Modern psychologists consider the Stanford Prison Experiment to be scientifically valuable
the verdict
REFUTED
the evidence says no
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
4 sources for · 3 against
While some historical textbooks and literature treat the Stanford Prison Experiment as a landmark study, modern investigations and peer-reviewed critiques heavily question its scientific validity and methodology.
Philip G. Zimbardo, emeritus professor of psychology at Stanford University, is internationally recognized as the voice and face of contemporary American psychology. He earned his PhD in social psychology from Yale University in 1959 and has since received seven honorary doctorates for his contributions to psychology and society. The author of more than 300 publications and 50 books, Zimbardo's research spans 20 topics, including shyness, evil, teaching, persuasion, hypnosis, dissonance, time perspective, and heroism. He is best known for his landmark study, the Stanford Prison Experiment; his widely seen TV series, Discovering Psychology; and his best-selling textbook, Psychology and Life. He is past president of the Western Psychological Association (WPA) and the American Psychological Association (APA), and has received distinguished teaching awards from WPA, APA, Stanford University, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Society for the Teaching of Psychology. His aim to “give psychology away” is evident in all he does. George M. Slavich is a Beck Institute Scholar, Society in Science: Branco Weiss Fellow, and National Institute of Mental Health Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology and Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He completed undergraduate and graduate coursework at Stanford University, received his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Oregon, and completed clinical training at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School. His research investigates the characteristics, causes, and consequences of life stress in major depression. He is also deeply devoted to teaching and mentoring. He founded the Stanford Undergraduate Psychology Conference and WPA Student Council; he also cofounded the Society of Clinical Psychology's Section on Graduate Student and Early Career Psychologists. For these contributions and others, he received the 2004 Albert Bandura Graduate Research Award, the 2005 Edwin B. Newman Graduate Research Award, and the 2005 Wilbert J. McKeachie Teaching Excellence Award.
The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) is one of the most famous studies in the history of psychology. For nearly a half century it has been understood to show that assigning people to a toxic role will, on its own, unlock the human capacity to treat others with cruelty. In contrast, principles of identity leadership argue that roles are unlikely to elicit cruelty unless leaders encourage potential perpetrators to identify with what is presented as a noble ingroup cause and to believe their actions are necessary for the advancement of that cause. Although identity leadership has been implicated in behavior ranging from electoral success to obedience to authority, researchers have hitherto had limited capacity to establish whether role conformity or identity leadership provides a better account of the cruelty observed in the SPE. Through examination of material in the SPE archive, we present comprehensive evidence that, rather than guards conforming to role of their own accord, experimenters directly encouraged them to adopt roles and act tough in a manner consistent with tenets of identity leadership. Implications for the analysis of conformity and cruelty as well as for interpretation of the SPE are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Philip George Zimbardo (; March 23, 1933 – October 14, 2024) was an American psychologist and a professor at Stanford University. He was an internationally known educator, researcher, author and media personality in psychology who authored more than 500 articles, chapters, textbooks, and trade books covering a wide range of topics, including time perspective, cognitive dissonance, the psychology o
Philip George Zimbardo (; March 23, 1933 – October 14, 2024) was an American psychologist and a professor at Stanford University. He was an internationally known educator, researcher, author and media personality in psychology who authored more than 500 articles, chapters, textbooks, and trade books covering a wide range of topics, including time perspective, cognitive dissonance, the psychology of evil, persuasion, cults, deindividuation, shyness, and heroism. He became known for his 1971 Stanford prison experiment, which was later criticized for its use of methods which allowed Zimbardo himself and whatever biases he may have had to influence the results. He authored various widely used, introductory psychology textbooks for college students, and other notable works, including Shyness, The Lucifer Effect, and The Time Paradox.
Zimbardo was the founder and president of the Heroic Imagination Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting heroism in everyday life by training people how to resist bullying, bystanding, and negative conformity. He pioneered The Stanford Shyness Clinic in the 1970s and offered the earliest comprehensive treatment program for shyness. He was the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and many awards and honors for service, teaching, research, writing, and educational media, including the Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science for his Discovering Psychology video series. He served as Western Psychological Association president in 1983 and 2001, and…
Zimbardo's official website
The Shyness Clinic
Curriculum Vitae
The Heroic Imagination Project
Discovering Psychology
Stanford Prison Experiment
Shyness Institute | Dr. Lynne Henderson | Shyness
International Time Perspectives Network
Philip G. Zimbardo (Social Psychology Network profile)
Philip G. Zimbardo Papers (Stanford University Archives)
Appearances on C-SPAN
Philip Zimbardo at TED
Philip Zimbardo at IMDb
"Critical Situations: The Evolution of a Situational Psychologist – A Conversation with Philip Zimbardo" (Archived June 3, 2017, at the Wayback Machine), Ideas Roadshow, 2016
The Shy Break Free at Chicago Tribune
Facing fears helps shyness, experts say
The main purpose of this work is to analyse the role and function of social psychology as a tool to strengthen contemporary democracies. For this, I will adopt a double perspective through which I will try to describe the psychological mechanisms that force to obedience. I think that a reflection on this point represents an important topic of discussion on the state of the art of contemporary political institutions and on strategies for building a reasonable political consensus, which is the former characteristic of a truly functioning democracy. The first perspective is historical; the second one is a political philosophical point of view. Since Stanley Milgram (1974) and Solomon Asch (1952) have focused their research on pressure towards conformity, social psychology has taken on a crucial role in understanding society and defining the main aspects of human nature. What kind of influence is able to exercise authority over our moral, economic and social choices? How does power control us? The answers to these questions are not obvious at all. Philip Zimbardo (2007), in his famous “Stanford prison experiment”, has elaborated an original description of the true face of human nature. The consequence of that dramatic experiment was that the illusion of natural goodness of human beings turned out to be just an illusion. The comfortable explanation about a rigid and dualistic distinction between good and evil has crashed on the cruel circumstances of real life. As Zimbardo has sug
The Stanford prison experiment (SPE), also referred to as the Zimbardo prison experiment (ZPE), was a controversial psychological experiment performed in August 1971 at Stanford University. It was designed to be a two-week simulation of a prison environment that examined the effects of situational variables on participants' reactions and behaviors. Stanford University psychology professor Philip
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The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) is one of psychology's most famous studies. It has been criticized on many grounds, and yet a majority of textbook authors have ignored these criticisms in their discussions of the SPE, thereby misleading both students and the general public about the study's questionable scientific validity. Data collected from a thorough investigation of the SPE archives and interviews with 15 of the participants in the experiment further question the study's scientific merit. These data are not only supportive of previous criticisms of the SPE, such as the presence of demand characteristics, but provide new criticisms of the SPE based on heretofore unknown information. These new criticisms include the biased and incomplete collection of data, the extent to which the SPE drew on a prison experiment devised and conducted by students in one of Zimbardo's classes 3 months earlier, the fact that the guards received precise instructions regarding the treatment of the prisoners, the fact that the guards were not told they were subjects, and the fact that participants were almost never completely immersed by the situation. Possible explanations of the inaccurate textbook portrayal and general misperception of the SPE's scientific validity over the past 5 decades, in spite of its flaws and shortcomings, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) is one of psychology’s most famous studies. It has been criticized on many grounds, and yet a majority of textbook authors have ignored these criticisms in their discussions of the SPE, thereby misleading both students and the general public about the study’s questionable scientific validity. Data collected from a thorough investigation of the SPE archives and interviews with 15 of the participants in the experiment further question the study’s scientific merit. These data are not only supportive of previous criticisms of the SPE, such as the presence of demand characteristics, but provide new criticisms of the SPE based on heretofore unknown information. These new criticisms include the biased and incomplete collection of data, the extent to which the SPE drew on a prison experiment devised and conducted by students in one of Zimbardo’s classes 3 months earlier, the fact that the guards received precise instructions regarding the treatment of the prisoners, the fact that the guards were not told they were subjects, and the fact that participants were almost never completely immersed by the situation. Possible explanations of the inaccurate textbook portrayal and general misperception of the SPE’s scientific validity over the past 5 decades, in spite of its flaws and shortcomings, are discussed.
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