EP 153: The Stanford Prison Experiment

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing the Stanford Prison Experiment. The Stanford Prison Experiment was a super controversial and somewhat shady psychological experiment that raised a lot of concern at the time and continues to invoke questions and worry to this day. Essentially, this was an experiment conducted in 1971 in which participants were placed in a prison-like environment for what was supposed to be two weeks in order to examine and evaluate their behaviors in this particular setting. The experiment was cut short, however (only 6 days into the planned 14 days), when the participants that had been assigned the roles of guards began physically, emotionally, and psychologically abusing the prisoner participants to extreme degrees. Some level of abuse had been assumed to occur–I mean, that was the point of the experiment. The Stanford Prison Experiment was meant to test human behaviors in a setting where one person has a clear, dominant role over the other. Much like the Milgram Experiment sought to understand how the Nazis could execute the sadistic orders demanded of them, the Stanford Prison Experiment likewise sought to understand to what degree humans will assume power over one another (or, the opposite, submit to one another) in a particular setting.

Not only was the Stanford Prison Experiment controversial–it was also likely unethical and perhaps even fraudulent with the lead professor over the experiment possibly directing the guards as to how they were to behave.

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Editor: Alex Perez

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