The Dark Side of Science: The Horrific Stanford Prison Experiment 1971 (Documentary)
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- čas přidán 31. 05. 2024
- #science #history
Learn while you're at home with Plainly Difficult!
The Stanford Prison Experiment was a Psychological experiment conducted by Phillip Zimbardo at Stanford University in 1971.
Participants were recruited from the local community with an advert in newspapers offering $15 per day to male students who wanted to participate in a "psychological study of prison life."
Volunteers were randomly assigned to being prisoners or prison guards.
Within a few days the experiment devolved into a horrific chaos and as such needed to be finished early.
The experiment is widely regarded as one of the most unethical experiments in history and even potentially fake.
00:00 Intro
01:26 Background
03:12 Setting up The experiment
10:14 The experiment Begins
23:45 Enter Christina Maslach
24:22 The last day
26:44 Criticism
29:01 My rating
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Sources:
web.stanford.edu/dept/spec_co...
pdf.prisonexp.org/ijcp1973.pdf
pdf.prisonexp.org/ijcp1973.pdf
What's your Favourite London Attraction? Mine is the cutty Sark and just greenwich in general!
Any suggestions for future Dark side of Science videos? Let me know.
Have you done a video on Thalidomide yet?
How about when the US had service men placed within 4 or 5 miles of a nuclear test detonation.
I’d really like to see one on the 1900 storm, It happened in my hometown and is the worst natural disaster in USA history, it’s pretty interesting.
Maybe Vladamimir Demikhov’s two headed dog experiments?
I think its kinda cool that a lot of the subjects you cover on his Chanel I've done papers on for school. just got one of the worship me rmbk shirts very comfortable 😀
I think the biggest problem with this 'study' is that the scientists ended up asking the 'guards' to be more aggressive. Soooooo.... it really had no point.
They also didn't seem to have any training. Even just for the basics
Very true a perfect example of confirmation bias!
Even with the faults of the Methodology, the fact that the mentality stuck afterwards still shows (at least a little) that the phrase "power corrupts" has some legitimacy.
And the need for survival can cause capitulation.
I wonder what would happen if they'd had an ability to reward the 'inmates', because all they could do was reprimand bad behaviour which is always going to tend towards a downward spiral.
@@Sage-Thyme That was a bit of the point. The rewards and punishments (bit more shown in a movie reenacting the experiment) were for the prisoners to simply avoid pain and humiliaton as the guards saw fit. Rewards probably would've still ended up with the prisoners being lessened into animals.
This is often mis-portrayed as a "fake" or "completely acted out" experiment, when, while it was absolutely rigged towards the horrors that took place, and was certainly far from ethical, calling it fake is invalidating the trauma actual people experienced.
Very true!
It's fake a hell lol it so obvious. It's an urban legend. Alot of these old study were exaggerated for government funding increases
It wasn't fake, it was a poorly run experiment tainted by the head researcher's biases from the ground up.
It's because people are too scared to embrace the horrors normal people in a position of power can enact on other humans
Even if they had traumatized people in the process it wouldn't legitimize this "experiment" in any way, they were still producing results that were predetermined
...and the "prisoners" have later confessed to act insane to get out as the terms they agreed on before the experiment then changed, one student didn't get the chance to study for his exams so he acted out a break down to get out
Zimbardo is one of those faces that is burned in my brain from my university years. From studying ethics, to methodology, Zimbardo comes up repeatedly as the example of doing it all wrong.
"Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable--you are a _poor_ scientist, Dr. Zimbardo."
@@ZGryphon I see you, too, had his innumerable failings drilled into your head!
And after all my Psych courses I can never forget "I'm Dr. Phil Zimbardo, and this is Discovering Psychology!"
i only took two psych courses in gen-eds, but i'm _still_ pretty sure we partially covered this story at least three times lol.
Took one high school psych class and will never forget zimbardo and his face, so many of his videos repeatedly shown to us. Had an amazing teacher as well, he had cops come into arrest a kid, of course known to the kid getting arrested, for his introduction into teaching about the stanford prison experiment
I already know about what happened but the way you delivered the information actually built up an element of suspense for me which made this even more interesting.
Thank you!
@@PlainlyDifficult You're welcome, I found your channel very recently, literally just a week ago or so and already watched a couple of dozen videos while doing housework at the weekends. It's great stuff, keep it up!
Second this sentiment
Some of the stuff he makes I’ve seen elsewhere but no one else ever tells it like he does. Always worth 30 or 40 mins of my time
yeah I agree
In addition to making the guards more aggressive, Zimbardo selected for those who were more narcissistic, more Machiavellian, and more violent in his ad. He was illegally involved in his experiment, in such a way that would never pass an IRB or ethics board now. He also didn’t select a representative sample obviously
Edit: this experiment has been redone with more representative samples, and it doesn’t devolve like this
This same boys club atmosphere is omnipresent in medical trials, research & drug development. Once you research the financial control of grant money & the unholy alliances of big pharma to huge medical establishments, add in regulatory capture & boom, truth & health fall by the wayside. It's a huge scandal that needs to be uncovered. I was educated as an RN, I feel for average folks trying to navigate a system designed to fleece people before their deaths.
Do you understand that that segment of people is *always present* in society?
And they are *selected for* by any work that involves power over others. And any work that involves power over others touches this dark place in humans' animal spirits, and has the power to feed it and corrupt it.
I'm not talking airy theory here, but nut-cutting practicality. I used to be a psych tech, which carries something of the air -- and I *saw* how that work draws the dark and wakes it up in even the gentlest. I even felt it working on me -- and that's why I got out. Why did I know it was working on me, why did I know it was time to bail, for my own sake and others'?
Oh, yeah. *BECAUSE I'D READ ZIMBARDO AND TAKEN THE LESSON TO HEART!* That's how I was warned, and why I withdrew from that profession before I could even have a chance to go Stanford.
So go ahead and piss on him all you like. Sneer at his errors. Call him a bad scientist if you like -- I won't argue. But he is still telling us all something we need to understand about ourselves as humans. And his errors don't make it less true.
@@Tindometari The biggest thing to understand then, is that humans are not a blank slate.
What goes through their mind, is just like a computer program.
How they respond to certain situations are different.
Some are comfortable with a set of rules and instructions. Others rebel against them.
Some are comfortable taking orders. Others are more likely to analyze things. Rather than take something at face-value.
Some people can accept different opinions. Or as we say "Open Minded."
Others are more likely to be hostile against these opinions.
@@Tindometari Yes they're present in society, but it's not like they're the only sort of folk who apply for these experiments. Out of seventy-five applicants, the ones chosen were more likely to put their self-interests first. Also, the point of the experiment is that everyone's role was randomly assigned, that kind of bias is evident of a larger issue with the study itself. That being, none of it would ever pass a modern ethics board, which we have BECAUSE of studies like the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Normal US prisons also invite and select more narcissistic and Machiavellian men as their guards..
I read Zimbardos book and it's disturbing as hell how he tries to blame anyone and everyone but himself. The man should have been thrown in prison himself and had all of his credentials stripped away. He's a monster and doesn't even have the decency to feel bad about how he behaved and what happened to those boys.
Seriously! He was literally asking them to be more cruel, but then takes all blame away from himself by saying they were just cruel bc it happens like...my dude you told them to be like that
I agree he should have been held accountable for crossing obvious ethical lines even back then. Throwing him in prison though would be too far. If he tried that b.s. today then yes prison would be appropriate. Unfortunately back then the regulations (or lack thereof) for conducting such experiments pretty much allowed guys like him to do almost whatever they wanted.
Because back then regulations on guards was rare especially in maximum security prison's and guatanimo bay
One thing people forget - which is amazing was brought up in the video is the trauma of the FAMILIES. They watched their family members like this with minimal contact and contact reduced. This is unbelievably unethical
Ge should have been sued out of everything he owned and would ever earn.
No matter how many times I hear about this experiment, I never understand what exactly Zimbardo thought he would learn. There was no independent variable, no control group, no way to compare anything that happened. Any conclusion he could have drawn was going to depend heavily on correlational evidence and guesswork. There's a reason that the conclusion is so broad. The experiment was designed in a way that made it impossible to actually learn anything concrete from it.
He has since admitted that it was more of a demonstration than an experiment. He made sure he got the outcome he wanted.
"College students getting arrested is not a unique thing" ... "by their university"
Agreed. That's how they get their funding.
😂😂
This experiment was so unethical, at the time people tried to justify it as important for science, but it has almost no scientific value and many of it's findings just can't be replicated.
@PoorMansChemist because its unethical and happend. This is more of an experiment history channel
@@gravel7614 don't engage with that dude. if you check his about section on his channel you can clearly see he is a deranged individual
@@bogbastard4243 how so? the only thing i saw there that could lead one to insult another in such a way is the "lets go brandon" bit. and thats a political standpoint. not sure what you read there.
@@GearGuardianGaming anyone with that political viewpoint is definitely deranged
@@platinummew3887 so he is deranged for having an opinion. nice. then why arent the rest of us in asylums for the same reasons?
Its a solid 8 for me, for the lack of a controlled enviroment, oversight, and psychological evaluation of the prisoners and guards. The plug should have been pulled early as this deteriorated, but with no one qualified looking over the experiment (And no actual guards around to stop sadistic acts) its just another unethical, unscientific experiment that told us little more that "Humans are naturally gifted for cruelty, and violence brings about obidience".
The thing with no trained guard around is a good one. Means the "guards" would act how they expect a prison guard to behave, not how they actually do.
It's more a measure of how an academic's ego can taint their work beyond moral and scientific standards
THANK YOU. Finally, now more people in the general public can understand just how scientifically useless and ethically screwed the Stanford Prison Experiment was. I hope we stop teaching this to AP Psych and college freshmen students as valid and ethical research because it's not, never has been, and never will be.
It should rather be taught as example on how not to do it.
I have a degree in psychology and while this experiment came up a few times, it was never to validate any of Zimbardo's "results". It was usually just to discuss different aspects of the experiment itself or his involvement. It comes up during your course on ethics. Not once did I see or hear it given any value as to actual research. Its seen pretty much as a failure except as an example of what not to do.
Where is this taught as valid research? I’m a forensic psych major and have never seen this experiment talked about other than to be critical of it and analyze it’s failures.
@@Kelsey1994 I was taught this back in my AP Psychology class, we used it as a way to show how not to do an experiment because of how much was "rigged" and biased.
Doesn't have to be ethical to be valid
We just covered this in school and it was portrayed that this a completely fair and valid experiment and that it shows how ,,completely normal people become violent and immoral when in this situation. We were never told that the experiment was rigged against the inmates from the start.
Hello
Think for yourself, question authority :)
I still don't understand what this experiment aimed to prove. The outcome was what everyone already knew would happen
Always experiment, even if 'everyone knows' the outcome.
Be surprised how often 'everyone' are actually wrong....
Just as someone else pointed out, its for scientific purpose. Like gravity, why try to prove it if its there and always will be and everyone knows about it? Well just because. A documented theory is much more valuable in academic purposes than a non documented one, even if it is obvious. In advanced research papers (college and beyond) you cant say “we can come to the conclusion that x will be y because its obvious” you have to say “we came to the conclusion that x is y thanks to thisguy, in his research”
Edit: im not defending this study, but just like other videos of PD, like the monkey raised by humans, everybody knew how that would end, but there wasnt anything documented, and there is prestige in being the one thats the first to research a subject.
Does anyone in this thread know the definition of insanity?
You say that, and yet none of the other replications have been able to achieve the same results.
@@lostbutfreesoulThat's true. With real experiments, not this sadistic narcissist's crap-fest.
This was a very ugly study. We learned about it in my master's research course as part of our "this is why you have to be ethical in your studies" lessons. I have heard a few stories about attempts to repeat the experiment, but no one was able to replicate the results. I can't help but wonder if the ad rigged the results from the start: specifically looking for young men to do a prison study would result in a response bias, attracting people already primed for certain responses. It wasn't a random selection of average people at all.
Edit: I see you pointed that out also! Glad you saw it too~
But being ethical or not doesn't make it invalid if it did Nazi research wouldn't have been valuable
Then how do you explain Abu Ghrahib? 🤔 The Nazis? A whole country of "normal" people going along w this? Plus citizens?
Wild that the one lady chastised him for basically allowing/causing the abuse, yet then married him within a year
I could NOT believe that part omg
Hey PD I was wondering if you would consider doing a video on a grain elevator explosion such as the one in Westwego. They aren't really discussed much but they are common and extremely dangerous, and much like the other incidents you cover they generally stem from human error or arrogance. I work in the grain industry and feel like the way you approach your content could result in a very educational video for both people unfamiliar with the agricultural industry and those already working in it.
Fun fact: Grain dust has 3 to 5 times the explosive power of it's equivalent weight in TNT.
Thank you for the suggestion I'll look into it!
Does it matter the grain types? I'm curious
They have been discussed.
Fun fact: dust explosions are a hazard of any energy-rich matter. Flour, sugar, coal, some metals.
I wish the whole "Fun Fact" exclamation would die already. So annoying... 🤮
I love that the police refused to take all the men into their custody and cells because of 'insurance' NOT because it's a complete and utter waste of police resources. 😅
The worst part of this is how proud Zimbardo is of all this. He talks about it like it was an experiment that was not only a masterpiece, but also completely vital to conduct. No remorse.
What's particularly interesting about this study to me, as someone from a country where prisons are care facilities to a much larger extent rather than abuse opportunities for sadistic prison guards, is the fact that pretty much everyone agrees that this study was wildly abusive and inappropriate, and that it risked the mental and physical health of everyone involved, yet the actual prison system is still a play pen for abusers and no one wants to change that.
A poorly designed experiment without adequate oversight or controls results in cruel treatment of the subjects. But instead of academic censure or even criminal charges, the excesses are hailed as a breakthrough discovery. Stanford has a knack for that.
I find it interesting that it's unable to be replicated. That really shows how influential Zimbardo's presence/architecture was to the experiment's outcome itself. I do wonder how the 'sadistic' guards ended up. Do they show sadism in other aspects of their lives? Great video as always 😊
probably
It was random. Look at Abu Ghrahib
@@kamkam3457 what? You act like they beat them or water boarded them or somn. It was sissy little bs. Real prison is 1000× worse and up to 65% are innocent with no money for decent legal representation. Sissy weak teens. Those guards were soft
"Hey I'm pretty sure the prison system turns people into psychopaths...
...lets test it on some children."
They’re college students, they’re all adults
They aint minors foo
You think collage students are children?
@@MajorOctofuss i was about to say the same thing, most of the people i met in collrge were 28 plus in age
It’s interesting how wildly different this went compared to “The Sex Raft” experiment. Obviously wildly different circumstances but I do think it’s quite telling how the circumstances and roles change people
My favorite part of the raft experiment was how everyone became lifelong friends, but retained an equally lifelong hatred/distaste for the experimenter.
@@AnUndeadMonkey I'm willing to bet it was the lack of control that could be exerted on the raft. In the prison experiment, the researchers were able to coerce the guards into doing bad things, but on the raft it wasn't possible to influence the participants nearly as much, to the dismay of the researcher guy.
The what now?
@@carebloodlaevathein6732
Yeah, it was an incredibly funny experiment, the guy running the experiment wanted to see how easy it was for everyone to turn against each other when isolated (they were on a boat in the middle of the ocean) and with nothing to do, but where he first failed was that every subject was under the guise of it being an experiment for world peace, not human deprivation. A lot of people assumed that because everyone (and including the expirementor who was, for some reason, on the boat as well) was on a boat in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do, they were just getting freaky, which was VERY MUCH not true, they actually became incredibly close friends. I recommend watching Wendigoo's video on it, it's really funny.
@@sugarpapaelmo2004I absolutely second Wendigoon's Sex Raft documentary, I laughed audibly a few times.
The high recidivism rates are unfortunately intentionally not solved, at least in private US prisons. In Norway recidivism is only 20%, in the US it's 70%. You'd be shocked and horrified to find out how much money private prisons make from keeping people coming back. Things like "3 strikes and you're out" giving mandatory life sentences, giving little to no mental healthcare and physical healthcare, making and keeping harmless drugs as criminal offenses, overall poor access to services and assistance once out (in fact being a convict can disqualify you from some social programs), and the whole discrimination based on records (even if for nonviolent offenses) all combine to make people essentially have no choice but to go back to a life of crime. There's no real second chance. Everyone here is setup to fail.
This is right on the money - both figuratively and literally. The Stanford Prison team never took a step back to consider how the economic system they exist within actively shaped the way they viewed positions of structural power. One would have to imagine if a Norwegian Prison Experiment would end differently hmmmm
You have to take into account the vastly different demographics in both countries. The FBI perpetrator tables make for interesting reading.
Yes, agreed. It's all.a big game like life is. In my country play the game and you'll soon be home. USA has extremely long sentences so I would assume the mindset is very different there
@@eeltamer oh wow, yeah that's a good thing to think about.
That is because US prison system is legal slavery. Wouldn't want to rehabiliate your work force, now would you? That would hurt the profits.
This experiment has come up multiple times in my studies. I find it fascinating, but at the same time I still find it incomprehensible how everyone got into that role quite swiftly. From how I understood, the "guards" as well as "prisoners" were well-aware that they were all mere students, or at the very least, only participants to a study. It does not seem like these guards ever thought they were dealing with real criminals who deserved punishment. Even though you can argue for a variety of psychological processes to cause this, it still baffles me that no one really seems to have stood up like "hey guys, you know this is not real, right? So let's all chill, okay?". Unless the guards were given particular instructions to be cruel and play mindgames to elicit a response, but in that case you are biasing the outcome of your study rather than letting things develop naturally.
That is, anyone can easily say "that would NEVER happen to me!" while they are not in that position. But if I genuinely think it over, had I been put in that study as a prisoner, the first second that any guard behaved even remotely rude to me I would go "You realize I am just a fellow student, right? I am just here for my pay, same as you. No need to get hostile." Or the other way around, as a guard, if I saw another guard or prisoner aggress, I would give them a reminder of the same nature. Perhaps one's mind gets "broken in" overtime and you actually get somewhat "brainwashed" into your role. But it seems peculiar to me that from day 1 or 2 on, that is the stance they all adopted.
+ They determined the personalities of the participants to make sure they use "normal" students, and not someone who is a complete "red flag" for pathologic behaviour of sorts. But even so, you can argue that many seemingly "normal" people do hold some dark, twisted fantasies which, given a position to pursue them, they would. (E.g. One might just not break the law and act like a respectable person to not get in trouble at work, be criticized by friends, or end in jail). So how do they determine that the participants' behaviour truly only came about due to the setting and the group-level interactions at play, rather than due to some of them perhaps having some of these "dark" desires to begin with, which now they felt they could act upon as in this case it would not be met with any negative consequences?
It's easier than you think to lose track of what's "real". I doubt it started off that quickly though- the first couple of days, they likely were just thinking that they could put up with whatever because of the money. Remember, the pay worked out to about a hundred bucks a day and for a college student, thats something they could definitely use. Especially when you're figuring you just have to stay in this room most of the time, eat when they feed you, and maybe deal with one of them acting like an asshole for a few minutes a day. The problem is that time is long. They're sitting there with no concept of time outside of whatever they're told by others (meals, when to sleep, etc). Then, everyone is playing a part and not breaking character. All of the sudden you have someone coming in and asking why you haven't seen a lawyer yet. Little things like that that you didn't think you'd have to deal with because its not real but they sound serious.
Human nature is dark as fuck people just don't wanna admit it why do you think war and greed exist along with a power struggle
The people selected were selected for their personality traits. They were literally self serving narcissists with low empathy, and that was a qualifier. They were also repeatedly instructed to be more aggressive.
There was something a read about about native children being taken from their parents in Greenland and raised in Denmark, losing their language and culture. High rates of alcoholism and suicidal tendencies. Not sure of the year but could be a good new video
Thanks for the suggestion!
Same thing happened here in Canada too, unfortunately.
How old were the children?
@@PlainlyDifficult I've found it, the experiment was called the Little Danes. I know it happened in most colonial places, but this was an experiment in the 50s with the idea of creating role models for the natives
@@jonnymac8925 it was very common in colonised nations and an absolute tragedy. We had it in Scotland too, with the banning of culture.
I think if it had been allowed to continue, this experiment would have led to some pretty extreme violence. In a real prison system, the guards are, at least nominally, held accountable for their actions.
I wish that was true but if you could see how many deaths/r*pes are done by guards with no punishments, you'd know how fucked authority can get when protecting each other
By far the lowest recidivism rates are in Norway. Turns out when you treat prisoners as human beings and spend more time reforming them than punishing them they become far less likely to offend again. Norways "5 star hotel prisons" as we refer to them in the UK create less recidivism than the hardest most brutal prisons that you would think would seriously deter anyone going back. The figures can't lie yet for some reason the vast majority of countries still insist on treating prisons as a means of punishment rather than a means of reform.
For the record I still say this same thing about the man who brutally raped and murdered my cousin with down syndrome. My exact thoughts on this matter are simple, if you're not going to kill him then reform him otherwise when you release him you just set up more families to face the pain and anguish my family has faced.
U think there’s a good/ high chance he’ll be reformed? Although I’ve read about Norway’s prison (conditions n MUCH less likely to reoffend) I don’t think it’s really reformed for many (brutal) murder cases.
Thats where life sentences can come in, execution is a difficult topic(which I oppose due to the fact it gives the state the right to kill its citizens and due to the possibility of innocence). Prisons should be for reforming most people, however if individuals are particularly heinous and likely to reoffend(murderers and rapists etc) they should be essentially incarcerated for life and kept away from society
@@Yeewen88 depends on the crime, like tbh I'd 100% agree with the fact that a Rapist, if "reformed" is definately going to reoffend in the vast majority of cases
Finland's prison system is the same, if not better. In Finland, prisons are almost all open. Only the most diabolical criminals who've proven they can never be reformed end up in closed prisons. Open prisons are cells criminals can walk in and out of at any time. They have regular jobs, regular friends, regular family, and regular every day lives. They live nearly identical to how they did outside of prison. The difference is, depending on the crime, they're given different therapies, meds, and government help. Finland teaches their criminals that crime is wrong, but if you do a crime then there's always an option to apologize and live a less criminal life after. Even murder is often excused, as long as there was a "good reason" for it, such as murdering an abusive spouse, cheating spouse, child abuser, ect. These are treated less harshly, because they're already horrible people for doing such horrible things to someone else that the majority of Finns agree that, although the reaction of murder is extreme, it does make sense. Only those of cold blooded killers and obviously rapists are kept locked up, as they should be.
As a whole, nearly every Scan/Nordic country has a far superior judicial system than anywhere else in the entire world. That is why crimes are extremely rare in these countries, especially Finland. Society is kinder, human rights exist, prisons help criminals to not be criminals again, and their economies don't tank into the negatives because they're spending too many taxes on prisons
@@Yeewen88 @Fire SB I believe there is a path to redemption for almost everyone and execution should only be for an absolute last resort for serial offenders of the most heinous crimes (if someone proves they wont reform and commits the same heinous crimes after being given a chance to reform we should not be paying for their continued existence). My point is unlike many people who will believe in reform right up to the point that someone does such a thing to one of their own family, I try to keep my position regardless of how much that may effect me.
We talked about this when I took my first university psychology class. Our main topic at that point was ethics and how to make sure that your experiments are ethical. This case was basically an entire explanation of what NOT to do.
I learned about this "experiment" in my American Government class. As far as I can remember, this was one contributing factor that changed how prisons in the United States were run, because of how unethical the Stanford Prison Experiment was. I honestly saw Zimbardo's actions as a way for him to abuse power. I question if the experiment was really meant to study the psychological effects prison guard brutality had on inmates, or if it was just a way for some twisted sadist to get a cruel enjoyment out of watching teenagers suffer.
i learned about this in depth in my high school psychology class. the power of the situational roles in the experiment even caused zimbardo himself to forget he was in control of the whole thing and could put a stop to it at any time. one day a participant allegedly approached him and said he wanted to leave because he was under high emotional distress. zimbardo coaxed him into staying because the situation was so powerful and he took on the role of prison warden rather than researcher. pretty scary to think about
I seen others say the study was fake or interfered with more than the authors claim. Study also can't be replicated and is just one of many famous studies involved in the replication crisis.
This channel has gotten me through a lot of long shifts. Keep up the good work
Glad to hear it! Glad it helps!
What job do you have that pays you to watch documents 👍
@@musestarlight1 "documentaries."
@@musestarlight1 I wanna know too.. Are they hiring? Haha
Nice job mentioning all the flaws in methodology and the total failure to replicate it in the criticisms, you earn an upvote
Thank you!
I smell a redditor *sniff sniff*
@@YourSuccubus haven't used or posted on reddit in 5+ years... Guess the smell hasn't worn off yet
We learned this in my Psychology class to show how power can go to ones head when placed in a position of authority. There was a film made about it and it was really good. The whole study was wild.
I saw this story somewhere else. You left out part of the end. Some of those "prisoners" actually forgave the "guards" for their sadistic treatment. A few of the "prisoners" told the "guards" they would never forgive them and that they were horrible people. I still can't believe the ones that forgave them. It's one thing to act like prison guards and deny the "prisoners" certain freedoms, but these "guards" went way too far. There is no way in hell I would have ever forgiven them.
the actual lesson here is even when the power is fake, the corruption is real.
In my opinion. One thing to remember is that this study had way too many uncontrolled variables to be of any real scientitic value. Very few or none of the observations and results could be transposed to reality. I think one may biasing factor that could null all the results is the fact that these people were treated as emprisoned criminals, stripped from their rights, while knowing that they did not commit any crime.... In the real world, most people in prison, even in denial, know deep down they are responsible and what they have done is unacceptable sociacialy, or morally, ethically and on, perhaps, a personnal level. There are people who are trully innocent in prison, and this experiment would most probably try to represent them, which is a low proportion of the population. On the side of the guards, it is to be noted the utter lack of their professional training and experience compared to a real setting; they would most probably be comparable to unskilled, starting guards... but even guards starting in a new setting have two things: a formal training and other collegues that have more experience and are leaders and models; this whole concept was stripped out and hence, only on this basis, this experiment has only but very little validity to be compared or shed light on any aspect of reality; so beware at your own feelings, opinions, deductions, beliefs and conclusions. The single human being is a very complex system, put them together in a social interaction setting, here of differential power, and it becomes an incredibly higher complexity problem. There is nothing from this that allows us to make any valid conclusion about some innate condition, pattern of cognition or behavior, that could be generalized to the human being in any real life context... The results of this experiment are valid only in this experimental setting, and even worse, historically placed in that time; they offer no comparative value and bring problems of bias when bringing them up in present and future discussions (too many times we hear, remember the Stanford Prison Experiment... we saw that... lol and people somewhat forget all the biasing factors that were not controlled and not valid) The Stanley Milgram experiement, in this sense, was way better controlled as in the sense of having less factors of influence, better controlled settings and fewer variables to account for and measure. I am not saying, even then, that the Stanley Milgram experiment results are directly applicable today to many settings; we have to respect the complexity of the human being and avoid generalizations and accept that this complexity is hard to understand and study by whole teams of scientists, let alone one human being and then, by human beings that have no formal scientific training. And thats were the media is a corrupting and biasing factor when the big journals or tv shows broadcast the results. I am not saying that there is no light that can be shed on the human being at all, but only as human beings as a statistical model; for one human beings behavior cannot, and probably never could, be predicted by a statistical study of a group, or even a single, other human being... I think the future is in Big Data statistical analysis as a prediction model; but even then the study of groups or a different human being cannot be transposed in order to predict results on another human being effectively... One human being has to be studied throughout his life in order to barely predict one of his decisions in the next hour....
I totally don't understand how/why the experiment got so crazy after not even 24 hours. Like they were rebelling that first night? Why? They knew it was an experiment and they knew they weren't actually in jail. Even with being locked up in a single room all day, I don't think I would start to loose my sanity or get totally lost in the simulation so quickly. It seems like both the guards and prisoners were probably just acting on the stereotypes of each role and that's why it went bad so quickly. To me, that kinda makes me see the study as completely pointless because the randomly selected people just took on the normal expected traits of the roles. It just seems like a big game of roleplay
I’m genuinely surprised no one has poked fun at the text at 3:10 saying “Stamford.” Made me giggle despite the subject matter.
What blows my mind is how this only lasted 6 days. They descended into complete chaos and sadism in under a week.
I remember my professor talking about this experiment when we were discussing about the ethics of experiments. I knew it was bad, but I didn't know it was THIS bad. While it did contribute something to the psychology world, still...
I did not know dark glasses that cops wear were to prevent eye contact. I thought the glasses were to make the cops look bad-ass.
Holy crap. I didn’t know the infamous electric shock experiment was only 10 years earlier! So interesting to see such infamous experiments put into a timeline. I’ve studied this experiment in college, but I still learned new things from this video! Thank you so much for covering it!
I dunno if it makes me a sadist or just a sicko but I really look forward to Dark Science videos. Good job I guess keep up the good work 👍
More to come!
I think everyone looks forward to them - even me, and I'm a scientist!
I'd chalk it up to morbid curiosity
Ur an American
i like hearing about horribly unethical things done "in the name of science" and so on, since it's great inspiration for how to write horror-fiction :'D
I met Zimbardo at University. Intimidating character with a peculiarly high voice.
I love your videos! The topics and format manage to keep my attention for hours at a time, which is a difficult thing to do, I’m very easily distracted lol.
Funny how this was more of a study on sociology than psychology, with friends that graduated with a major in psych and myself as sociology and criminal justice we were always at ends with each other- and I always will be since most of psychology is often assuming information and therefore getting what you seek- instead of interpreting and understanding why individuals both themselves but part of a society do certain things. What reasons cause differences, nationality, customs and traditions, class, etc etc...
As I've gotten older I've become softer on psychology and even would like to study it at times, but seeing the many modern horrors done often for some 'psychological' experiment is downright scary.
I did miss this!!
Great stuff as always PD, thank you for what you do 💪
Love and respect from across the water 🇮🇪
The ironic part is that it wasn’t the guards that went on a power trip; it was the scientists themselves. THEY encouraged their subjects to be cruel, THEY wanted more violence and subjugation, THEY had to be told that they went to far.
The Stanford experiment is a good cautionary tale on how not to run an experiment. And how to not let your biases deep into the very process you administer. Not only was the head researcher too hands on through the experiment, his biases and preconceptions seeped through the team's methodology. The making the whole thing a wash
hey dude, i just wanted to let you know i’m currently doing a genetics project on the ethics of the nature vs nurture theory and your videos are helping me a bunch. thanks!
I lost count of how many illegal things happened in that experiment.... was Zimbardo trying to replicate an actual jail?
I was familiar with this experiment and had also seen two movie versions of it. However, the actual images you showed and the accurate details of the conditions made this so much more raw and tabgible than a hollowood movie and, thus, much more interesting. Thank you. Keep up trhe great work.
Suggestions: Unit 731, Lysenkoism in China, Dr. Sims the father of modern gynecology, Genie, the "feral" (abused) child from the 70s who was used to prove/disprove language acquisition theories
Thank you for the suggestion!
Saying this 'got out of hand' was probably an understatement 😂😂
I love these DSoS videos! One that turned out all right (I guess), but was of some questionable ethics, was the determination of the dosing interval of RhIG, also known as RhoGAM. We give RhIG to Rh negative mothers after they deliver babies(at 28 weeks, before they deliver, too, but that's acutally based on a bit more science), and we say that we have up to 72 hours to give the RhIG. What most people don't know is that we only have this rather arbitrary number because of some Rh negative prisoners at Sing Sing prison who participated in an experiment to see if they could be prevented from making Anti-D (which is the antibody the human body makes when Rh negative people are exposed to Rh positive blood). Anti-D is the leading cause of HDFN (hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn) in newborns, and is now preventable, thanks to these unsung heroes. I guess no one wants to know how the magic happened, just that it did. Why do I know this? I'm a Specialist in Blood Banking, so it's my job to know the dirty little secrets. If you're ever bored, PD, you might want to check this out. It involves science, prisoners, and an uncaring system that wouldn't allow prisoner access. Quite a tale with a very useful ending.
Another insightful and informative video. Well done
Oh wow I remember this! I was hoping to find a plainly difficult documentary on it!
I swear, I thought there was a point in this experiment where they forced the prisoners and guards to reverse roles, making the newly anointed "guards" to be way more sadistic based on the treatment they received, but I guess I am confusing this with another experiment, or possibly a movie LOL.
I had a philosophical discussion today with my 15 year old grandson regarding the difference between US & other European countries prison systems. It's crazy how few days of control & manipulation can make people become someone unrecognizable.
Very well done sir!
Sadly, these nefarious "experiments" have continued & progressed. DARPA funding doesn't go to waste 😖
When I was studying methodology on University this case was showed as a example what we CANNOT DO and how to avoid making mistakes like Zimbardo did.
You know, after hearing about this experiment so much over the years, this is the first time I ever heard why the Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted. I knew it was studying conflict between people, but not that the driving force was the US prison system.
14:20 he did not refuse, as per Zimbardo's book he actual accepted and chose to lie to his fellow prison mates telling them that there was no way out of the contract. that played was a mayor part in setting the mood and tone, this one single lie, caused the prisoners to mentaly slip deeply into the role
What I found most shocking here is that $210 is now $1400.
Coming home to a 30 minute video was exactly what i needed today :))
A very interesting experiment, I'd never heard of this and was fascinating to hear about. Great video
I love that you add time stamps haha
If you're going to try to replicate the US prison system, it would make sense to copy an actual US prison - including rules, schedule, punishment methods, etc. The way they set it up, it felt very slapped together and last minute. The guards don't come up with the rules for the prisons either - those are established by the laws and the warden (or the corporation running the prison).
The way you cover these events are leagues above anyone else. I thought I knew this story in full, I did not.
well, now I do.. ;)
that is so weird, we talked abt this in class yesterday and it just popped up on my recommended
About as scientific as a hardcore game of dungeons and dragons. Just a worthless study, not even experimental in nature. No control group, scientists inserting themselves into the experiment, just quack shit. I'm surprised they let him write textbooks.
Would you consider creating a video about the radioactive waste buried in a landfill in North St. Louis County, in Missouri?
I actually grew up about 6 miles or so from the landfill. I'm 43 now, but when I was 32, I was diagnosed with colon cancer, and nearly all of neighbors who were living on Langdon Court when we moved there, if they didn't move away, they died of cancer.
A documentary was filmed concerning this crisis, called Atomic Home Front, but I would be interested to see a condensed educational video about it, or the history of St. Louis Missouris involvement in the Manhattan Project, or even an educational video on environmental racism, which is the likely reason why nothing is being done about the radioactive waste in the landfill, as white fight has destroyed the economies of several municipalities in North St. Louis County, Berkeley, Missouri, where I grew up (I was also one of a handfull of white children who grew up in Berkeley, MO because my stepdad is black, and we were alway-and I still am-poor) being one such minicipaliy, and I can't help but wonder if the fact that most of North St. Louis County is poor, and black, has got something to do with government inaction in deaing with the environmental crisis at the landfill, despite the landfill, and a neighboring landfill, where there is an unground smouldering event that is aproaching the radioactive waste, being classified by the EPA as a Superfund Site.
There are so many subjects, and so much history related to this crises that more than one educational video could be produced, and I would love it if you would produce them.
Thank you for considering my suggestion, and I would welcome your thoughts on my suggestion.
Thank you,
Rose McCann.
Hey he has a thing pinned at the top asking for suggestions, he might have a better chance of covering this (which sounds so interesting!) if you pasted it there too.
sounds interesting! I'll thumbs it up👍 good luck on getting it recognized!
Oooo was about to check for new videos!
Every video on this always shines some light on new corners in it. There's just so much insanity going on, it's an almost endless well of info.
VSauce actually had a great MindField episode on this featuring an interview with Professor Zimbardo himself.
I would question the wisdom of everyone involved but this was an age where doctors thought babies didn't feel pain. What we learned from this is that people fill the roles they are given. the biggest problem with that in this case is that these were not trained guards therefore they could only fill their role based on their own perception of that role. Any phycology educator should know mankind's propensity to fill in what they dont know with speculation at best. Then coupled with the fact that people tend to get off with unrestricted power. This is tragedy of short sighted ambition and ambition above humanity.
*THIS* is the dark side of science video I was waiting for! Thank you.
Glad you liked it!
@@PlainlyDifficult Glad you made it! I remember watching the movie when I was about 14 or 15 at my dad's behest. So when I stumbled upon your dark side of science videos I was excited to see your in depth take on the experiment. It's nice to get such a matter-of-fact and unbiased approach to something that is morally questionable but strictly scientific in nature. Keep doing what you do, ill keep watching!
It's noteworthy that normal US prisons also (purposefully or not) invite and select more sadistic men as guards and encourage them to be very strict.
So while this is not a clean study by any means, it reflects reality in many ways.
woo! been waiting for this video!
Idk how so many people call upon the value of this "experiment" and how it relates to human psychology. To me it just feels like some narcissist who had all this pent up anger from his past decided to take it out on a bunch of college students and excuse his actions as a scientific achievement when in reality no one really learned anything from it
This is how it be in prison too there's points people get locked in solitary confinement and forgotten about for years there was one dude in there for 40 year's
Fascinating study, but as I learned about it taking my Psychology degree we were told immediately to settle down as the design of the "experiment" was horrific. Confounds everywhere, biased. Still, interesting and I think we can draw inferences about power corruption and submission from it.
I have been waiting for this
thanks for the great video. once again. Makes my Saturday mornings
Glad to hear it!
Zimbardo's book on this experiment is excellent. Highly recommend it.
I loved the book on this . Really shows how quickly an environment can impact the human condition
Danmarks Radio (DR, Denmark's public broadcasting network) also recreated this experiment in 2012 (I believe). A journalist wanted to see if a similar situation could unfold in our culture about 40 years after the original experiment. Supervised by multiple psychiatrists, the experiment had to be cancelled early as well. The findings of this experiment was roughly similar to that of the original in 1971. The Danish version is called "ond, ondere, ondest", meaning evil, more evil, most evil
Oh wow we just talked about this prison experiment in our social psychology class a few days ago! Cool how CZcams recommended me this
Actually there were reports of long term effects on both prisoners and guards after the experiment.
It feels like this is a bit to Zimbardo-friendly telling of the experiment. It has come to light that most of the sadistic technics were not invented by the guards but taken straight from a consultant who was a former inmate, that Zimbardo did push the "guards" in the direction he wanted in the orientation meeting. Furthermore, the "prisoners" couldn't actually leave the experiment, a mental breakdown was staged by a "prisoner" (Korpi) when it became apparent that medical (incl. psychological) reasons would be the only way for him to leave.
There is a long form discussion of this experiment in an article titled "The Lifespan of a Lie" by Ben Blum (not posting the link as it seems to prevent my comment from going live).
Thank You. That article was a very enlightening read
So many of these videos are things we already went over in my sociology class, yet the vids still very interesting.
So that earns you a subscription from me
Glad you like them!
Plainly I like your videos a lot. Thank you.
Why tf did i read the title as "the sturdy that went too far"? The internet has ruined me.....
😂😂
One bad apple ruins the whole bunch. Even if you’re a nice CO/DO or law enforcement officer, if you don’t call out others’ immoral and sadistic acts then you’re just as bad as the person committing those acts.
I had to learn about Stanford/Tuskegee/Nuremberg/Even Unit 731 when I did an IRB (Institutional Review Board) for a research project. Process took a full year and many revisions to get approved.
The IRB is a pain in the ass for a very VERY good reason. It’s to prevent suffering of people and liability. Some of these experiments leave you in tears reading about them. Like fuck me how can humanity be this bloody cruel??!!! I hope we all can learn from this!
I love plainly difficult. I'm going to play a portion of this video in my lecture on research ethics at a university next week. Thank you my bro
This is something we reference whenever the school administration messes up lol... "well at least it's not as bad as the prison experiment..."
Let’s go baby, this is what we been waiting for !!! First like and comment !
I am the first after the other ones
Cringe
Don’t you feel special Pat
Okay, who?
I was caught up with/in an experiment similar to the small individual parts for a 3 day weekend. At different times of the day one or two people were separated from the group. The group was then given instructions on how treat the people who were separated. There were possibly twenty of us. I know of one or two other than myself were changed irrevocably. It was conducted by a church minister under the auspices of the uniting Church Australia. I would rate our time as 9 on the impact it had on three of us. The legacy of the experience is something that I have relived all of my life probably until the day I die. I've never said anything about this until now and will never speak of it again as the anguish I feel and the knowledge that there is no remedy is too great for me to experience again..
That's a brainwashing cult, btw
Cult + time="religion.
I honestly watching this documentary while I was in high school (1-2 years ago) for my society and culture class. I enjoy watching this kind of content