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Alvarez, Kyle Patrick. 2015. The Stanford Prison Experiment . United States: IFC Films.

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The Stanford Prison Experiment: The Power of the Situation

• First Online: 20 January 2024

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• Harry Perlstadt   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0233-0463 3  

Part of the book series: Clinical Sociology: Research and Practice ((CSRP))

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Philip Zimbardo is best known for his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). Early in his career, he conducted experiments in the psychology of deindividualization, in which a person in a group or crowd no longer acts as a responsible individual but is swept along and participates in antisocial actions. After moving to Stanford University, he began to focus on institutional power over the individual in group settings, such as long-term care facilities for the elderly and prisons. His research proposal for a simulated prison was approved by the Stanford University Human Subjects Research Review Committee in July 1971. He built a mock prison in the basement of the University’s psychology building and recruited college-aged male subjects to play prisoners and guards. The study began on Sunday, August 8th, and was to run for 2 weeks but ended on Friday morning August 13th. In less than a week, several of the mock guards hazed and brutalized the mock prisoners, some of whom found ways of coping, while others exhibited symptoms of mental breakdown.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. — attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Chris Herrera, Jonathan K. Rosen, David Segal and Ruth Spivak for their comments on this chapter.

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(emeritus) Department of Sociology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

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Perlstadt, H. (2023). The Stanford Prison Experiment: The Power of the Situation. In: Assessing Social Science Research Ethics and Integrity. Clinical Sociology: Research and Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34538-8_8

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Selected Resources on The Stanford Prison Experiment

• TED Talks: Philip Zimbardo - How Ordinary People Become Monsters...Or Heroes Streaming Video
• Science of Evil Online video.
• Obeying or Resisting Authority: A Psychological Retrospective Online video. " Echoing the infamous Milgram experiment from the 1960s, this ABC News program sets up a psychological test in which an authority figure urges men and women to inflict pain. Test administrator and social psychologist Dr. Jerry Burger interprets the disturbing findings. The program also analyzes the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment . . . "
• Zimbardo Speaks: The Lucifer Effect and the Psychology of Evil Online video. "Topics include the permeability of behavioral boundaries; the nature of evil and its societal consequences; Zimbardo’s Lucifer Effect; the Abu Ghraib atrocities, a recent example of evil in action; blind obedience as demonstrated by Stanley Milgram’s experiments and by the Jonestown mass suicide; anonymity as an enabler of evil action . . . "

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