Inside The Stanford Prison Experiment

Today In History with The Retrospectors

The Stanford Prison Experiment, created by Philip Zimbardo, began on 14th August, 1971.

24 male college students volunteered to be assigned roles as either ‘guard’ or ‘prisoner’ in a mock jail: the ‘prisoners’ were ‘arrested’ by real cops outside their family homes and marched down to a Police Station before being transferred to their imitation incarceration.

Once inside, they were stripped, deloused, and given smocks and ID numbers; while guards were outfitted with khaki uniforms, mirrored sunglasses, and batons, establishing a stark power divide.

The guards quickly embraced their roles, with some becoming cruel and abusive. They enforced strict, often humiliating regimens on the prisoners, such as roll calls and physical exercises, to instill a sense of powerlessness. But the guards were not aware they were also subjects of the study…

In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly interrogate the selection process and context that belies the study’s impact; consider the distress supposedly experienced by the participants; and ask if this controversial experiment should now be scrubbed from the textbooks…

Further Reading:

• ‘The Stanford Prison Experiment: Philip Zimbardo defends his most famous work’ (Vox, 2018):

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/6/28/17509470/stanford-prison-experiment-zimbardo-interview

• ‘Philip Zimbardo Thinks We All Can Be Evil’ (The New York Times, 2015):

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/magazine/philip-zimbardo-thinks-we-all-can-be-evil.html

• ‘The Stanford Prison Experiment Was One of the Most Disturbing Studies Ever’ (Weird History, 2020): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRR7CwdHxUE

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