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.
I get that this is yesterday’s news, but I did not hear of this development in 2018 when the article came out. So for me this is a “Today I learned” (even if it’s old news for everyone else).
I learned about the Stanford Prison Experiment from the crappy German movie “The Experiment” they made in 2001 and then listened to some interviews by Zimbardo around 2006 or so.
In fact, though the linked Vox article provides several examples of experiments that cannot be well reproduced, it is interesting that the Wikipedia article says Zimbardo is still very much convinced his experiment is sound (at least he still was in 2018).
Edit: fixed grammar