinary people would fall for Nazism. That’s an important question, one that set the agenda for a huge amount of research in psychological science, and is still echoed in papers today.

Textbooks need to catch up

Psychology has changed tremendously over the past few years. Many studies used to teach the next generation of psychologists have been intensely scrutinized, and found to be in error. But troublingly, the textbooks have not been updated accordingly .

That’s the conclusion of a 2016 study in Current Psychology. “ By and large,” the study explains (emphasis mine):

introductory textbooks have difficulty accurately portraying controversial topics with care or, in some cases, simply avoid covering them at all. ... readers of introductory textbooks may be unintentionally misinformed on these topics.

The study authors — from Texas A&M and Stetson universities — gathered a stack of 24 popular introductory psych textbooks and began looking for coverage of 12 contested ideas or myths in psychology.

The ideas — like stereotype threat, the Mozart effect , and whether there’s a “narcissism epidemic” among millennials — have not necessarily been disproven. Nevertheless, there are credible and noteworthy studies that cast doubt on them. The list of ideas also included some urban legends — like the one about the brain only using 10 percent of its potential at any given time, and a debunked story about how bystanders refused to help a woman named Kitty Genovese while she was being murdered.

The researchers then rated the texts on how they handled these contested ideas. The results found a troubling amount of “biased” coverage on many of the topic areas.

But why wouldn’t these textbooks include more doubt? Replication, after all, is a cornerstone of any science.

One idea is that textbooks, in the pursuit of covering a wide range of topics, aren’t meant to be authoritative on these individual controversies. But something else might be going on. The study authors suggest these textbook authors are trying to “oversell” psychology as a discipline, to get more undergraduates to study it full time. (I have to admit that it might have worked on me back when I was an undeclared undergraduate.)

There are some caveats to mention with the study: One is that the 12 topics the authors chose to scrutinize are completely arbitrary. “And many other potential issues were left out of our analysis,” they note. Also, the textbooks included were printed in the spring of 2012; it’s possible they have been updated since then.

Recently, I asked on Twitter how intro psychology professors deal with inconsistencies in their textbooks. Their answers were simple. Some say they decided to get rid of textbooks (which save students money) and focus on teaching individual articles. Others have another solution that’s just as simple: “You point out the wrong, outdated, and less-than-replicable sections,” Daniël Lakens , a professor at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, said. He offered a useful example of one of the slides he uses in class.

Anecdotally, Illinois State University professor Joe Hilgard said he thinks his students appreciate “the ‘cutting-edge’ feeling from knowing something that the textbook didn’t.” (Also, who really, earnestly reads the textbook in an introductory college course?)

And it seems this type of teaching is catching on. A (not perfectly representative) recent survey of 262 psychology professors found more than half said replication issues impacted their teaching . On the other hand, 40 percent said they hadn’t. So whether students are exposed to the recent reckoning is all up to the teachers they have.

If it’s true that textbooks and teachers are still neglecting to cover replication issues, then I’d argue they are actually underselling the science. To teach the “replication crisis” is to teach students that science strives to be self-correcting. It would instill in them the value that science ought to be reproducible.

Understanding human behavior is a hard problem. Finding out the answers shouldn’t be easy. If anything, that should give students more motivation to become the generation of scientists who get it right.

“Textbooks may be missing an opportunity for myth busting,” the Current Psychology study’s authors write. That’s, ideally, what young scientist ought to learn: how to bust myths and find the truth.

Further reading: Psychology’s “replication crisis”

• The replication crisis, explained. Psychology is currently undergoing a painful period of introspection. It will emerge stronger than before.
• The “marshmallow test” said patience was a key to success. A new replication tells us s’more.
• The 7 biggest problems facing science, according to 270 scientists
• What a nerdy debate about p-values shows about science — and how to fix it
• Science is often flawed. It’s time we embraced that.

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Doing ill for ‘the greater good’: Understanding what really went on in the Stanford Prison Experiment

• written by Alex Haslam , Stephen Reicher & Jay Van Bavel

Just about every highschool and college psychology textbook offers extensive coverage of Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). The meaning of the SPE seemed obvious — that when given roles with power , people naturally become brutal tyrants. This message has had lasting influence, not only in psychology but in the world at large. However, after researchers have recently gained access to the SPE archives, it has come to light that much of what we thought we knew about the study is inaccurate. We asked three experts to weigh in on these recent events, and the resulting discussion is one that offers valuable insights not only into the SPE but also into the role of debate in science and way that we engage with, and teach about, psychology’s classic studies.   

Few readers will be unfamiliar with the story of the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). Conducted in the summer of 1971, the study involved randomly assigning 18 college students to roles as Prisoners and Guards in a simulated prison that had been created in the basement of the Department of Psychology at Stanford University [ 1 , 2 ]. The researchers’ claim was that they simply stood back and watched what happened, and, in particular, that they provided no training to the Guards.

Their hypothesis was that the participants’ “behavioural scripts associated with the oppositional roles of Prisoner and Guard” — which were “the sole source of guidance” — would be sufficient for the prison to turn nasty [ 3 ]. There is little question that things did indeed turned nasty: after just six days the study had to be abandoned out of fear for the Prisoners’ welfare, such was the brutality of the Guards.

In the intervening 47 years this is a story that has been told by Zimbardo again and again, in media interviews, public lectures, and on the official website for the study. It was also a story that he retold in 2003 as he contributed to the legal defence of those who abused detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Here Zimbardo argued that the brutal acts that shocked the world were evidence of the power of roles to subvert perpetrators’ character and morality. He labelled this “The Lucifer Effect” — the title of his best-selling 2007 book [ 4 ] which also provided the basis for Kyle Alavarez’s eponymous film which faithfully and dramatically reenacted Zimbardo’s official version of events in the SPE [ 5 ]. This story is a staple of most of introductory psychology textbooks [ 6 ] and is retold to tens of thousands of college and high school students around the world every year [ 7 ].

In recent weeks, however, there has been another surge of interest in the SPE, rivalling any that have gone before. This time, though, the story is very different. It coincides with the digitization of material from the SPE in the Stanford University archives [ 8 ] which, for the first time, gives researchers (and anyone else who is interested) direct access to evidence from the study itself. In particular, it reveals hitherto unknown information about how Zimbardo and his colleagues conducted their research. Since the original paper was not published in a traditional peer-reviewed psychology journal, these critical methodological details have been hidden to scholars—and the public—for the past half century.

There is a wealth of such material in the archive, and researchers are now beginning to pore over it with interest. In this they have been guided by the exhaustive forensic work of the French researcher Thibault Le Texier [ 9 ], closely (and independently) followed by American journalist Ben Blum [ 10 ]. The title of Le Texier’s book —  Histoire D’Un Mensonge  [ Story of a Lie ] — gives a clear indication of his findings. Blum also uses the same word,  lie , to sum up his conclusion. The bottom line for both researchers is that many of the things we thought we knew about the SPE are flatly contradicted by the newly unearthed evidence.

Perhaps the most revealing piece of evidence in the archive is an 18-minute tape recording of a meeting between Zimbardo’s prison Warden, David Jaffe, and a reluctant Guard, John Mark [ 11 ]. This recording can be accessed at  https://purl.stanford.edu/wn708sg0050  (from 8:38 onwards).  Before you read on, we strongly recommend that you listen to this recording with your own ears and ask yourself: Is the guard conforming blindly to his role as a brutal guard or is he being pressured by the Warden to behave this way?

What you can hear on the tape is a Warden repeatedly cajoling the Guard to “toughen up”. He starts by saying “ We noticed this morning that you weren’t really lending a hand … but we really want to get you active and involved because the Guards have to know that every Guard is going to be what we call a tough Guard” . The Guard, John Mark, repeatedly resists this pressure from the Warden over the course of the meeting. Eventually, the Warden declares: “ When there’s a situation … [you have]  to have to go in there and shout if necessary. To be more  into  the action. ”

Far from being left to their own devices, it is thus clear that the Guards—or at least this one Guard—were told what they had to do, and then asked to account for themselves if they didn’t. It is not clear how many guards were exposed to pressure of this form, but it seems likely that even if only one Guard was told to behave this way, the message would have been shared among the Guards as the study progressed (noting that this was instruction directed at “every Guard”).  

This evidence blows Zimbardo’s role account out of the water. For what one sees in the meeting is that the Warden characterizes the Guard not as a research participant but as a confederate who is expected to act in ways defined by the Experimenters. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, no mention was made of such meetings in Zimbardo’s 2007 book, and they are conspicuously absent from Alvarez’s movie. While an early paper did allude to the fact that the Guards thought the Experimenters were primarily interested in the Prisoners’ behaviour [1, p.75], the significance of this point was never elaborated upon, and it was then dropped from later accounts.

This type of instruction is unheard of in psychology experiments. Indeed, Experimenters are expected to take steps to ensure that their actions, even subtle ones, do not unduly influence the behaviour of participants. But in this case, the Experimenters’ influence attempts were anything but subtle. In the face ongoing and stubborn resistance from the participant they took the form of explicit, repeated instructions to engage in patterns of behaviour that supported Zimbardo’s research goals.

Almost everyone we have shared this recording with has concluded that Zimbardo’s account of the SPE actually is deeply flawed. To ensure these intuitions had some validity, we conducted a Twitter poll asking people to listen to the tape and then evaluate Zimbardo’s account. This, of course, is not a scientific test. Nevertheless, just 4% of respondents felt that what happened in the meeting between Warden Jaffe and Guard Mark was consistent with the idea that the Guards in the SPE conformed “naturally” to role (the phrase used in the original article on the study [ 12 ]). In short, then, the received story about the Stanford Prison Experiment simply does not hold up in the face of the new evidence.

Although we were surprised to find such convincing evidence (evidence that, to be frank, we would have struggled to make up), its content was not wholly surprising to us. There had always been rumours that the SPE was not all that it seemed. Amongst other things, a number of letters published in the  Stanford Daily  over the years had suggested that the Experimenters had been more interventionist than they admitted. Thus, in 2007 the resistant Guard, John Mark, wrote that: “My opinion, based on my observations, was that Zimbardo began with a preformed blockbuster conclusion and designed an experiment to ‘prove’ that conclusion” [ 13 ].

Even before this, in 2006, we had noted that snippets of information that were already in the public  domain  — such as Zimbardo’s original briefing to his Guards which forms part of his film ‘Quiet Rage’ [ 14 ]  —   pointed to the importance of the Experimenter’s leadership in producing the toxicity of the SPE. But such evidence was limited in quantity and quality. It was hardly enough to topple what is possibly the single most famous study in social psychology. But the news from the archive and the Jaffe-Mark tape completely transform our understanding of this classic study. Now the evidence of the Experimenters’ intervention and leadership is simply undeniable.

Faced with this new evidence, one response has been to urge psychologists to wash their hands of the SPE. Tellingly, both Le Texier and Blum press for the study to be labelled as fraudulent and purged from classrooms and textbooks. We understand this response. Whether it will be successful is a quite different question. As Richard Griggs has noted [10], in the past, textbook authors have been reluctant to discuss the SPE’s shortcomings in favour of a simple compelling story.

But this new evidence is of a qualitatively different order. Moreover, it comes in the midst of greatly heightened concern about scientific fraud and misconduct. Certainly, it would be better to have the study expunged from the scientific record than to perpetuate a story which is strikingly inconsistent with the facts.

At the same time, we would urge against so sweeping a response. Certainly, the SPE is deeply flawed. The accounts we have been given omit crucial information, the degree of guard brutality is overemphasised, and Zimbardo’s explanation of the study is plainly untenable.

But it remains undeniable that  some  Guards did act in extreme ways.  So we still accept Zimbardo’s claim that the SPE is a powerful demonstration of the capacity for ordinary men to be turned to evil. But this needs to be properly explained. In this respect, at the same time as it discredits the old analysis, the information that has emerged from the archive is extremely helpful.

We were always concerned with what we saw as excessive interventionism with the SPE. That is why, when two of us ran our own prison study [ 15 ] we consciously declined to tell our participants what to do. In the absence of such direction, our Guards were very unwilling to take on their role and to impose discipline. This meant that they became increasingly unable to keep the Prisoners in order and eventually the system collapsed. It was only when a leader who promised to restore law and order in the prison came to the fore and cultivated a following among new Guards that the spectre of oppression akin to that seen in the SPE surfaced.

Over time, that experience motivated us to examine the role of leadership in toxic behaviour more generally, looking both at other studies that address how ordinary people can act with inhumanity (notably Milgram’s Obedience to Authority studies [ 16 ]) and real-world examples such as the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide [ 17 , 18 ]. This work culminated in a model of ‘identity leadership’ which argues that brutality occurs to the extent that leaders are able to persuade people (1) that they are part of a common group, (2) that the group’s cause is worthy, and (3) that brutal acts are necessary for the achievement of group goals [ 19 , 20 ].

But although the SPE set us on the path towards an identity leadership analysis, we were unable to find clear evidence that such an analysis could explain what happened in the SPE. Until now. As we show in a paper we have just submitted for publication [ 21 ], the archives provide us with the critical evidence to complete our argument.

What we hear in Warden Jaffe’s cajoling of Guard Mark is precisely the hallmarks of identity leadership. First, the Warden repeatedly uses collective pronouns (“we”) to characterize their relationship, endeavoring to position the Experimenters and Guards as a team working toward a common goal . Second, Warden Jaffe does not tell Mark to be tough for its own sake. Rather he tries to persuade him that toughness is something  necessary  for the achievement of shared ingroup goals. And, third he presents that cause as one that is fundamentally  noble and worth y.

In this case, the cause was much-needed improvement to the U.S. correctional system.  “ Hopefully what will come out of this study”,  the Warden tells the Guard , “is some very serious recommendations for reform, at least reform, if not, you know, revolutionary-type reform”.  “We’re not doing this because we’re sadists” , he says, we’re doing it to make the world a better place. This, then, is the very essence of identity leadership.

The end of tyranny

For the past 10 years we have sought to engage Zimbardo in debate around the above ideas. Not least, we have done so through peer-reviewed publications in leading journals that address the broad range of issues that his and our work raises — those concerning not only the origins of tyranny and resistance [ 22 ], but also the nature of leadership and followership [ 23 , 24 ], and the social determinants of stress and mental health [ 25 ]. 

These efforts have failed. Zimbardo has responded by labelling our prison study ‘reality TV’ [ 26 ], as deplorable, shameful and fraudulent [ 27 , 28 ], and he describes us as mere ‘bloggers’ [ 29 ]. What is fascinating here is the way that Zimbardo — responding to us and his other critics — uses the very same rhetorical techniques to try and engage the audience on his side as his Warden, Jaffe, used to try and engage Mark in the SPE. That is, he insists that his work is a moral crusade, aimed at promoting social justice. And that therefore those who threaten to derail his position need to be swatted aside for the sake of the cause.

As Zimbardo himself is unwilling to reconsider the meaning of his study, then we ask you, the reader, to listen to the evidence with your own ears and tell us what you hear. If you share our concern that his story does not fit his data, then we encourage you to change how you talk about the SPE to your students, colleagues and members of the public at large.

Correspondence regarding this piece can be addressed to Alex Haslam, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St. Lucia QLD 4072, Australia; e-mail: [email protected] ; Tel.: +61 (0)7 3346 9157

[1] Haney, C., Banks, C. & Zimbardo, P. (1973). A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison.  Naval Research Reviews . September (pp.1-17). Office of Naval Research: Washington, D.C.

[2] Haney, C., Banks, C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison.  International Journal of Criminology and Penology ,  1 , 69–97.

[3] Zimbardo, P. G. (2004). A situationist perspective on the psychology of evil: Understanding how good people are transformed into perpetrators. In A.Miller (Ed.),  The social psychology of good and evil  (pp.21–50).New York: Guilford. (p.39)

[4] Zimbardo, P. (2007).  The Lucifer Effect: How good people turn evil. London: Random House.

[5] Alvarez, K. P. (Dir.) (2015).  The Stanford Prison Experiment [Motion picture]. New York: IFC Films.

[6] Griggs, R. A. (2014). Coverage of the Stanford Prison Experiment in introductory psychology textbooks.  Teaching of Psychology ,  41 , 195-203.

[7] Bartels, J. M., Milovich, M. M., & Moussier, S. (2016). Coverage of the Stanford prison experiment in introductory psychology courses: A survey of introductory psychology instructors.  Teaching of Psychology ,  43 , 136-141.

[8] https://searchworks.stanford.edu/catalog?f%5Bcollection%5D%5B%5D=6022627

[9] Le Texier, T. (2018).  Histoire d’un mensonge: Enquête sur l’experience de Stanford . Editions la Découverte: Paris. 

[10] Blum, B. (2018). The lifespan of a lie.  Medium . https://medium.com/s/trustissues/the-lifespan-of-a-lie-d869212b1f62

[11] Accessible at:  http://purl.stanford.edu/wn708sg0050

[12] Haney, C., Banks, C. & Zimbardo, P. (1973). A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison.  Naval Research Reviews . September (pp.1-17). Office of Naval Research: Washington, D.C. (p.12)

[13] See: https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=32561

[14] Zimbardo, P. (1989). Quiet rage  (video). Stanford, CA: Stanford University.

[15] Reicher, S. D., & Haslam, S. A. (2006). Rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC Prison Experiment.  British Journal of Social Psychology ,  45 , 1-40.

[16] Milgram, S. (1974).  Obedience to authority: An experimental view.  New York: Harper & Row.

[17] Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2012). Contesting the “nature” of conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo’s studies really show.  PLoS Biology ,  10 (11): e1001426.

[18] Reicher, S., Haslam, S. A., & Rath, R. (2008). Making a virtue of evil: A five‐step social identity model of the development of collective hate.  Social and Personality Psychology Compass ,  2 (3), 1313-1344.

[19] Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2007). Beyond the banality of evil: Three dynamics of an interactionist social psychology of tyranny.  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33 , 615-622.

[20] Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2017). 50 years of “obedience to authority”: From blind obedience to engaged followership.  Annual Review of Law and Social Science ,  13 , 59-78. e109015. doi:10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110316-113710

[21] Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., Ranz-Schleifer, N., & Van Bavel. (2018).Rethinking the ‘nature’ of brutality: Uncovering the role of identity leadership in the Stanford Prison Experiment. Accessible at PsyArXiv Preprints: https://psyarxiv.com/b7crx

[22] Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2012a). When prisoners take over the prison: A social psychology of resistance.  Personality and Social Psychology Review ,  16 , 154-179.

[23] Reicher, S. D., Haslam, S. A., & Hopkins, N. (2005). Social identity and the dynamics of leadership: Leaders and followers as collaborative agents in the transformation of social reality.  Leadership Quarterly, 16 , 547-568.

[24] Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2007). Identity entrepreneurship and the consequences of identity failure: The dynamics of leadership in the BBC Prison Study.  Social Psychology Quarterly , 70 , 125-147. doi:10.1177/019027250707000204

[25] Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2006). Stressing the group: Social identity and the unfolding dynamics of responses to stress.  Journal of Applied Psychology, 91 , 1037-1052. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.91.5.1037

[26] See: http://www.prisonexp.org/response

[27] See: https://twitter.com/alexanderhaslam/status/1011876643927883776

[28] Zimbardo, P. (2006). On rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC Prison Study.  British Journal of Social Psychology ,  45 , 47–53.

[29] See: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/6/28/17509470/stanford-priso...

article author(s)

Alex Haslam

Alex Haslam is Professor of Psychology and Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Queensland. His research focuses on the study of group and... more

Stephen Reicher

Stephen Reicher is Wardlaw Professor of Psychology at the University of St. Andrews. His research is on social identity and group processes. Stephen is a... more

Jay Van Bavel

Jay Van Bavel is an Associate Professor of Psychology & Neural Science at New York University, an affiliate at the Stern School of Business in... more

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The New York Times

The lede | stanford experiment revisited: could it be replicated today.

Stanford Experiment Revisited: Could It Be Replicated Today?

This via Scientific American’s “ Sciam Observations ” blog, which notes that an artifact familiar to any of us who have sat through Psychology 101 has recently been added to the annals of YouTube: The Stanford Prison Experiment .

The controversial but undeniably iconic study, developed by Dr. Philip Zimbardo , a Stanford University psychology professor, has become part of the popular vernacular in its examination of authority, submission, groupthink, situational behavior, and the power of momentary wrinkles in the social fabric to induce chaos.

Dr. Zimbardo has established a Web site devoted to the prison experiment , complete with photos and video clips — as well as an analysis of some of the relevant parallels that the project might have to offer in light of what happened at Abu Ghraib prison , and perhaps even less egregious incidents at the Naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

(Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat and chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee, said on Friday that he plans to force the closure of both prisons .)

We won’t link to the YouTube videos here, because we’re fairly certain they’re a violation of someone’s copyright (it’ll take you two seconds to find it for yourself). After all, Dr. Zimbardo peddles a 50-minute DVD documentary of the project at the Stanford Prison Experiment Web site for $100 a pop, so the 5-part series on YouTube, each running about 10 minutes, seems a bit fishy.

(If we’re wrong, we trust someone will point it out.)

But in any event, we thought the folks at Scientific American had alighted on an interesting point: Seems a fair number of YouTube commenters — many presumably young folk — were appalled by what they saw (and anyone who remembers reading about and/or watching footage of the project for the first time might understand why).

For those who need a refresher, we defer to Scientific American’s Nikhil Swaminathan , who provided this synopsis of the experiment, which went famously awry:

Twenty-four male, college students, found to have no previous psychological problems, were selected for the study and then, by flip of a coin, assigned to be either prisoners or guards. After a relatively playful first day of settling into their roles, the prisoners became cagey and insolent and the guards became controlling and sadistic.

The planned two-week experiment was ended after six days, in Dr. Zimbardo’s own words , “because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated.”

Whatever your thoughts on Dr. Zimbardo’s methods, though, he was the go-to guy in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal, giving interview after interview — including to this paper — to help explain what might have been going on in the minds of the soldiers there.

Even Dr. Zimbardo concedes that much of the research he conducted in the 1970’s could not be done today, but given the profound need to understand just what makes men (and women) turn ugly in institutional settings, at least one of Mr. Swaminathan’s questions at the SciAm blog seems particularly apt: “Are there tweaks we could make to the experiment that would make it a less harrowing experience, but still data-rich?”

The BBC tried, for a 2002 television show , so why not?

Comments are no longer being accepted.

“We won’t link to the YouTube videos here, because we’re fairly certain they’re a violation of someone’s copyright…(If we’re wrong, we trust someone will point it out.)”

You mean ethically wrong? Legally? Both? Did you consult your legal counsel first? (Sorry, a poor attempt at sarcasm.) Why not post something because it *might* lead to copyright infringement? You don’t see that hesitation as being a little insidious? Think about it: You pointed to someone who did post it! Just link to the darn videos New York Times….

From personal experience I believe Dr. Zimbardo observations about prison behavior are not universal.

When I was about 20, pulled a few days of temporary guard duty at the army stockade at Nuremburg. An emotional nightmare caught between doing my duty and being gamed and baited by the prisoners. Fortunately, I was gone before being transformed into someone I didn’t want to be.

Had a very different experience many years later as the psychiatrist in charge of mental services at a large California county jail and prison farm. Good prison management and humane guards created a calm atmosphere inside the facility.

Dr. Zimbardo is not the right person to judge the Abu Ghraib situation. The soldiers involved faced an impossible situation. There is a world of difference between coming to a modus vivendi with prisoners from the same cultural background versus ideological enemies whose “hearts and minds” can never be won.

Very unfortunate today’s military lawyers are too quick to hang young soldiers and junior officers out to dry. I suspect the behavior of the Abu Ghraib prisoners were many times worse than the stockade inmates at Nuremburg mostly incarcerated for minor offenses like going AWOL and mouthing off to superiors.

I am surprised that Mark Klein is an M.D. and I hope he will not be in a position to supervise wards, whether prisons or otherwise. He seems to be hopelessly racistic. I am not displaying knee-jerk reaction. Carefully, and closely observe his statements. He defends the human rights violators by finding fault with the prisoners who do not have the same cultural background!, as if cultural background of prisoners and their guards must be the same for prisoners not to be abused. I am not sure but suspect that Klein, M.D. is white because a black or an asian or latino would not expect to have the same cultural background as the prisoner/guard. Klein, M.D. perhaps has rarely interacted with people who have different cultural backgrounds. Worse even is his statement that “the hearts and minds” of those prisoners can never be won because they have dissimilar cultural backgrounds! and automatically those prisoners (Abu Ghraib) are ideological enemies and behaved many times worse than the stockade inmates at Nuremburg!. He does not even remotely consider that some or many or even most of those prisoners could have been mistakenly or accidentally caught in the net!. I am not discounting the abhorrent nature of the crimes of some of those prisoners but then those Nuremburg prisoners committed at least equally, if not more, heinous crimes against humanity.

Klein, M.D. represents more closely the character and nature of the culprits of Abu Ghraib and Guantanomo than a person who has taken Hippocrate oath!

It’s not a copyright violation to link to something.

I second Subhash Reddy’s comments. Without benefit of counsel or even charges, at least some of the prisoners at Guantanamo may be being held on suspicion of being named Mohammed, and the government may be willing to let them rot there rather than admit its mistakes. This is why the right to a public trial, confronting accusers and witnesses, and all the other safeguards of our legal system have been developed.

And even if the prisoner undeniably deserves incarceration — and even if he taunts and screams abuse — even if, within the limited capacity of a prisoner, he threatens violence — the guard has the responsibility not to sink to the prisoner’s level. That’s called civilised behaviour; that’s decency; that’s the reason that the guard is on THIS side of the bars.

Or should be. But the sorry truth is that very few people can be trusted with power over others. Recall Lord Acton’s famous comment about the corrupting influence of power.

I believe Dr Klein was referring to the military stockade at Nuremberg not the prison where they held the Nazis for trial, they were 2 different areas, yes our military keeps prisoners in stockades, it use to be more prevalent than it is today, but most major military bases have them, Fort Lewis, Charleston Navy Base, and others I am sure.

People who have power over other people tend to abuse it if left unchecked

Mark Klein, M.D. apparently believes the sadism exhibited at Abu Ghraib was OK because the prisoners deserved it, not having the right cultural background and all. Any other questions as to why U.S. policies in Iraq have failed?

I think that the previous poster is confused about something. It seems to me that the “Nuremberg” prisoners in this case were American soldiers who were temporarily incarcerated in the “brig” on a U.S. Army base in Germany. They were NOT the Nazi war criminals who were convicted at Nuremberg after World War 2.

Mark Kelin, MD should have his medical licensed revocked or at least have it sent back to the matchbook company that he got the phoney sheepskin from. Stop posting and hit the books.

His analysis gives license for torute and abuse. In the words of Dr. King, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.

Regarding the Stanford experiement, I recently saw it on a PBS show that Dr. Zimbardo host. Powerful. Finding out how to tweak would be very interesting but the cost I believe to great to the individual.

A little too eager to find grounds for outrage, Subhash Reddy confuses the Nuremberg army stockade (temporary home to AWOL privates) with the Nuremberg trials of high-ranking Nazis for crimes against humanity. Dr. Klein’s last paragraph makes it clear, I think, that he is referring to the more innocuous use of the stockade.

Perhaps Dr. Klein did not mean quite what he wrote. Unfortunately, it seems that he has taken valid data, both from the Zimbardo study and his own experiences and drawn invalid conclusions. Zimbarbo demonstrated that normal people can become abusive under the correct circumstances. Dr. Klein’s own experience validates the fact that a well supervised environment is needed to avoid such abuses. The problems in Abu Ghraid arose out of an climate conducive to abuse, made so by policies, including a failure to fulfill obligations under the Geneva Conventions, in a quest for information. It also is worth noting that implicit in Dr. Klein’s comments is the presumption that the prisoners at Abu Ghraid all were guilty – something that we know to be untrue. In fact, had the prisoners, especially those who were not guilty of any crime, been treated in accordance with US law, including the United Nations Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions (of which the US is a signatory) at least hearts and minds of those wrongly detained may not have been lost, along with tens of thousands of other minds and hearts. SG M.D., J.D.

This is in response to Mr. Subhash Reddy. The crimes against any prisoner anywhere be it India of china or Iraq or US need to be condemned- period. But what Dr. Klein pointed out is not a “racistic” rant(I don’t know of any such word) and I think is a valid thought. As he points out, a good prison management system (which seems to be quite difficult in the case of abu ghraib or guantanamo)and a common cultural understanding(which obviously is absent in this case) will contribute to the better maintenance of law and order in a prison setting. Also the nature and the mindset of the incarcerated (small time convicts vs hate criminals like terrorists) will definitely play a role in the maintenance of the conditions. What I think he is asking is to take all the factors into account before making a carefull asessment of the situation and that the accused not be hanged to mollify public angst(which by the way seems to be quite pervasive against anything and everything). Also he says the group of criminals that HE supervised/guarded were in there for petty crimes but you try to read human rights violations just because of the name nurembUrg was mentioned.

True, many of the abu ghraib prisoners might be caught accidentally in the net. But that is true of any prison system including nuremberg. But in your rant, which is exactly what you are accusing him of doing, you spew your unwarranted racist vitriol(YES YOU CAN BE A RACIST EVEN IF YOU ARE AN ASIAN, LATINO OR BLACK) reflexively and say he does not deserve to be an M.D because he suggests that the nature and behaviour of criminals might have had some thing to do with this and take that into account. Just proves how prejudiced and clueless you are.

By the way it is hippocratic oath – not – hippocrate oath.

I just want to clarify my message above. When I said “the previous poster”, I meant Subhash Reddy. (His message was the last one on the list at the moment I submitted my message.)

I think Zambardo presented a very real aspect of human nature. In his experiments the “incarcerated” were not even criminals, so to say that the level of criminality (is this even a word? oh well, I am sure Chandra M.D. will correct me..lol) is an issue, is to ignore what Zambardo demonstrated. I hope Dr. Klein would enlighten us and share the name of the idealistic calm prison he worked at. I am sure many a budding psychological researcher would love the opportunity to examine what he and his colleuges were able to accomplish…

On another note why do you put M.D. after your name? Initials? Because unless we are talking about something you have some special knowlegde of, ie. expertise, we dont need to know your credentials. It does not make what you have to say anymore relevent or accurate, so unless you’re fishing for a new girlfreind leave the ego trip at home, Doc.

Is it obvious to anyone else that Dr. Klein assumes that the prisoners in Abu Ghraib were evil because they were muslims?

May I suggest that Dr. Klein has assumed the role of a prison guard at least twice. Once in the US Miliary and once,at least vicariously, as a zionist occupying arab territory. The second time produced all of the expected Stanford experiment results.

I find nothing racist, implicitly or explicitly, in Mark Klein M.D.’s post about Zimbardo. I do find his analysis superficial and thus simplistic in that he has based his defense of the Abu Ghraib guards on a generalization from his meager and only somewhat relevant experiences. But then, he is trained as a doctor. Subhash Reddy, on the other hand, is clearly racist.

I agree with Dr. Mark Klein. Dr. Zimbardo’s prison experiment is a controlled environment and lack professionalism.

But his experiment did bring out one important entity – that guards are human beings and need conditioning before they can properly conditioned others. A lot of prisons still employ guards as if guards are guards – locking and unlocking; escort duties and custody of inmates. Prisoners of today are even better educated than the guards – and because a number of penal institutions are situated in small town America, it basically serves as an economy to the small town.

A lot of small town folks do not have correctional education and do not know how to handle inmates well. Even though a correctional academy will provide education for these new recruits, its not necessary the several weeks training are sufficient enough to handle human interaction and behaviour.

Human are not machines and therefore a lot of compassion and understanding are needed to motivate individuals in a confined environment

I think you are right on! Zambardo’s experiment highlights what can easily happen, but not necessarily what will happen. Abu Ghraib and the New Mexico State prison riot, along with other horrific examples, should serve as constant reminders that Zambardo demonstrated a very real aspect of human nature. With constant training and education of prison guards maybe we can prevent the worst of what we have seen.

Sadly in the US, as Mr. Chan mentioned, our prisons are propping up many small town economies. They are also facing a rapid privatization. There is already a major spending gap between private and public prisons, and this is not because the private system is more efficient. Who knows what long term effects privatization will be?

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Landmark Stanford Prison Experiment Criticized as a Sham

by Steve Horn

It’s a study widely taught in high school and college psychology textbooks as a prime example of how, as Lord Acton put it, “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It’s also a study whose findings may very well have been falsely represented.

The study – the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment carried out by Prof. Philip Zimbardo – had already been called into question over the years, yet maintained legitimacy in mainstream psychology as a landmark piece of research. Zimbardo’s study revolved around a mock prison created at Stanford University, with 24 students randomly assigned the roles of “guards” or “prisoners.” The purpose was to observe the psychological effects on the participants; expected to last two weeks, the experiment ended after just six days due to the apparent trauma that some of the students experienced.

The conclusion, both at the time the study was conducted and as it was subsequently taught for decades, was that the subjects of the mock prison experiment quickly embraced their assigned roles, with the “guards” becoming authoritarian and sadistic, and the “prisoners” accepting the abusive authority of the guards and experiencing psychological trauma. The study was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research.

Over the past 47 years, though, the experiment has been criticized on the grounds of both its lack of generalizability and flawed methodology. Generalizability is defined as extending research findings and conclusions from a small sample population to the larger, general population.

“Prison Study” Advertisement Flawed

The Stanford Prison Experiment has been critiqued for the fact that it involved all white men except for a single Asian-American male. It was also advertised as a “prison study” in classified ads at the time, in order to attract volunteer participants. That, critics have said, would tend to attract people already interested in the authoritarian nature of prison settings.

“Individuals high in social dominance may be drawn to volunteer for the prison study due to the explicit hierarchical structure of the prison system, and such individuals are unconcerned about the human costs of their actions,” psychologists Thomas Carnahan and Sam McFarland explained in a 2007 article published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, an academic journal.

Just as problematic, others have argued, is the issue of generalizability. That is, could this same experiment be recreated in other settings using a random sample of participants? If not, in the world of social science, big picture takeaways should not be drawn from such a small-scale study.

In this case, the students who participated did not represent a solid cross-section from the general population due to the way the experiment was advertised. Thus, critics say, general conclusions should not be drawn from the results.

Accusations of Coaching

The generalizability critiques were made before the latest round of objections to the study. The newest volley of critiques center around the implementation of the study itself. While academic research typically includes an in-depth explanation of the methodology used, Professor Zimbardo was not fully transparent about his methods, and the study was not peer-reviewed – the gold standard in academia. The full scope of those methods finally came to light almost a half-century later, in the form of audio recordings and other documentation in historical archives housed at Stanford.

The first person to track down those materials was Le Texier Thibault, a French academic and filmmaker, who wrote up his findings in a book titled Histoire d’un Mensonge (History of a Lie). His book came out in April 2018, but did not become a news story in the U.S. until June, when author Ben Blum wrote an extensive blog post about Thibault’s conclusions. In the aftermath of that post, the “sham” of Zimbardo’s study – as Blum called it in his article – made international headlines. The article, titled “ The Lifespan of a Lie ,” went beyond Thibault’s archival findings by interviewing several of the students who participated in the study, as well as Prof. Zimbardo himself.

“Anybody who is a clinician would know that I was faking,” Douglas Korpi, one of the original student volunteers, told Blum in an interview. “If you listen to the tape, it’s not subtle. I’m not that good at acting. I mean, I think I do a fairly good job, but I’m more hysterical than psychotic.”

Zimbardo was accused of telling the students how to act before and during the study. Those were not new critiques, as they had been aired in a 2005 article by a consultant to the Stanford Prison Experiment who had spent 17 years incarcerated at San Quentin. But they had a new level of gravitas due to the fact that they came via the lens of primary archival materials and interviews, not merely hearsay.

For example, in a recording, one of Zimbardo’s assistants, David Jaffe, was heard telling a “guard” to be tougher with the “prisoners” – indicating that the participants were coached. “We really want to get you active and involved because the guards have to know that every guard is going to be what we call a ‘tough guard,’” Jaffe said in the recorded conversation.

“Serious Fraud”

The timing of Prof. Zimbardo’s study was important, as it was conducted in 1971 – the same year as both the Attica and San Quentin prison riots. His research offered a simple explanation for such incidents: the prison environment created monsters of everyone involved and it was the nature of the carceral system itself that should bear the blame. Not long after his study came out, Zimbardo was invited to testify before Congress at a special hearing in San Francisco, applying his findings to the recent riots.

“In the wake of the prison uprisings at San Quentin and Attica, Zimbardo’s message was perfectly attuned to the national zeitgeist,” wrote Blum. “A critique of the criminal justice system that shunted blame away from inmates and guards alike onto a ‘situation’ defined so vaguely as to fit almost any agenda offered a seductive lens on the day’s social ills for just about everyone.”

According to a 2017 academic paper , 95 percent of criminologists have cited Zimbardo’s study without skepticism since 1971. Further, the Stanford Prison Experiment is often taught in most entry-level psychology and criminology courses with little critique, and as a seminal study in the field. It has also been made even more famous via the release of a movie, “ The Stanford Prison Experiment ,” which won two awards at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Zimbardo’s colleagues in the psychology community have called the recent critiques of his research a watershed moment not only within academia, but for the impact on psychological research more generally.

“The Stanford Prison [Experiment] – as it is presented in textbooks – presents human nature as naturally conforming to oppressive systems. This is a lesson that extends well beyond prison systems and the field of criminology – but it’s wrong,” wrote Jay Van Bavel , a professor of neuroscience and psychology at New York University.

Van Bavel’s colleague at NYU, psychology professor David Amodio, further examined the real-world effects that Zimbardo’s famous study has had.

“The serious fraud seems to have occurred between Zimbardo and a complicit audience in the media, policy makers, and general public. Zimbardo couldn’t convince his scientific peers in social psychology, so he circumvented the field and went straight to the people,” Amodio stated . “This, to me, is a very different kind of fraud – it’s not about a breach in scientific practice, but in how science is communicated and consumed....”

Queensland University psychologist Alex Haslam had tried to recreate the study in 2002, but the subjects in his study who assumed the roles of “guards” did not become brutal or abusive. “We didn’t reproduce that core finding” from the Stanford Prison Experiment, he said. “The standard account [of the research] has no credibility whatsoever now.”

Zimbardo’s Response

Prof. Zimbardo, now 85 years old, posted a lengthy rebuttal to the latest round of critiques on the study’s website, www.prisonexp.org/response.

“For whatever its flaws, I continue to believe that the Stanford Prison Experiment contributes to psychology’s understanding of human behavior and its complex dynamics,” he wrote. “Multiple forces shape human behavior: they are internal and external, historical and contemporary, cultural and personal. The more we understand all of these dynamics and the complex way they interact with each other, the better we will be at promoting what is best in human nature.”

The renewed debate about Zimbardo’s scholarship, should it extend beyond the walls of academia and into the world of public policymaking, could have profound impacts on the future of policies concerning incarceration for years to come. 

Sources: www.researchgate.net, www.static1.squarespace.com, www.psych.nyu.edu, www.psypost.org, www.tandfonline.com, www.vox.com, www.pitt.edu, www.searchworks.stanford.edu, www.netflix.com, www.journals.sagepub.com, www.stanforddailyarchive.com, www.editions-zones.fr, www.threadreaderapp.com, www.globalnews.ca

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Investigating the Stanford Prison Experiment

History of a lie, publisher description.

In 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo ran the now famous Stanford prison experiment to show that prison could make normal people behave in pathological ways. Based on the first thorough investigation in the archives of the experiment and on interviews with about half of its participants, this book shows that the Stanford prison experiment is far from being scientific. In particular, the guards knew what results were expected from them, they were trained and supervised by the experimenters, and they were following a schedule and a set of rules written by the experimenters. The experimenters deceived the guards and made them believe they were not subjects. They also borrowed many elements from a previous student experiment without disclosing this information in their reports. The prisoners were not allowed to leave the experiment at will, and they were conditioned by the experimenters. The mock prison situation was unrealistic. Most participants did not forget they were participating in an experiment, and many responded to demand characteristics. The data was not collected properly. And the conclusions were pre-written according to non-academic aims. This book goes beyond the experiment to provide ample background and context, in order to understand how the experiment was planned, financed, recorded, and divulged in the press and within the academic. It discusses also the role played by Philip Zimbardo in the trial of one of the guards of Abu Ghraib, as well as the impact of mass media on science, the debates between personal psychology and social psychology, and the specific nature of cold war social science.

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