Review of the Stanford Prison Experiment documentary (opinion)

Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth-A limited series The film, which recently premiered on the National Geographic channel and is streaming on Disney+ and Hulu, represents at least the sixth time the events of 1971 have been told at length on screen, either in documentary form or semi-fictional drama. How could anyone cram almost three hours of video narration into such comprehensively covered events? I sat down to watch the preview viewer, preparing to fast-forward when necessary.

Actually it was never like that. The series is masterfully constructed and eminently playable. The narrative flow passes through more layers of context than even someone aware of the relevant history could possibly see coming.

Many (perhaps most) readers of this column already know something about the experiment itself, the almost legendary use of undergraduates as guinea pigs in the days before institutional review boards kept an eye on such things.

But anyone who draws a space can see it from here this is a 10 minute video I wonder why the experiment has long been a staple of introductory psychology textbooks. It was provocative and still is now for different reasons.

Executed professor experiment, Philip Zimbardo (1933–2024) always presented his design and findings quite clearly. Guards and inmates were randomly selected from the same seemingly homogeneous pool of participants (i.e., young, white, male Stanford students with no criminal history and judged to be in good mental health).

When their interactions quickly turned into sadism and rebellion, the determining factor was not racial tension or some psychological trait shared by both groups, but rather the simulated prison environment itself.

The events at Stanford occurred just a few weeks before the Attica prison riot. Newspaper and television reporters who had paid little attention to Zimbardo’s initial public statements suddenly found their interest increasing. The availability of six hours of film footage shot during the experiment was an unexpected development in terms of media exposure. And it is difficult to separate the effect of the experiment from its telegenic aspects.

On National Geographic program, a parade of video clips from across the decades show Zimbardo as the ideal talk show guest: earnest but affable and willing to omit inconvenient details in favor of a compelling narrative.

Initial accounts reported that guards’ attitudes towards prisoners ranged from friendliness to offensive disdain.

But during his repeated media appearances, Zimbardo began to treat the impact of prison conditions as monotonous and inevitable: All the guards had become authoritarian, at least in the publicity-friendly version.

And in fact, the most hostile and overbearing guards set the tone for the footage captured during the experiment; especially the guard, nicknamed John Wayne by his peers, who assumed the alpha position with gusto. But in a recent interview, one of the less enthusiastic guards describes being pulled aside by Zimbardo and encouraged to participate with greater enthusiasm.

Likewise, the alpha guard recalls Zimbardo encouraging him to take the lead. He had a theater background and saw himself playing a character inspired by the prison movie. Cold Hand Luke.

Participants interviewed for the documentary agree that they had certain expectations of what Zimbardo would become. Like some of his experimental subjects, he was critical of the prison as an institution.

Zimbardo did not expect events to develop so quickly, but the course was generally as expected. A press release published shortly after the experiment began referred to “reforms needed at the psychological level so that men who commit crimes are not turned into dehumanized objects due to their prison experiences…” interviews.

French in 2019 scientist Thibault Le Texier published a paper It appeared in the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association under the title “Refutation of the Stanford Experiment,” drawing on archival sources and interviews with 15 of the 24 subjects in the experiment. He was summarizing the findings of a monograph he published a year ago, which is now available in translation. Investigating the Stanford Prison Experiment: The History of a Lie (springer). Le Texier appears briefly in the documentary, but his influence is clear beyond that: The filmmakers followed his investigation, but disapproved of the fraudulent characterization of Zimbardo’s behavior.

It was up to the surviving participants to do this. Many felt, or began to feel, that they had been misled or exploited by the experiment or, from the 1970s onwards, used to further Zimbardo’s media stardom. If I read my notes correctly, he is referred to twice as a “disco psychologist,” which was among the less hostile remarks.

Zimbardo emerges in the third episode, responding to criticism and flying his own expletives, but is ultimately confident that the experiment shows something about how bad situations can turn good people into monsters. I don’t know if the story will ever make it to the big screen again, but this interpretation seems unlikely to improve.