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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 .

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The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015)

Rated R for language including abusive behavior and some sexual references

122 minutes

Billy Crudup as Dr. Philip Zimbardo

Ezra Miller as Daniel Culp - Prisoner '8612'

Michael Angarano as Christopher Archer

Tye Sheridan as Peter Mitchell - Prisoner 819

Olivia Thirlby as Christina Zimbardo

Johnny Simmons as Jeff Jansen

Gaius Charles as Banks

James Wolk as Penny

Thomas Mann as Prisoner 416

Moisés Arias as Actor

Keir Gilchrist as John Lovett

Nelsan Ellis as Jesse Fletcher

• Kyle Patrick Alvarez
• Tim Talbott

Director of Photography

• Jas Shelton

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The Stanford Prison Experiment

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Watch The Stanford Prison Experiment with a subscription on Paramount+, rent on Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Prime Video, Apple TV.

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As chillingly thought-provoking as it is absorbing and well-acted, The Stanford Prison Experiment offers historical drama that packs a timelessly relevant punch.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Kyle Patrick Alvarez

Billy Crudup

Dr. Philip Zimbardo

Michael Angarano

Christopher Archer

Moises Arias

Anthony Carroll

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Review: ‘The Stanford Prison Experiment’ Revisits the Psychology of Power and Abuse

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By Neil Genzlinger

• July 16, 2015

Fine ensemble acting brings a notorious psychological study to life in “The Stanford Prison Experiment.” The research, now 44 years old, may today seem as if it merely confirmed the obvious, but the film, by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, certainly makes you feel the claustrophobic intensity of what went on.

The film is about a 1971 study done by a Stanford University professor, Philip Zimbardo, in which students were recruited to play either guards or inmates in a make-believe prison. Guess what? People put in positions of authority, like prison guards, sometimes abuse that authority, and in startlingly cruel ways.

Anatomy | The Stanford Prison Experiment

In this anatomy of a scene, kyle patrick alvarez narrates a sequence from his film..

Billy Crudup, playing Dr. Zimbardo, is the most recognizable name in the cast, and he does nice work portraying a man who, as the experiment spirals out of control, is torn between protecting the students and protecting his research. But it’s the young actors playing the students who really make an impression.

Michael Angarano is downright terrifying as a guard who patterns his behavior after a particularly nasty character in the prison movie “Cool Hand Luke,” which had come out in 1967. The students playing prisoners adopt attitudes ranging from rebellious to meek, but none are immune to the brutal treatment of their overseers.

The experiment’s methodologies and meanings have been analyzed endlessly over the years, and the film doesn’t delve deeply into these interpretations and critiques. It doesn’t need to; this stark and riveting version of events speaks for itself.

“The Stanford Prison Experiment” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for language and intensity.

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Nat Geo Orders ‘The Stanford Prison Experiment’ Docuseries From ‘Trafficked’ Producers

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EXCLUSIVE: National Geographic is wading into one of psychology’s most debated studies from the past 50 years. The network has given a green light to The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking The Truth (wt), a three-part docuseries from Juliette Eisner, Alex Braverman and Muck Media , the producers behind Nat Geo’s Emmy-nominated  Trafficked: Underworlds with Mariana van Zeller.

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The three-part series centers on the stories of the participants, many of whom are speaking out in detail for the first time. They are then brought to a replica film set of the “prison,” where they revisit pivotal moments, explore the power of perspective, and attempt to find consensus about what really happened over the course of those six days.

Additionally, the docuseries includes interviews with Zimbardo and his wife, Dr. Christina Maslach, who encouraged him to shut down the project, and looks at Zimbardo’s childhood, his motivations for beginning the project, and the notoriety he found in the aftermath.

“ The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking The Truth (wt) is an unprecedented documentary series that pushes the boundaries of storytelling while shedding new light on a pivotal moment in psychological history,” said Tom McDonald, EVP of Global Factual and Unscripted Content, National Geographic. “Through the voices of those who lived it, we, along with our longtime partners at Muck Media, invite audiences to reexamine the Stanford Prison Experiment and confront the truths that lie beneath the surface.”

The Nat Geo docuseries is directed by Eisner and executive produced by Braverman and Eisner. For Muck Media, Darren Foster, Cristina Costantini, Jenn Wood and Krista Manis are executive producers. Josh Cole is executive producer for National Geographic.

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Currently you are able to watch "The Stanford Prison Experiment" streaming on fuboTV, Paramount+ with Showtime, Paramount Plus Apple TV Channel , Paramount+ Amazon Channel, AMC+ Amazon Channel, Showtime Apple TV Channel, IFC Films Unlimited Apple TV Channel or for free with ads on Pluto TV. It is also possible to rent "The Stanford Prison Experiment" on Amazon Video, Apple TV online and to download it on Apple TV, Amazon Video.

This film is based on the actual events that took place in 1971 when Stanford professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo created what became one of the most shocking and famous social experiments of all time.

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What happens when a college psych study goes shockingly wrong? Based on the notorious true story, THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT stars Billy Crudup (Watchmen) as Stanford University professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who, in 1971, cast 24 student volunteers as prisoners and guards in a simulated jail to examine the source of abusive behavior in the prison system. The results astonished the world, as participants went from middle-class undergrads to drunk-with-power sadists and submissive victims in just a few days. Featuring an extraordinary cast including Ezra Miller, Olivia Thirlby, Tye Sheridan, Keir Gilchrist, Michael Angarano, and Thomas Mann, and created with the close participation of Dr. Zimbardo himself, THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT is a chilling, edge-of-your-seat thriller about the dark side of power and the effects of imprisonment.

Product details

• Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ NR (Not Rated)
• Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 2.4 ounces
• Item model number ‏ : ‎ 35225379
• Director ‏ : ‎ Kyle Patrick Alvarez
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ Multiple Formats, NTSC, Color, Widescreen
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 2 hours and 2 minutes
• Release date ‏ : ‎ November 17, 2015
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Olivia Thirlby, Ezra Miller, Nelsan Ellis, Matt Bennett, Ki Hong Lee
• Studio ‏ : ‎ IFC Independent Film
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B013W7LTL6
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
• #15,207 in Drama DVDs

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The Stanford Prison Experiment

About one of the most controversial experiments in the history of psychology, invoked to shed light on everything from the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, to prison rioting and police brut... Read all About one of the most controversial experiments in the history of psychology, invoked to shed light on everything from the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, to prison rioting and police brutality. In 1971 Professor Philip Zimbardo recruited students to play prisoners or guards in... Read all About one of the most controversial experiments in the history of psychology, invoked to shed light on everything from the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, to prison rioting and police brutality. In 1971 Professor Philip Zimbardo recruited students to play prisoners or guards in a makeshift jail to examine the nature of good and evil. Due to last two weeks, within da... Read all

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• Christina Maslach
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• Jul 22, 2023
• May 11, 2002 (United Kingdom)
• United Kingdom
• BBC Documentary on the Stanford Prison Experiment
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• £100,000 (estimated)

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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)

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