Science Stanford Prison Experiment Shown to Be Questionable - How a Landmark Psychological Study Might Be Bullshit

The Stanford Prison Experiment, one of the most famous and compelling psychological studies of all time, told us a tantalizingly simple story about human nature.

The study took paid participants and assigned them to be “inmates” or “guards” in a mock prison at Stanford University. Soon after the experiment began, the “guards” began mistreating the “prisoners,” implying evil is brought out by circumstance. The authors, in their conclusions, suggested innocent people, thrown into a situation where they have power over others, will begin to abuse that power. And people who are put into a situation where they are powerless will be driven to submission, even madness.

The Stanford Prison Experiment has been included in many, many introductory psychology textbooks and is often cited uncritically. It’s the subject of movies, documentaries, books, television shows, and congressional testimony.

But its findings were wrong. Very wrong. And not just due to its questionable ethics or lack of concrete data — but because of deceit.

In science, too often, the first demonstration of an idea becomes the lasting one.

A new exposé published by Medium based on previously unpublished recordings of Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford psychologist who ran the study, and interviews with his participants, offers convincing evidence that the guards in the experiment were coached to be cruel. It also shows that the experiment’s most memorable moment — of a prisoner descending into a screaming fit, proclaiming, “I’m burning up inside!” — was the result of the prisoner acting. “I took it as a kind of an improv exercise,” one of the guards told reporter Ben Blum. “I believed that I was doing what the researchers wanted me to do.”

Source: https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-experiment-fraud-psychology-replication

 

[ObeseScreamingBlackMan]

When I was in AP psych in high school we watched a documentary about this fucking presented by Dr. Zimbardo himself where he outright states the experiment was poorly designed and that it was for the best that it was shut down early.

Why is this even news?

 

[AnOminous]

When I was in AP psych in high school we watched a documentary about this fucking presented by Dr. Zimbardo himself where he outright states the experiment was poorly designed and that it was for the best that it was shut down early.

Why is this even news?

You also couldn't do it under ethical rules because the very experiment itself requires a lack of informed consent. If you filled out what you were actually going to do under the human subjects forms they now require for shit like this, they'd basically say lol no.

What's this, you mean academia, constantly pushing the narrative that people are bad and need to be controlled by authority figures, produced a study that states that people are bad and need to be controlled by authority figures?

Imagine my shock!

I thought the implications were actually exactly the opposite. Give people authority and they invariably abuse it. Or with the Milgram experiment, relieve someone of responsibility by having someone in a uniform order something, even if it's just a lab coat and a clipboard, and people will do heinous things without feeling responsible for them.

 

[Red Sun]

Wait. There was actually a time when people took the stanford prison experiment seriously? My psychology teacher in high school made it a class rule that any use of the phrase "stanford prison experiment" also had to include the word "debunked", so I assumed they tossed it out a long time ago.

 

[polonium]

thought the implications were actually exactly the opposite.

Yes, but you've also said you think collectivism is a good idea, so it's already evident that your reasoning skills are faulty.

 

[Computery Guy]

Yes, but you've also said you think collectivism is a good idea, so it's already evident that your reasoning skills are faulty.

Well speaking as someone who thinks Commies can go fuck themselves, yeah, it sorta implies the exact opposite depending on how you interpret it. The "guards", the authority figures in the experiment, kicked the "prisoners" around like red-headed stepchildren for all sorts of petty bullshit.

 

[Hux]

If the researchers were trying to prove that people can be compete monsters under the right circumstances, they technically have proven that hypothesis with immense eloquence.

Only it's not the people playing as the prison guards like they were intending it to be, all along it's actually the fucking morally empty, opprotunistic researchers that allowed for undeserving people to go through that much anguish just so they can prove a shitty point and garner monetary gain out of it all.

 

[LeeSun]

When I was in AP psych in high school we watched a documentary about this fucking presented by Dr. Zimbardo himself where he outright states the experiment was poorly designed and that it was for the best that it was shut down early.

Why is this even news?

Because just like Freud, people still believe this shit and teach it in high school/college courses.

 

[Slap47]

Pyschology was a meme when it almost got 10-cent comics and rock'n'roll banned in the 1940s and its a meme today with its troon encouragement and videogame bans.

Take a popular opinion and do a clearly rigged study to ride the wave. Zimbardo did that perfectly with the anti-torture and softer-prison movements.