The Stanford Prison Experiment

It’s been 40 years now since one of the most infamous research experiments ever performed in the field of psychology — the Stanford Prison Experiment.

It started out simply enough.  Stanford psychology professor Phillip Zimbardo recruited twenty-four students to participate in the experiment and assigned half to be prisoners and half guards for the duration of the two week project.

The mock “prison” was set up in the basement of Jordan Hall, the psychology building at Stanford. (More than 20 years later, I attended graduate school in sociology next door at McClatchy Hall).

All seemed well as prisoners and guards settled into their roles the first day. But by the second day, some prisoners rebelled. Zimbardo, in his role as prisoner superintendent, told the student guards they had to handle it as they saw fit.

What happened over the next few days surprised everyone, including Zimbardo. The guards began a routine of escalating abuse which included spraying the prisoners with fire extinguishers, a bizarre system of rewards and punishments, withholding of bathroom privileges, sleep deprivation, and other acts of torture. Experimenters estimated that about a third of the guards had engaged in sadistic behavior.

Even Zimbardo was affected, losing his perspective as researcher and taking on not just the role of prison administrator, but actually behaving as one.

After a graduate student complained, the plug was pulled on the planned two-week experiment after only six days. 

But that wasn’t the end of the story. Shortly afterward, riots at Attica prison in New York and San Quentin in California made prisons and their conditions a topic of national attention. Suddenly, Zimbardo found himself testifying in front of congress on how prisons affect people.

The students involved in the experiments were neither criminals nor trained corrections officers. But one of the lessons of the story is how quickly they took on those roles, seeing themselves as either guards or prisoners. The guards tended to view the prisoners as incorrigible, denying “parole” requests and believing the prisoners criminals incapable of living in decent society.

Meanwhile, the prisoners took on their subservient roles, becoming passive and despondent. Several quit the experiment early and a number were traumatized by the experience.

Zimbardo became well known as a spokesperson on role acceptance, the role authority and the lack thereof play in society and the effects of prison environments on both prisoners and guards. He has emphasized the need for strong oversight by correctional authorities and even testified for the defense in the Abu Ghraib case.

In 2007, Zimbardo published his definitive book on the subject, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. A documentary film was also produced, entitled Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment. 

When I took my research methods classes, the Stanford Prison Experiment was one of several case studies we discussed in examining research ethics. The project met the ethical guidelines in place at the time (though some have been changed in part as a result of this and other projects, including the also infamous Stanley Milgram experiments on obedience to authority).

Primary among the ethical issues the project brings up is the psychological abuse endured by the student prisoners. But there are other concerns. For example, what is the effect on the guards of knowing that they are capable of such abuse? 

The study remains controversial to this day. Some accuse Zimbardo of exaggerating the results. Others argue that there were inherent biases in the study and the students were simply conforming to the roles established by the researchers and basing their behavior on what they believed Zimbardo expected of them. It is also pointed out that the experiment did not simulate actual prison conditions as the prisoners were not actual criminals and the guards did not have realistic training. 

But for those who are interested in knowing for themselves, they can examine some of the hours worth of video recordings stored at www.prisonexp.org.


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Last month, the government of Guatemala formally apologized to the family of former president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmàn for its role in removing him from office via a coup in 1954. Sadly, neither the CIA or anyone in the US government has apologized for its role in engineering the coup or for US support for the military dictatorship that succeeded him and ruled the country for the next four decades.



Michael Carley is a resident of Porterville.  He can be reached at mcarley@gmail.com.