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Participants in the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment reflect on how that study changed their lives

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Stanford University’s alumni magazine has a fascinating article in its July/August issue about the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment , a psychological study of prison life that went horribly wrong.

The study has, of course, been the subject of several books and documentaries. It has also been referred to frequently during the past decade in the wake of disclosures of abuses by U.S. military and intelligence personnel at prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. But to mark the study’s 40 th anniversary, Stanford alum (and Bloomberg Businessweek deputy editor) Romesh Ratnesar went back to several of the experiment’s key participants and asked them for their recollections of what happened during those six days in the basement of the Stanford psychology building and how it changed their lives. If you’re unfamiliar with the study, this article would be a good place to begin.

The experiment was led by professor Philip Zimbardo , then in his late 30s. He and his team recruited 24 male students, who were randomly divided into two groups: prisoners and guards. The students were told they would be paid $15 a day and that the experiment would run for two weeks.

It lasted only six days.

As Ratnesar explains, “no one knew what, exactly, they were getting into. Forty years later, the Stanford Prison Experiment remains among the most notable — and notorious — research projects ever carried out at the University. For six days, half the study’s participants endured cruel and dehumanizing abuse at the hands of their peers. At various times, they were taunted, stripped naked, deprived of sleep and forced to use plastic buckets as toilets. Some of them rebelled violently; others became hysterical or withdrew into despair. As the situation descended into chaos, the researchers stood by and watched — until one of their colleagues finally spoke out.”

In addition to Zimbardo, Ratnesar interviewed a graduate student who assisted with the study, two of the student “guards,” one of the “prisoners” (who led a “prison revolt” during the experiment), and the female psychologist who became appalled when she saw what was going on and ultimately persuaded Zimbardo to halt the experiment.

Here’s a reflection about the experiment from the graduate student, Craig Haney , who is now a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, an authority on the psychological effects of incarceration, and an advocate for prison reform:

I … realized how quickly we get used to things that are shocking one day and a week later become matter-of-fact. During the study, when we decided to move prisoners to different parts of the prison, we realized that they were going to see where they were and be reminded they’re not in a prison — they’re just in the psych building at Stanford. We didn’t want that to happen.

So we put paper bags over their heads. The first time I saw that, it was shocking. By the next day we’re putting bags on their heads and not thinking about it. That happens all the time in real correctional facilities. You get used to it. I do a lot of work in solitary-confinement units, on the psychological effects of supermax prisons. In places like that, when prisoners undergo the so-called therapy counseling, they are kept in actual cages. I constantly remind myself never to get used to seeing the cages.

And here is Zimbardo’s recollection of the moment he realized the truth of what was happening in the experiment — that it was out of control:

We had arranged for everyone involved — the prisoners, guards and staff — to be interviewed on Friday by other faculty members and graduate students who had not been involved in the study. Christina Maslach, who had just finished her PhD, came down the night before. She’s standing outside the guard quarters and watches the guards line up the prisoners for the 10 o’clock toilet run. The prisoners come out, and the guards put bags over their heads, chain their feet together and make them put their hands on each other’s shoulders, like a chain gang. They’re yelling and cursing at them. Christina starts tearing up. She said, “I can’t look at this.”

I ran after her and we had this argument outside Jordan Hall. She said, “It’s terrible what you’re doing to these boys. How can you see what I saw and not care about the suffering?” But I didn’t see what she saw. And I suddenly began to feel ashamed. This is when I realized I had been transformed by the prison study to become the prison administrator. At that point I said, “You’re right. We’ve got to end the study.”

Maslach was dating Zimbardo at the time, and soon became his wife. Interestingly, it was that relationship, she told Ratnesar, that enabled her to speak out. She said she wasn’t sure that she would have had the courage to confront Zimbardo if they had been only work colleagues.

The experiment generated immediate controversy. Although a 1973 review by the American Psychological Association found that the experiment hadn’t breached existing ethical standards, those standards were later revised to ensure against any similar kinds of behavioral studies.

You can read all the interviews, and see photos of the participants (including some taken during the experiment itself) at Stanford Magazine’s website .

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Celebrating 13 Years of History

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After the Stanford Prison Experiment, what happened to all the ‘prisoners’ and ‘guards’ who were involved? Did any of them sue/have long term mental health issues from what went on in there?

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

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

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.

Additional resources

Watch video

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

How The Stanford Prison Experiment Revealed The Darkest Depths Of Human Psychology

Conducted by philip zimbardo in august 1971, the stanford prison experiment revealed how ordinary people could quickly adopt abusive behaviors when given authority and power..

In October 2004, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Ivan “Chip” Frederick was facing some hard time. He had been one of the accused in the notorious torture scandal that erupted in March of that year from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, and his court-martial saw disturbing details aired about prisoner abuse, sleep deprivation, and sexual humiliation.

One of the witnesses that Frederick called to defend him — and arguably one of the reasons he only got eight years for his crimes — was Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who argued that Frederick’s actions weren’t necessarily a reflection on his character, but were instead a reaction to the environment that commanding officers had allowed to develop in Abu Ghraib.

Zimbardo explained that, given the right set of circumstances, almost anyone could be induced to do some of the things of which Frederick stood accused: beat naked prisoners, defile their religious items, and force them to masturbate with hoods over their heads.

PrisonExp.org Prisoners with bags forced over their heads await their “parole hearing,” their release from the Stanford Prison Experiment upon its conclusion.

Frederick’s actions, Zimbardo argued, were the predictable outcome of his assignment, rather than the isolated acts of a “bad apple,” which had been the Army’s approach to shifting blame onto certain individuals.

At the court-martial, Zimbardo was able to speak with a certain expertise on the subject of prisoner abuse because he had once participated in it himself.

For six days, between August 14 and 20, 1971, he had been the “warden” of a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University’s Jordan Hall.

In an effort to better understand what drove the interactions of prisoners and their guards — funded by a grant from the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps — Zimbardo devised a psychological experiment that saw two-dozen otherwise normal young men randomly assigned the role of either prisoner or guard for what was intended to be a two-week role-playing exercise.

PrisonExp.org A naked prisoner stands behind bars during the Stanford prison experiment.

Under Philip Zimbardo’s watch, the Stanford prison experiment turned into a struggle between suffering prisoners and the manipulative, sadistic guards who enjoyed torturing them.

The results were written up and widely circulated, making Zimbardo famous throughout his profession, and revealing something very disturbing about how little it sometimes takes to turn people into monsters.

How The Stanford Prison Experiment Got Started

A decade before the Stanford prison experiment, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram carried out an experiment in 1961 to test the willingness of some people to deliver electric shocks to strangers.

The Milgram experiment , as it came to be known, revealed that it’s upsettingly easy to talk some young men into shocking another person to death (which they were led to believe they may have done, although no subjects were actually harmed).

PrisonExp.org A guard escorts a blindfolded prisoner through the makeshift Stanford prison.

This experiment pointed the way forward for more research into situational behavior and the premise that we are only as good or as bad as our surroundings will let us be. Philip Zimbardo was not present for the Milgram experiment, but he had been a psychology student at Yale until 1960, and by 1971, he was ready to take Milgram’s work one step further at Stanford.

That’s when the U.S. Office of Naval Research commissioned him to study the psychology of confinement and power as it exists between guards and their inmates. Zimbardo accepted the grant and got to work on the Stanford prison experiment right away.

The site chosen for the experiment was in the basement of Jordan Hall, on the Stanford campus. There, Zimbardo set up four “prison cells” using interior partitions, as well as a “warden’s office” and various common areas for the guards to use for recreation. There was also a small broom closet, which will become relevant later on.

Zimbardo recruited subjects for his test by placing an ad in the Stanford Daily , asking for “male students” who were needed “to participate in a psychological study of prison life.” The ad promised compensation of $15 a day (equivalent to roughly $90 in 2017).

When his subjects applied for the experiment, Zimbardo carefully screened them to weed out potential bad apples. Anyone with a criminal record, however minor, was declined participation, as were applicants with histories of psychological aberrations and behavioral problems.

In the end, Philip Zimbardo was left with 24 healthy college-age men who had no detectable tendencies toward violence or other negative behaviors. Shortly before the Stanford prison experiment began, the subjects were randomly assigned to either the prisoner group or the guard group.

The night before the experiment, Zimbardo held an orientation meeting for his 12 guards. He gave them firm instructions regarding their duties and limitations: Guards would be organized into three eight-hour shifts to provide round-the-clock supervision of the inmates.

They were given military-surplus khakis, mirrored sunglasses, and wooden batons as a symbol of authority. The guards were all told not to hit or otherwise physically abuse the prisoners, though they were told they’d have wide discretion in how they treated the 12 prisoners under their watch.

PrisonExp.org Stanford Police handcuff prisoner #8612 before transporting him to the prison.

The next day, members of the Palo Alto Police Department arrived at the designated prisoners’ homes and took them into custody. The 12 men were booked into the county jail and searched, fingerprinted, and had their mugshots taken.

At length, they were transported to the Stanford campus and escorted into the basement, where the guards were waiting for them. Prisoners were given ill-fitting smocks and told to wear large stocking caps. Each had a short length of chain looped around his ankle to drive home their status as prisoners. They were assigned three to a cell and given a lecture about the rules.

Every angle had been worked out to make the prisoners feel subordinate to the guards, including the large numbers sewn onto their smocks; guards had been told to address inmates only by these numbers, rather than allowing them the dignity of names.

By the end of the Stanford prison experiment’s first day, both sides had fully internalized the rules and begun acting toward each other as if their power dynamic had existed all along.

Revolt and uproar.

PrisonExp.org Prisoners are made to face the wall as a guard watches over them.

Though both sides had internalized their roles and some inmates seemed to chafe at the boredom and the arbitrary nature of their guards’ commands, the first day of the Stanford prison experiment had passed by more or less uneventfully.

Prisoners would sometimes be pulled out of their cells and searched, even though they couldn’t possibly have had contraband that early in the experiment. The guards were generally rude and condescending. They often demanded that prisoners repeat their numbers to drive home their lowly status. Menial tasks were assigned, and penalties, such as being ordered to hold stress positions for extended periods, were being imposed.

By that first night, the guards had decided to punish less-compliant prisoners by taking away their mattresses, forcing them to sleep on the cold floor. They also disrupted the inmates’ sleep by being noisy in their common area, which was adjacent to the cells.

By noon on day two, prisoner #8612 had started showing the signs of a breakdown. He started screaming and raging, and Zimbardo himself had to come in to control the situation. The prisoner refused to calm down, and so the decision was made to release him from the study for his own sake.

This took the form of a “parole hearing,” accompanied by an extended stint in the broom closet, which was doing duty as a solitary confinement area. The release process was intended to be long and arduous, in order to further the impression that the prison was an all-powerful institution where inmates were helpless.

Bear in mind that this was all a voluntary exercise, and that — in principle, at least — everybody was free to go whenever they wanted to.

PrisonExp.org As a form of punishment during the Stanford experiment, a prisoner is made to scrub a toilet.

While prisoner #8612 was being processed out, the other 11 prisoners were in an uproar. Arbitrary and cruel treatment by the guards had already provoked inmates to refuse to obey orders or to leave their cells. They refused to answer to their numbers when called.

Inmates in one cell barricaded themselves in by propping a mattress against the door. By that evening, things were bad enough that some guards, who were free to go home after their shift, volunteered to stay overtime and suppress the revolt.

After the clinical staff observing the experiment went home, the guards left on duty hit prisoners with blasts from a fire extinguisher and transferred them to the other cells to increase crowding. The empty cell was reserved for “good” inmates who hadn’t participated in the uprising. Perceived ringleaders, on the other hand, were shut up in solitary for hours.

Prisoners in the regular cells were refused leave to use the bathroom and were instead given buckets to relieve themselves in. The buckets were then left unemptied in the cell all night long. The next day, guards forced the prisoners to stand in stress positions without their clothes on for hours at a time.

Too Dangerous To Continue

PrisonExp.org Guards begin a strip search of a prisoner.

By day three of the Stanford prison experiment, things were rapidly coming unglued. According to Zimbardo, roughly one-third of the guards spontaneously developed signs of genuine sadism, consistently inventing new forms of punishment and egging the other guards on as these punishments were inflicted on the helpless inmates.

Guards and inmates both — who had, remember, been randomly assigned their roles only a few days prior — began identifying with their side and acting collectively. After a few days, most of the inmates had joined together in a hunger strike to protest their conditions, while the guards were pulling extra shifts for free and becoming increasingly paranoid.

When a rumor got started about prisoner #8612 coming back with a small army of supporters to stage a jailbreak, none other than Zimbardo ordered the basement prison to be disassembled and moved upstairs while he waited alone in the basement for the attackers. He later said his plan, if the man had actually shown up, was to tell him the experiment had been terminated and to send him home.

PrisonExp.org Philip Zimbardo waits alone in the basement of Jordan Hall for the rumored attack on the experiment led by a prisoner who became unhinged and was released early.

By this point, Philip Zimbardo had become fully immersed in the experiment himself.

As he later admitted, it was never going to be possible for him to maintain objectivity in his role as prison administrator, and so he found himself bound up in the fantasy world he had created for his test subjects. Zimbardo found himself becoming morbidly curious about where the experiment was going and what new developments each day would bring.

By day four, when certain inmates were becoming suicidal and apparently losing their grip on reality, Zimbardo thought the situation interesting enough to bring in his girlfriend — herself a psychology graduate student — to have a look at what was going on. The woman, 26-year-old Christina Maslach, was appalled by what she saw and said so.

In the past, whenever a new person was brought in from the outside — such as prisoner #416, who replaced #8612 — they went through a period of normalization.

But #416’s objections to his treatment got him locked up in solitary, where the guards would torment him by pounding on the door with their hands in shifts. By the time he got out of the solitary confinement closet, prisoner #416 had been sufficiently broken as to accept the routine of prison life as normal.

Maslach, on the other hand, couldn’t be locked up or broken in that way, and her fresh perspective on what was going on shocked her boyfriend into seeing his nightmare through her eyes. So it was that on day six of the Stanford prison experiment, Dr. Zimbardo announced its termination — much to the dismay of his guards, who had grown to quite like the power they had been abusing all week.

Afterward, everybody was still unhinged enough that it took a full day to “parole” the remaining inmates, though — again — the experiment was over and they weren’t being paid anymore; they could have just left.

The Legacy Of The Stanford Prison Experiment Today

PrisonExp.org A guard wears his issued uniform while holding his baton during the Stanford prison experiment.

The Stanford prison experiment became a classic study of human psychology and power dynamics. Perhaps the most stunning findings were that the people who took part in the study almost instantly internalized their roles so completely that they seem to have forgotten that they even had lives outside of the prison.

Guards acted with exceptional brutality, as if they would never have to answer for their actions, while prisoners put up with appalling abuses of their human rights without, for the most part, demanding to be let go.

Perhaps even more disturbing, many researchers and graduate students had passed through the basement during the Stanford prison experiment, observed the conditions of the men’s confinement, and said nothing about it. Later on, Philip Zimbardo estimated that perhaps 50 people had seen what was going on in his basement prison, and his girlfriend was the only one who objected.

Zimbardo’s findings immediately found relevance when, just two weeks after the Stanford prison experiment ended, inmates in the notorious San Quentin and Attica prisons rose up in violent revolts that were strikingly similar to what had happened on day two of the experiment at Stanford.

Zimbardo was called to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about prison conditions and their effect on human behavior. Zimbardo’s contention had always been that external conditions, rather than an individual’s personality, determine how people react under stress.

Partly as a result of Philip Zimbardo’s research, the decision was made in the United States to separate juvenile and adult offenders as well as to impose stricter controls and protections for prison inmates who, for instance, wish to file a lawsuit challenging their conditions.

But the Stanford prison experiment, like the earlier Milgram experiment, had implications that go far beyond prison management.

PrisonExp.org A prisoner sits blindfolded inside the prison.

In both experiments, seemingly normal, mentally stable human beings were induced — with virtually no coercion and only a little encouragement — to commit horrific crimes against other people. In both cases, the decisions made by individuals would have been unthinkable had they been acting on their own, and strongly suggest that reactions can be conditioned by the local environment when the decisions are made.

This casts a gloomy light on the distinctions that society makes between criminals and law-abiding citizens, as well as suggesting some disturbing possibilities in regards to the perpetrators of humanity’s greatest crimes.

Nazi death squad members, for example, famously argued that they bore no personal malice, but were only following orders; if they had been ordered to do something other than shooting thousands of civilians, they would have.

The postwar trials of these men did not accept this as a defense, but Philip Zimbardo’s research suggests it might have been an excellent excuse; worse, it could be the excuse that any normal person uses when some dictator or other autocrat issues them with khakis and eyeshades, gives them a baton, and tells them to control the prisoners in their cells — as seems to have happened at Abu Ghraib, and probably many other places that didn’t make the news.

After this look at the Stanford Prison Experiment, read up on the most evil science experiments ever conducted . Then, discover what some of the cruelest Nazi research and experimentation contributed to medical science .

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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.

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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.

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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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What the Stanford Prison Experiment Taught Us

Guards with a blindfolded prisoner, still from the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Phillip Zimbardo

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 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.

Stanford University. About the Stanford Prison Experiment .

Stanford Prison Experiment. 2. Setting up .

Sommers T. An interview with Philip Zimbardo . The Believer.

Ratnesar R. The menace within . Stanford Magazine.

Jabbar A, Muazzam A, Sadaqat S. An unveiling the ethical quandaries: A critical analysis of the Stanford Prison Experiment as a mirror of Pakistani society . J Bus Manage Res . 2024;3(1):629-638.

Horn S. Landmark Stanford Prison Experiment criticized as a sham . Prison Legal News .

Bartels JM. The Stanford Prison Experiment in introductory psychology textbooks: A content analysis . Psychol Learn Teach . 2015;14(1):36-50. doi:10.1177/1475725714568007

American Psychological Association. Ecological validity .

Blum B. The lifespan of a lie . Medium .

Le Texier T. Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment . Am Psychol . 2019;74(7):823-839. doi:10.1037/amp0000401

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."

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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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE): Icon and Controversy

Introduction, archival sources.

Primary Documentation of the SPE
Biographical Background
SPE and Related Experiments in Media
SPE in Textbooks, Handbooks, and Histories of Psychology
Replication of the SPE and Related Replications
Psychological Prison and Punishment Literature Related to the SPE
Methodological Criticisms
Ethical Criticisms
Thibault Le Texier

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Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE): Icon and Controversy by David C. Devonis LAST REVIEWED: 26 August 2020 LAST MODIFIED: 26 August 2020 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199828340-0269

The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) took place at a time when the sources of authoritarianism and evil were a focal concern in psychology. It emerged from a tradition of activist social psychological research beginning with Solomon Asch in the 1940s and extending through Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments in the early 1960s. The SPE was a product of the research program of social psychologist Philip Zimbardo, a member of the Stanford psychology faculty since 1968. Discussions among Zimbardo’s students in spring 1971 led to a plan to simulate a prison environment. They converted portions of the basement of a University building into a combination booking room and jail. Zimbardo and a number of his graduate and undergraduate students took on supervisory roles. Before the Experiment began, paid participants recruited through newspaper advertisements were screened to eliminate obvious psychopathology, then randomly assigned to either the role of ‘guard’ or ‘prisoner.’ On the first experimental morning August 14, 1971, actual local police simulated an arrest of each of the prisoner participants. After they arrived, blindfolded, a simulated booking took place. Guards escorted them to the prison hallway where prisoners were required to strip and exchange their clothing for simple shifts and slippers. After a simulated spray delousing, they entered makeshift cells. After this, the Experiment evolved as an extended improvisation, by both the guards and prisoners, on prison-related themes. Episodes of deprivation, bullying, and humiliation emerged unplanned. Originally planned to run for two weeks, the Experiment lasted only six days, prematurely terminated when its supervising personnel judged that the simulation had gotten out of their control. The coincidence of its termination with the Attica prison uprising in New York led to its immediate dissemination in the news. Since then the SPE has become one of the most iconic psychological studies of psychology’s modern era. Although intended to expose and ameliorate bad prison conditions, its effectiveness in this regard diminished during a rapid shift in US prison policy, in the mid-1970’s, from reform to repression. Over succeeding decades, the Experiment continued to stimulate the popular imagination, leading to an extensive replication on British television and its portrayal in two feature films. Soon after its original publication, the SPE attracted criticisms of its methodology. After 2010, critical scrutiny of the SPE as well as similar iconic studies from the 1960s and 1970s increased, fueled by the growing ‘replication crisis’ in psychology. This most recent phase of criticism reflects not just a turn toward reflexive disciplinary self-criticism but also the increased availability of archival sources for examination. The SPE continues to excite both passionate support and equally passionate obloquy, much as have other comparable simulations of human social behavior.

Philip Zimbardo, the primary investigator of the SPE, has been unusually generous in making archival donations during his lifetime. Two of these are physical archives in two different locations: the Zimbardo (Philip G.) Papers at the Stanford University Archives and the Philip Zimbardo Papers at the Drs. Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology (CCHP) at the University of Akron. Alongside these is a virtual archive, the Stanford Prison Experiment website, maintained for over twenty years by Zimbardo and others. The Stanford Prison Experiment: 40 Years Later , a website constructed by the Stanford University archivist in connection with an exhibition at Stanford, contains links to much of the transcribed data collected by Zimbardo and his colleagues in 1971. Le Texier 2018 and Le Texier 2019 (cited under Thibault Le Texier ) represent the most complete use of the archives to date, and citations in these critiques of the SPE form a virtual finding aid for the many subdivisions of the available archival material.

Philip Zimbardo Papers. Drs. Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology (CCHP). Univ. of Akron, Akron, Ohio.

This collection, a subset (4.5 linear feet in 16 boxes) of the Stanford Zimbardo archive, is focused on the SPE. It contains SPE-specific materials, teaching materials, and materials relating to the development of Zimbardo 2008 (cited under Primary Documentation of the SPE ). The CCHP also holds several oversize folders of SPE materials and has some of the original props and costumes from the SPE. The finding aid also has a brief Zimbardo biography. The finding aid is available online .

The Stanford Prison Experiment .

Well-designed and informative website, maintained with National Science Foundation (NSF) funding under sponsorship of the Social Psychology Network, with links to much of the primary documentary and contextual material relating to the SPE as well as to major media presentations of the Experiment. Historically it evolved from the original slide show Zimbardo and White 1972 (cited under SPE and Related Experiments in Media ) circulated among social psychologists in the 1970s.

The Stanford Prison Experiment: 40 Years Later In Stanford Libraries: Special Collections and University Archives .

This site contains copies of material related to the SPE from the Stanford Archives, including accessible transcripts of several documents related to the SPE such as the original informed consent forms, audio clips, and photos, as well as links to the original eighty-slide slideshow from the 1970s.

Zimbardo (Philip G.) Papers. Stanford University Archives, Collection SC0750.

This collection runs 256 linear feet in 182 boxes, and contains material directly and peripherally related to the SPE, including a substantial amount of audiovisual and film material and materials used in Zimbardo’s classes at Stanford. The finding aid, available online , has a brief Zimbardo biography attached.

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Watch CBS News

Shocking "prison" study 40 years later: What happened at Stanford?

December 27, 2011 / 11:15 AM EST / CBS News

It's considered one of the most notorious psychology experiments ever conducted - and for good reason. The "Stanford prison experiment" - conducted in Palo Alto, Calif. 40 years ago - was conceived by Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo as a way to use ordinary college students to explore the often volatile dynamic that exists between prisoners and prison guards - and as a means of encouraging reforms in the way real-life prison guards are trained.

But what started out as make-believe quickly devolved into an all-too-real prison situation. Some student "guards" became sadistic overlords who eagerly abused the "prisoners," many of whom began to see themselves as real prisoners.

Just what happened in the basement of the Stanford psychology department all those years ago? Keep clicking for a glimpse back in time...

It all started with a newspaper ad: "Male college students needed for psychological study of prison life." Dr. Philip Zimbardo and his team selected 24 college students and offered them $15 per day for the two-week study. A coin-flip would decide who would be "prisoner" or "guard." Nobody, including Zimbardo, had any idea what was in store.

On a quiet Sunday in August, Zimbardo enlisted real Palo Alto police officers to help kick off the study - by arresting students from their homes for armed robbery. The idea was to make the experience as "real" as possible.

The students were read their rights, frisked, cuffed, then carted off to the Palo Alto police station.

At the police station, "suspects" were fingerprinted, read their charges, blindfolded, and taken to a holding cell to await transportation to the "prison" at Stanford.

While the "suspects" were being rounded up by the real-world police, Zimbardo and his team put the finishing touches on the "prison." They nailed bars on cells and set up a closet for solitary confinement - known as "the hole." Real ex-cons served as consultants to make things as realistic as possible.

A hidden video camera was installed, and cells were bugged so the researchers could see and hear what was happening at all times.

Many of the "prisoners" were still reeling from the surprise arrests when they arrived at the "prison." But things quickly grew even worse for the "prisoners," as they were stripped naked and "deloused" with a spray.

Each "prisoner" was issued a smock with ID number, stocking cap, rubber sandals - and each had a chain bolted to his ankle. The chain was to remind "prisoners" at all times that they were incarcerated and unable to escape.

"Guards" wore khakis, mirrored sunglasses, and carried around a whistle and a baton. They were untrained, free to do whatever they deemed necessary to maintain law and order. Some played nice, but others grew increasingly sadistic.

"Prisoners" expected some harassment and a poor diet when they volunteered. But they didn't expect to be rudely awakened at 2:30 a.m. the first night and forced to line up for roll call. "Guards" asserted authority by forcing "prisoners" to memorize their prison numbers and do push-ups.

On the second day of the experiment, the "prisoners" barricaded themselves in their cells, ripped off their numbers and caps, and began taunting the "guards." That surprised the researchers.

The "guards" responded by shooting fire extinguishes at the "prisoners," and then stripping the "prisoners" naked and removing their beds. "Guards" tossed the rebellion's leader into "the hole."

When the "guards" realized they couldn't always physically control their "prisoners," they turned to psychological tactics. The "guards" set up a "privilege cell" where the most cooperative "prisoners" got their clothes and beds back and were allowed to wash, brush their teeth, eat, and sleep.

"Guards" soon denied "prisoners" the right to use the bathroom, providing buckets. Emptying the bucket? That privilege was granted only to cooperative "prisoners."

"Prisoners" believed the "guards" were chosen because they were bigger and stronger. In reality, there was no height difference between the groups.

"Guards" put paper bags on the prisoners as they walked around - just one of many dehumanizing tactics.

This "prisoner," No. 8612, went into a fit of rage less than 36 hours into the experiment, telling his fellow "prisoners" that they couldn't quit the experiment. It wasn't true, of course, but the message seemed to terrify the other "prisoners."

Zimbardo set up visiting hours with some of the "prisoners''" friends and family. He had the "prisoners" clean themselves and their cells, and fed them a big meal so worried parents wouldn't insist that their kids leave the study. Some parents nevertheless complained to Zimbardo - but he brushed off their concerns.

Rumors soon spread that prisoner #8612, who had been released following his outbursts, was arranging a prison break to free the "prisoners." When Zimbardo caught wind of the plan, he tried unsuccessfully to arrange for the "prisoners" to be transferred to a real prison. "Guards" blindfolded "prisoners" and led them to a different floor.

Zimbardo waited all night, but the prison break never materialized. Like his study's participants, Zimbardo seemed to have blurred the lines between reality and make-believe, by acting like a real-world prison superintendent.

After the rumored jail break, the "guards" escalated their harassment of the "prisoners." They upped the number of jumping jacks and push-ups the "prisoners" were told to do, and forced them to do unpleasant tasks, including scrubbing toilets.

Zimbardo called in a priest to interview "prisoners," just as it might hapen in a real prison. To Zimbardo's amazement, "prisoners" introduced themselves to the priest not by their names but by their prison numbers.

When the priest asked "prisoners" why they were in jail, or if they needed a lawyer, some took him up on the offer.

More "prisoners" succumbed to the harsh conditions inside the "prison." One stopped eating and cried hysterically. Zimbardo told him he could leave the study, but he declined - saying he didn't want the others to believe he was a bad "prisoner."

No prison experience is complete without going before the parole board. But this "board" was made up of psychology department secretaries and graduate students. They met with "prisoners" who thought they had grounds for parole. The "prisoners" seemed to forget that they could leave anytime they wanted. Said Zimbardo, "Their sense of reality had shifted."

Five days into the experiment, some "guards" calmed down and became "good guys." But others kept up their brutal treatment of the "prisoners," including one notoriously tough "guard" the "prisoners" nicknamed "John Wayne."

Parents eventually called Zimbardo, asking if they could contact a lawyer to get their kids out of "prison." The calls, combined with the increasingly abusive treatment of the "prisoners," convinced Zimbardo that the experiment had gone too far. But Zimbardo ended the experiment only after being admonished by a newly minted PhD who had returned to Stanford and was shocked by what she saw.

The experiment was certainly shocking, but did it bring about the sorts of prison reforms that Zimbardo had hoped for? Not really. "Research and knowledge rarely changes systems," Zimbardo told CBS News in an email.

But the experiment has been cited again and again over the years - for example, by experts trying to explain the 1971 riots at Attica Correctional Facility in New York, or even the dehumanizing photos that came out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib in 2003.

What's more, as Zimbardo points out, just about everyone fills the role of "prisoner" or "guard" at some point in their lives - as when a boss restricts the actions of his/her subordinates or a parent disciplines a child. And it's in these roles that we live up to - or down to - our own expectations. As Zimbardo puts it, "Human behavior is under situational control more than we imagine or want to believe and admit."

The Other Legacy of the Stanford Prison Experiment

The lessons of the stanford prison experiment aren't about cruelty..

Posted January 28, 2021 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

Psychology has dealt with only one of the two major legacies of the Stanford Prison Experiment. The Stanford Prison Experiment (which was not technically an experiment) appears in introductory textbooks as an illustration of the “power of the situation” to influence behavior. Philip Zimbardo recruited college students to conduct a simulation of a prison and found that even nice college men could be cruel and dehumanizing to each other in the prison simulation. The implication was that otherwise good people could easily be led to do bad things in the right situation—and the situation of running a prison brought this bad behavior out.

One lasting effect of the Stanford Prison Experiment is the ethical reform it helped inspire in psychology. Zimbardo put college students through a humiliating, traumatizing experience, and only stopped when he was describing the study to his girlfriend (now wife) who told him how cruel his behavior was. Outside oversight, in the form of institutional review boards, would have likely prevented this. Institutional review boards are now a ubiquitous feature of scientific research, and almost all universities and scientific journals require that psychology research on human subjects undergo this review.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a trending topic a few years ago, when researchers and journalists reported on archived material showing that Zimbardo instructed his prison guard participants to behave more viciously. This undercuts the characterization and interpretation of the results Zimbardo gave for years. The guards in the study were not spontaneously cruel. They had to be prodded. A 2019 article by Thibault Le Texier in the journal American Psychologist lays out this case.

Le Texier quotes Zimbardo’s public statements about the study: “neither group [prisoners or guards] received any specific training in these roles” and “guards had no formal training in becoming guards.” Evidence from Zimbardo’s publicly available archives of the study, contradict this in several ways.

First, Zimbardo instructed his guards what result he wanted to see, explaining that the purpose of the study was to recreate the psychological conditions in a prison that are related to mob behavior, violence, and loss of individuality. During guard orientation, he provided them with several psychological effects he hoped the study would have on prisoners, including feeling fear , frustration, loss of individuality, and powerlessness. Psychologists have long known the participants in experiments have a tendency to try to produce the results they believe the researcher wants, and so good research procedures involve not telling subjects what you expect them to do during the study. These are called demand characteristics. By telling participants what he wanted from them, it appears Zimbardo was eliciting the bad behavior he said emerged spontaneously and naturally. Guards confirmed this in interviews, with one saying “I was thinking: ‘I got to do this thing or else the experiment won’t come off right.’”

Zimbardo also gave the guards instructions for how to create the psychological effects he wanted to study. For example, he provided the guards with a list called “Processing In—Dehumanizing Experience” where he had written “Ordered around. Arbitrariness. Guards never use name, only number. Never request, order.” These were explicit written instructions for how to create the psychologically toxic situation. During orientation, a research assistant also told guards that routine counts of prisoners were a good time to “somewhat humiliate or be sarcastic” to them. Instructions continued throughout the study.

One guard reported that “the warden or Prof. Zimbardo specifically directed me (us) to act a certain way (ex. hard attitude Wednesday following Tuesday leniency).” An undergraduate student who was recruited to play the role of warden said after the experiment: “I believed (and I still do) that without rules, without gruff and mildly realistic guard behavior, the simulation would have appeared more like a summer camp than a prison … I was asked to suggest tactics based on my previous experience as master sadist , and, when I arrived at Stanford [after a summer job in Chicago, Illinois], I was given the responsibility of trying to elicit ‘tough-guard’ behavior.” This outside hire was credited by participants in the guard role for coming up with many of the most creative techniques of psychological cruelty: “I thought that the warden was very creative ... through the experiment, he gave us very good sado-creative ideas.”

Finally, reinforcing the idea that the prison guards’ cruelty was part of a role they believed they were taking, many said they were led to believe by Zimbardo that they were not subjects in the study but research assistants. One guard wrote after the study: “[F]rom the beginning of the experiment, to the end, I thought of the guards as being a helping agent to the ‘experiment,’ not actually part of it. … I took care to make sure that I played a guard (as I thought a guard to be). I felt that any niceness on my part would eliminate me from the experiment.”

These quotes highlight that the study was not conducted the way Zimbardo said it was. The major insight that Zimbardo drew from and promoted about this study was that the prison situation inherently created bad behavior—but in actuality, he and an outside consultant were prodding the participants continuously to elicit this behavior. However, the point isn’t that, because Zimbardo’s study had flaws, his thesis was wrong. A better-run study in Australia in 1979 found that the instructions given to prison guards made a big difference in the atmosphere of the mock prison, supporting the interpretation that the prison situation can elicit bad behavior. Instead, it shows that Zimbardo was able to gain fame in his field and in the broader culture by presenting a misleading and incorrect version of what happened in his study.

Psychology researchers may complain about the requirements of institutional review boards, but the field generally accepts and agrees that this type of oversight is useful to maintain an ethical research field. The Credibility Revolution in psychology is pushing for reforms in scientific practice that should lead to more credible, reliable research. What is still missing is a way to make sense of research misconduct in the past. We do not necessarily need to judge all of Zimbardo’s research as misleading or flawed, based on this one example. Yet we do need to be able to create a scientific record that is trustworthy, and to establish a system where misleading statements lead to proportional career consequences. That is the legacy of the Stanford Prison Experiment that still has not been addressed.

Le Texier, T. (2019). Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment. American Psychologist, 74(7), 823-839.

Alexander Danvers, Ph.D. , is a social psychologist by training with an interdisciplinary approach to research. Currently, he works on measuring and improving mental health outcomes.

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Famed stanford prison experiment was a fraud, scientist says.

One of the most famous–and controversial– psychology studies ever conducted is a fraud, a scientist claims in a new report.

Not only was the Stanford Prison Experiment a sham, but it’s mastermind, Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo, pushed participants towards the results he wanted, Dr. Ben Blum claims in a report published on Medium last week.

The 1971 experiment pitted young male volunteers against each other – with some assigned to act as guards and the others as inmates in a mock prison. As the experiment began, the fake guards immediately took to their roles, instituting authoritarian measures and torturing the inmates, who passively took the abuse.

The study was supposed to last two weeks but guards were reportedly so cruel, it had to be stopped after six days.

The study made a cynical conclusion about human nature: those who are put in positions of power will naturally abuse their authority.

And people placed in situations where they are powerless, would become submissive or even crazy.

Since then, the experiment has been the subject of books, TV-show episodes, documentaries and feature films.

Blum’s expose — based on previously unpublished recordings of Zimbardo, a Stanford psychology professor, and interviews with the participants — offers evidence that the “guards” were coached to be cruel.

One of the men who acted as an inmate told Blum he enjoyed the experiment because he knew the guards couldn’t actually hurt him.

“There were no repercussions. We knew [the guards] couldn’t hurt us, they couldn’t hit us. They were white college kids just like us, so it was a very safe situation,” said Douglas Korpi, who was 22-years-old when he acted as an inmate in the study.

In a recorded clip of the experiment, Korpi was seen locked in a dark closet, naked under a thin white smock, screaming “I’m burning up inside!” and kicking furiously at the door.

But the Berkeley grad now admits the whole thing was fake.

“Anybody who is a clinician would know that I was faking,” he said. “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.”

One guards told Blum he pretended to be a sadist for kicks.

“I took it as a kind of improv exercise,” Dave Eshelman said. “I believed that I was doing what the researchers wanted me to do… I’d never been to the South but I used a southern accent.”

Zimbardo has admitted that he was an active participant in the study, meaning he had influence over the results. At one point, he handed the “guards” batons, which could have implied to them that using physical force was okay. Yet, he maintained that their behaviors arose organically.

The study has long been subject to scrutiny — it was never published in a mainstream journal or subjected to peer review – but it is still widely taught in schools.

Blum’s report has spurred professors to call for the experiment to be scrapped from textbooks.

“Psychologists: please read this. We must stop celebrating this work. It’s anti-scientific. Get it out of textbooks,” tweeted UC-Davis psychology professor Simine Vazire.

“It’s also irresponsible in many other ways (socially, politically),” she added. “I’m embarrassed that my field treated this work and this man as heroic.”

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Making a Drama out of a Crisis: The Curious Case of the Stanford Prison Study

In his new book, Incarceration Games: A History of Role-Play in Psychology, Prisons, and Performance , Stephen Scott-Bottoms offers a fresh perspective on some of America’s most notorious social psychology experiments. Incarceration Games is now available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook. There will be a virtual book launch on Thursday, May 23rd. Register at Eventbrite .

“People are fascinated with the Stanford prison study,” Philip Zimbardo tells me reflectively, “but in reality, in the real world, almost no-one gives a shit about prisons.” He is standing in the doorway of his San Francisco home, bidding me farewell, and this thought has just hit him: “Prisons in and of themselves are not a topic that anybody is curious about, but they are interested in the drama of the prison study. For me, it’s a curious dichotomy.”

Photo of author on the left and Philip Zimbardo on the right with a small red star behind them that reads "Any of us can be heroes!"

“Any of us can be heroes!” Stephen Scott-Bottoms with Philip Zimbardo at his San Francisco home, February 2020. Photo: Stephen Scott-Bottoms.

It’s February 2020, just before Covid imprisoned us all, and I’ve just been interviewing this famous psychologist for a book I’m researching. It has become apparent, during this conversation, that Zimbardo is still hurt and upset by some very personal accusations made against him in the previous couple of years. The writers Ben Blum and Thibault LeTexier have both claimed publicly that Zimbardo and his co-researchers told flat-out lies about the outcomes of their notorious, 1971 prison experiment at Stanford University. These revelations, which have prompted a predictable Twitter-storm of righteous indignation, are dependent on LeTexier’s rather cursory reading of archival materials relating to the experiment. Yet as Zimbardo quite reasonably points out, he had made those very materials available for public consultation in the interests of transparency. For him, at least, there were no lies to conceal. Moreover, he notes, Blum and LeTexier had cried “gotcha” without making any attempt to relate their critiques back to the subject of prisons. The veracity or otherwise of the prison experiment itself had apparently become more newsworthy than the bleak realities it had set out to dramatize. Hence Zimbardo’s parting observation to me.

Floor plan for staging the Stanford Prison Experiment. Basement of Jordan Hall, Stanford University, 1971. Graphic by John Polley.

His reference to “the drama of the prison study” was also, no doubt, informed by his awareness that I am a drama professor—not a psychologist. My own interest in the Stanford Prison Experiment arises from the fact that this was essentially an exercise in improvised role-play. A volunteer cast of student-age young men were arbitrarily allocated to roles as prisoners and guards in a mocked-up prison setting, and asked to play those parts for a watchful audience of psychologists. What happened next has become the material of popular myth, as the guards allegedly became more “brutal” toward the prisoners than anyone had anticipated. There were, however, no independent observers present to witness these events. The only accounts we have of this intimate drama have been provided by the psychologists who staged it. From the perspective of a theatre historian, there are obvious problems with this—whether or not anybody lied. It’s like having a playwright’s description of their own play, but no access to the play itself. So I’ve been scouring the archives, and interviewing surviving participants, in the hope of reconstructing these events from a more objective point of view. Somewhat remarkably, nobody has ever tried to do this before.

My hope, in conducting this re-examination, is that a fresh account might help to resolve the “curious dichotomy” that Zimbardo points out. For if, as he suggests, people remain fascinated by the “drama” of the Stanford Prison Experiment, that is because he has always told the story of this study in bold, primary colours—using pleasingly direct language. Take Zimbardo’s book-length account, The Lucifer Effect (2007), with its knowingly populist subtitle: How Good People Turn Evil . This is not exactly scientific language, but it neatly captures his core theoretical claim about the study: under certain situational pressures, he argues, even the best of us may end up acting abominably. And maybe that’s true. Yet Zimbardo’s evidence for this claim rests on a specific experimental situation—an attempt to simulate the power dynamics of a prison. This is the bit that tends to get fudged or ignored in pop-culture retellings of the story, because prisons—as Zimbardo suggests—are not something that most of us want to think about for long. Real prisons are more mundane, more complicated, and more oppressive than any psychology experiment could hope to approximate. So instead, oftentimes, the Stanford study is presented as proving some generalized point about “human nature” (whatever that is).

This is, however, to miss the point. The allegedly abusive behavior of the Stanford guards has always been presented by the researchers as a consequence of a specific, situational phenomenon—namely, the structural power imbalance between guards and prisoners that exists in any prison setting. Zimbardo’s study has often resonated with prison professionals for precisely this reason—because they recognize the problem identified. Institutional conditions can, indeed, result in staff adopting a casually dehumanizing attitude toward the inmates in their charge—unless care is taken to ensure the contrary. Crucially, though, such care is often taken. Not all prisons are the same.

As criminologist Alison Liebling once put it to me, every prison is its own social experiment. The specifics of a building’s size and architecture, of its population’s daily routines, of its governor’s disciplinary philosophy—all these variables and more will impact on the conduct and wellbeing of inmates and staff. Liebling’s own work, as Director of the Prisons Research Centre at Cambridge University, has demonstrated this point convincingly. Her MQPL questionnaire ( Measuring the Quality of Prison Life ) has been used extensively, in a wide range of institutions, to gather comparative data on the day-to-day experiences of those who live and work in them. This has enabled Liebling and her colleagues to establish clear correlations between—for example—the perceived harshness of prison regimes and the rate of suicide among prisoners. In crude terms, you are demonstrably more likely to kill yourself if you are held in an institution that exhibits poor moral performance . So Zimbardo was onto something when he highlighted situational conditions over individual disposition. Rather than simply containing “bad apples”, some prisons are indeed “bad barrels”.

But if this is the case, an obvious question arises. What were the specific situational conditions that resulted in such negative outcomes for the Stanford Prison Experiment? What exactly made this simulation such a bad barrel for those subjected to it? Zimbardo and his colleagues have never been very clear on the details here—apparently because their orientation as psychologists was towards extrapolating generalizing claims about psychological phenomena, rather than honing in on specifics . So perhaps this is where a theatre historian like myself might have a role to play. In theatre studies, the critic’s orientation is usually toward the specific. Why, we might ask, was this production of Hamlet received so differently by audiences than that one? How exactly did actors, scripts, sets, costumes, etc., function together to create meaning? Or, more pertinently here, why is it that one iteration of an improvised role-playing game might result in very different outcomes from another? As any drama teacher knows, improv scenarios can spin off in all sorts of directions, as the various personalities in the room react spontaneously to the developing situation—and to each other. The basic rules of the game may stay the same, but the players’ game tactics will always be different—which is, of course, why good games are worth playing repeatedly. As for bad games, which turn out to be ethically flawed, we might just need a historian to piece together the details of what went wrong.

It’s April 2024. Covid is an uncomfortable memory. Sitting in front of me, on my desk, is an advance copy of my new book, Incarceration Games: A History of Role-Play in Psychology, Prisons and Performance . As the subtitle suggests, I’ve worked hard to resolve Zimbardo’s curious dichotomy. The Stanford experiment sits at the heart of the book, but my story also tracks backwards as far as the 1930s, and forwards as far as the 2000s, to examine other experiments—and other role-playing games—in which the coercion, manipulation, or even rehabilitation of prisoners was an overt or covert concern. The jacket blurbs tell me that “ Incarceration Games moves well beyond ‘gotcha’ sensibility … providing a refreshing, novel perspective” (Michael Pettit); and that “by bringing to bear methods familiar to theatre historians,” I have written “a fascinating, readable, rewarding book” (Mike Sell). I will certainly take the compliments. It remains to be seen, though, whether these tales of situational experimentation will inspire readers to give a shit about prisons.

Books Mentioned In This Post

Incarceration Games

Bodies on the Front Lines: Feminism and Performance Activism

Q&A with After Disruption Author Trevor Owens

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COMMENTS

Participants in the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment ...
Stanford University's alumni magazine has a fascinating article in its July/August issue about the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, a psychological study of prison life that went ...
After the Stanford Prison Experiment, what happened to all the ...
Although Zimbardo did not conduct an immediate debriefing, which could have uncovered harm caused by the experiment, none of the prisoners displayed long-term mental health issues. In the years following the experiment, the participants engaged in post-experimental questionnaires and interviews that (according to Zimbardo) confirms this.
Stanford prison experiment
Stanford prison experiment
The Stanford Prison Experiment 50 Years Later: A Conversation with
The Stanford Prison Experiment 50 Years Later
Philip Zimbardo defends the Stanford Prison Experiment, his most ...
For decades, the story of the famous Stanford Prison Experiment has gone like this: Stanford professor Philip Zimbardo assigned paid volunteers to be either inmates or guards in a simulated prison ...
Stanford Prison Experiment
Stanford Prison Experiment | History & Facts
6. Grievances
The First Prisoner Released. Less than 36 hours into the experiment, Prisoner #8612 began suffering from acute emotional disturbance, disorganized thinking, uncontrollable crying, and rage. In spite of all of this, we had already come to think so much like prison authorities that we thought he was trying to "con" us - to fool us into ...
Inside The Stanford Prison Experiment And Its Controversial Legacy
Published August 1, 2024. Conducted by Philip Zimbardo in August 1971, the Stanford Prison Experiment revealed how ordinary people could quickly adopt abusive behaviors when given authority and power. In October 2004, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick was facing some hard time.
The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment
The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment
The Stanford Prison Experiment was massively influential. We just ...
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 ...
The 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment Showing Authoritarian Abuse Still
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.
What the Stanford Prison Experiment Taught Us
What the Stanford Prison Experiment Taught Us
Stanford Prison Experiment: Zimbardo's Famous Study
Stanford Prison Experiment: Zimbardo's Famous Study
Stanford Prison Experiment: Zimbardo's Famous Study
Stanford Prison Experiment: Zimbardo's Famous Study
50 Years On: What We've Learned From the Stanford Prison Experiment
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 ...
The dirty work of the Stanford Prison Experiment: Re-reading the
Almost 50 years on, the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971 remains one of the most notorious and controversial psychology studies ever devised. It has often been treated as a cautionary tale about what can happen in prison situations if there is inadequate staff training or safeguarding, given the inherent power differentials between staff and ...
Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE): Icon and Controversy
Introduction. The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) took place at a time when the sources of authoritarianism and evil were a focal concern in psychology. It emerged from a tradition of activist social psychological research beginning with Solomon Asch in the 1940s and extending through Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments in the early 1960s.
The Controversial True Story Behind the Infamous Study
The Stanford Prison Experiment yielded significant findings about human behavior in power dynamics, sparking debates that continue to shape psychological research and ethics today. Results of the Experiment. The study revealed how quickly individuals adapt to assigned roles. Guards became increasingly authoritarian, while prisoners showed signs ...
Shocking "prison" study 40 years later: What happened at Stanford?
Shocking "prison" study 40 years later: What happened at ...
The Other Legacy of the Stanford Prison Experiment
The Stanford Prison Experiment (which was not technically an experiment) appears in introductory textbooks as an illustration of the "power of the situation" to influence behavior. Philip ...
More Information
A: Although the Stanford Prison Experiment movie was inspired by the classic 1971 experiment, there are key differences between the two. In the actual experiment, guards and prisoners were prevented from carrying out acts of physical violence such as those shown in the movie. In addition, the study ended differently than the movie.
Stanford prison experiment continues to shock
The Stanford prison experiment was supposed to last two weeks but was ended abruptly just six days later, after a string of mental breakdowns, an outbreak of sadism and a hunger strike. "The first ...
Scientist says Stanford Prison Experiment was a fraud
One of the most famous-and controversial- psychology studies ever conducted is a fraud, a scientist claims in a new report. Not only was the Stanford Prison Experiment a sham, but it's …
Making a Drama out of a Crisis: The Curious Case of the Stanford Prison
The Stanford experiment sits at the heart of the book, but my story also tracks backwards as far as the 1930s, and forwards as far as the 2000s, to examine other experiments—and other role-playing games—in which the coercion, manipulation, or even rehabilitation of prisoners was an overt or covert concern.

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

How The Stanford Prison Experiment Revealed The Darkest Depths Of Human Psychology

How The Stanford Prison Experiment Got Started

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Stanford Prison Experiment: Zimbardo’s Famous Study

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Prisoner #8612

A Visit from Parents

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

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