The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Twenty-four undergraduates were selected out of 70 to play the roles of both guards and prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Those selected were chosen for their lack of psychological issues, crime history, and medical disabilities, in order to obtain a representative sample. Roles were assigned based on a coin toss.

Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited “genuine” sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early. After a graduate student (prisoner #819) broke down from the inhumane conditions in the prison, and realizing that he had been passively allowing unethical acts to be performed under his direct supervision, Zimbardo concluded that both prisoners and guards had become too grossly absorbed in their roles and terminated the experiment after six days.

Ethical concerns surrounding the famous experiment often draw comparisons to the Milgram experiment, which was conducted in 1961 at Yale University by Stanley Milgram, Zimbardo’s former college friend. Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr wrote in 1981 that the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment were frightening in their implications about the danger which lurks in the darker side of human nature.

This is a 30 minute documentary on the subject created and aired by the BBC.

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2 Responses to “The Stanford Prison Experiment”

  1. Cordelia Says:
    September 6th, 2009 at 12:47

    Does this experiment really say anything about the evil in human nature or is it just mirroring the preseption of peoples idea of how a prison is run in a certain socity in a certain point of time?

  2. seeebz Says:
    October 17th, 2009 at 03:40

    the acumulation without stop of our desires … sumtimes makes us stray from things going in a postive way … being evil enters human nature once we renounce spiritualism …. let materialistic consumption guide the way .. and sure .. once we are in the system there is no way of avoiding this unless you are in contact with your real self …

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