The Stanford Prison Experiment
Students of high school or university psychology classes are probably familiar with the Stanford Prison Experiment. Run in 1971 at the behest of the U.S. Navy, the experiment intended to investigate the cause of conflict between guards and prisoners in military correctional facilities. Dr. Philip Zimbardo and his team chose 24 male Stanford students and divvied them up into guards and prisoners. Turning the basement of one of the student halls into a makeshift prison, Zimbardo placed his subjects under surveillance and watched as the prisoners became passive and the guards exhibited authority by way of sometimes sadistic psychological torture. Zimbardo ended the experiment 6 days into its 2-week run, mostly due to the objections of his fiancée. She felt Zimbardo had become an unhealthy part of his own experiment.
A documentary about this could potentially be fascinating, as some of the actual experiment exists on film. Unfortunately, “The Stanford Prison Experiment” is a dramatization, and no matter how much it may adhere to the well-documented specifics of Zimbardo’s work, it is a massive failure. It prefers to abstract the experiment from any psychological theories or details, opting instead to merely harp on endless, repetitive scenes of prisoner abuse. One particular guard, who thinks he’s Strother Martin in “ Cool Hand Luke ,” abuses the prisoners. The prisoners take the abuse, rebelling once or twice before becoming passive. Zimbardo glares at a TV screen doing nothing while his guards break the rules of the contract everybody signed at the outset. Repeat ad nauseum.
These scenes are supposed to shock the viewer, but they did not work for me, because I just didn’t care. The film reduces the entire experiment to a Dead Teenager movie whose slasher just roughs them up. Prisoners are referred to by numbers in order to strip them of their personal identities, and the film keeps them at this level of distance. We never get to know any subject outside of brief sketches, so the victims become disposable. Despite the best efforts of the actors on both sides of the law, the film is completely clinical in its depiction, striking the same note for over 2 hours. It gets real dull, real fast.
I didn’t care because this isn’t remotely like an actual prison; it’s a bunch of privileged kids playing dress-up for $15 a day. Even a priest Zimbardo hires as a prison chaplain tells the doctor “it’s good that these privileged kids experience prison life.” The actual reasons for the experiment (and its military involvement) are never expressed in Tim Talbott ’s screenplay, so the priest’s comment almost serves as the reason for these tests. And the film takes great pains to tell us that nobody in the experiment suffered “long term psychological damage” after it was abruptly cancelled. I’m sure someone who has experienced the harsh realities of actual prison life would feel relieved that these young men weren’t scarred.
The best scene in “The Stanford Prison Experiment” deals with an actual prisoner and serves to highlight my disdain for how the film trades emotion and details for exploitative shocks. The fantastic Nelsan Ellis (last seen in “ Get On Up ”) plays Jesse, an ex-con brought in by Zimbardo’s team as an expert witness to their proceedings. At a mock parole board hearing, Jesse rips into an inmate, treating him as inhumanely as possible while verbally shredding the inmate’s explanation for why he should be paroled. After the stunned inmate is sent back to his cell, Jesse reveals that he was recreating his own parole board treatment. He tells Zimbardo that playing the role of his own tormentor “felt good, and I hated that it did.” This, in a nutshell, is what the actual experiment sought to explore, that is, the nature of even the nicest human beings to commit evil. Jesse’s revelation, and the psychological toll it takes on him, is more effective than anything else the film conjures up. If only the movie had spent more time interacting with the Strother Martin-wannabe’s own thoughts rather than trudging him out only for sadism.
The film reduces Zimbardo to some kind of megalomaniac who doesn’t know what he is doing. This makes his research seem half-assed and unethical. He watches the guards strike the prisoners (a direct violation of the rules) and the film paints him as the biggest villain of all. He challenges anyone who questions his methods and authority, and at one point, he absurdly sits in a hallway like a low-rent Charles Bronson hoping for the return of a subject who might jeopardize his research. (In the actual case, Zimbardo simply moves the prison to a location unknown by the subject.) And though his intentions are to “feminize” the prisoners by giving them “dresses” that barely hide their genitalia, “The Stanford Prison Experiment” implies that Zimbardo’s sole reason for stopping the experiment was the moment when his guards forced the inmates into a gay sex pantomime. Violence and hog-tying inmates were OK, but none of that gay stuff, the movie seems to say.
Billy Crudup deserves some kind of medal for his attempt to breathe life into his one dimensional character, as do actors like Ezra Miller and Olivia Thirlby . But they are undermined by a poor script, horror movie-style music and ripe dramatizations that exist solely to make the viewer feel superior. I despise movies like this and “ Compliance ” because they pretend to say something profound about their scenarios but are, at heart, cynically manipulative trash designed to make audiences pat themselves on the back for not being “like those people.” Had we been forced to identify with anyone, prisoner or guard, the film might have achieved the palpable discomfort of forcing us to look at ourselves. That was one of the goals of the actual Stanford Prison Experiment. This movie just wants to superficially disturb, and it’s not even successful at that.
Odie Henderson
Odie “Odienator” Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .
- Keir Gilchrist as John Lovett
- Tye Sheridan as Peter Mitchell - Prisoner 819
- Ezra Miller as Daniel Culp - Prisoner '8612'
- Moisés Arias as Actor
- Billy Crudup as Dr. Philip Zimbardo
- Gaius Charles as Banks
- Thomas Mann as Prisoner 416
- Michael Angarano as Christopher Archer
- Olivia Thirlby as Christina Zimbardo
- Nelsan Ellis as Jesse Fletcher
- Johnny Simmons as Jeff Jansen
- James Wolk as Penny
Director of Photography
- Jas Shelton
- Kyle Patrick Alvarez
- Tim Talbott
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Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment Worksheet
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A worksheet to go along with the Stanford Prison Experiment video. Contains 8 questions (in order) to help students focus on the video and the events that are occurring. The ZIP file contains both an editable Microsoft Word document as well as a PDF version.
By purchasing this file, you agree not to make it publicly available (on websites, etc.) or to share with any other teachers. It is intended for classroom use only.
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Stanford Prison Experiment Movie Guide (Zimbardo) 1. Watch the opening with the newspapers. How much would the college students be paid a day? 2. The students were asked why they wanted to participate in the study. The first three all had the same. answer.
on. Experiment was conducted. 2. Why is the title "Stanford. so. Experiment" a misnomer? 3. What incentives were there for prisoners to outwardly accept t. r. ole and act "crazy"? 4. List three unethical instances concerning the conduct of.
Yes or No. What isthe name of the researcherthatdeveloped/ and ranthe Stanford Prison Experiment? What did we all learn from this experiment? *Hint: The answer is not verbatim from the movie, think critically (: Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Werethe guardsallowed privilege toeverhit or assault the prisoners ...
Engage your AP Psychology students with this comprehensive and thought-provoking movie guide and student worksheet bundle focused on the film The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015). Designed specifically for AP Psychology topic 9.3 (Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience), this bundle provides a range of resources that align with the units and ...
Stanford Prison Experiment Homework. Go to youtube. In search engine, type "Stanford Prison Experiment.". Click on the video entitled "Feature Film - The Stanford Prison Experiment (documentary). It is the one that is 29 minutes. Watch and take notes on the questions below.
This Stanford Prison Experiment BUNDLE includes 3 of my lessons on Zimbardo's famous experiment. I use the TED Talk and the article summary during my Unit 14 Social Psych unit and the movie after the AP Exam. You will find that the article summary works great for introducing the experiment. I ten. 3. Products. $4.50 $6.50 Save $2.00. View Bundle.
Stanford Prison Experiment: Lesson PlanStanf. Experiment: Lesson Plan Topic In the middle of August 1971, Philip G. Zimbardo held what would be later ca. ed the Stanford Prison Experiment. Twenty four participants were split int. two groups: prisoners and guards. Originally planned to last two weeks, the study was stopped after six days once an ...
The Stanford prison experiment was a social psychology experiment influenced by the Milgram experiment that attempted to investigate the psychological effects of perceived power, focusing on the struggle between prisoners and prison officers. Consider the steps of the Scientific Method, and think of each step in the scientific method as question.
Instructions: Please watch Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment before completing this homework assignment. Then, thoroughly answer all of the following questions. Your response to each question should be approximately 100 words per question response. Since everyone is doing their assignment based on the same film, citations are not ...
Worksheet Stanford Prison Experiment - Free download as Word Doc (.doc / .docx), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. The document contains questions about Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment. The questions cover details about the experiment such as the setup of the mock prison, how guards and prisoners were prepared for their roles, how guards asserted their ...
The document summarizes the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted in 1971. In the study, researchers recruited male college students to role-play as either prisoners or guards in a mock prison set up in the basement of the Stanford psychology department building. Over the course of 6 days, the experiment had to be shut down early due to the guards exhibiting extreme abusive behavior towards the ...
About This Quiz & Worksheet. Philip Zimbardo and colleagues at Stanford University conducted an experiment that would help them understand how people could allow the mistreatment and torture of ...
1971, Stanford University - Philip Zimbardo, the Psychology Dept. Chair runs a social experiment that attempts to recreate the social interactions between prisoners, guards and prison administrators in the basement of a building on campus. What happened within a few days has become the focal point of countless studies and debates to this day.
Stanford Prison Experiment- Comprehension Questions. Subject: Psychology. Age range: 16+. Resource type: Worksheet/Activity. File previews. pdf, 474.7 KB. This worksheet for students focuses on Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, and is typically used alongside a video (there are several great videos available on Youtube, e.g. https://www ...
Despite the best efforts of the actors on both sides of the law, the film is completely clinical in its depiction, striking the same note for over 2 hours. It gets real dull, real fast. I didn't care because this isn't remotely like an actual prison; it's a bunch of privileged kids playing dress-up for $15 a day.
The Stanford Prison Experiment is a 2015 American docudrama psychological thriller film directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, written by Tim Talbott, and starring Billy Crudup, Michael Angarano, Ezra Miller, Tye Sheridan, Keir Gilchrist, Olivia Thirlby, and Nelsan Ellis.The plot concerns the 1971 Stanford prison experiment, conducted at Stanford University under the supervision of psychology ...
The Stanford Prison Experiment run by researcher, Zimbardo, is one of the most famous experiments in psychology. I use this Netflix movie in my sociology course during my deviance and crime unit. This would also be easily adapted for a psychology class, law class, or English class in a Lord of the Flies unit. It highlights issues of ethical research and abuse of power.This movie guide is 12 ...
This resource is a single lesson to teach the Stanford Prison Experiment to your students. It includes: Motivation/Anticipatory Set: An interesting hook to get your class interested in the experiment. Application Procedures: A summary of the experiment, discussion questions and a worksheet that can be used as a webquest or to go along with the ...
Engage your AP Psychology students with this comprehensive and thought-provoking movie guide and student worksheet bundle focused on the film The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015).Designed specifically for AP Psychology topic 9.3 (Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience), this bundle provides a range of resources that align with the units and psychological concepts covered in the course.
Subject: Psychology. Age range: 14-16. Resource type: Worksheet/Activity. File previews. docx, 32.47 KB. pdf, 131.05 KB. Stanford Prison Experiment. The worksheet consists of an information text. Based on this text, there are various exercises such as matching tasks, multiple-choice questions, open questions and true-false questions.
The 'print and go' aspect makes this a perfect worksheet to leave for a sub lesson, homework task or in class study session where you might not have access to a computer lab or laptops. The Stanford Prison Experiment No Prep Revision Activities include: Vocab rich text on consciousness with an interactive fill in the blanks response
The Stanford Prison Experiment was an interesting movie. The way the experiment turned out versus the expectations was different and changed completely. The independent variable was the roles that the participants were assigned, which was determined by a coin flip. The dependent variable was the participants' behaviors throughout the experiment.
A worksheet to go along with the Stanford Prison Experiment video. Contains 8 questions (in order) to help students focus on the video and the events that are occurring. The ZIP file contains both an editable Microsoft Word document as well as a PDF version. By purchasing this file, you agree not to make it publicly available (on websites, etc ...