The infamous Stanford Prison experiment, conducted by Phillip Zimbardo, was a psychological study between guards and prison inmates at Stanford university, intended to last two weeks in 1971. Twenty four students were chosen in a mock prison experiment, few of which were made guards. Within a few days, however, the "guards", as well as Zimbardo himself, became highly sadistic.
Why did it fail? What caused the "guards" and Zimbardo to quickly adapt to their roles so brutally? Zimbardo claims that a person can become a negative person within a negative environment. Additionally, the mock prisoners became severely anxious as time passes. The project ended six days into the experiment.
However, as the main page notes, the experiment didn't prove that much, as it was tainted by a number of selection biases. In addition, the study was overall considered unethical. Despite all the evidence against his theories, Philip Zimbardo continues to claim that his experiment was necessary to prove his theory, even if it had problems.
His greatest fallacy, arguably, was his assumption that the people he selected for his experiment were all the same, and that their behaviours were solely a result of the prison environment. Even the results of the experiment showed this was not the case. Not only were some prisoners more rebellious than others, but there were also guards that did not engage in the abuse that others did. There were also a select few guards who did most of the abuse, implying that they may have already had sadistic tendencies. Much of this could have been avoided if Zimbardo actually did a full medical history on his subjects, as well as a psychological evaluation. He did not do this beyond asking them a few basic questions.
The experiment also had some pretty sexist overtones. For one, making the prisoners wear dresses was intended by Zimbardo to strip them of them individuality by "feminizing" them. Essentially, this implied that women did not have any individuality, and that a man's individuality is determined by how masculine they appear.
And on top of all that, Zimbardo's biggest mistake was making himself "warden" of the prison, removing the control factor from the experiment, and essentially giving him a dictator role. Prisoners who asked to leave were manipulated by him into believing they were actually in prison, and could not leave until "parole". The extend of this cruelty was so bad that many analysts believe that Zimbardo may have had the kind of evil tendencies that he was trying to prove were nurtured in certain environments.
Even for the time the experiment was done, it was poorly planned, had illogical reasoning, and was designed from the get-go to prove Zimbardo right. And on top of that, it was also completely pointless. Even in the 1960's, there were plenty of first-hand accounts of how guards acted in concentration camps in Germany and many other countries during World War II, making this kind of experiment unnecessary (as a comparison, you don't have to do an experiment to prove that lions hunt zebras, you just have to document it). Zimbardo also could have simply studied a real prison without having to create a fake one.
So, here's a troubling question. Did Zimbardo just really want to prove his hypothesis (no matter the cost), or did he want to play out a power fantasy? On top of that, is his insistence that the experiment was a success a way for him to cope with the guilt, and fear that it was All for Nothing? There may never be an answer.
