The Dark Side of Science: The Horrific Stanford Prison Experiment 1971 (Documentary)

#science #history

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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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[PlainlyDifficult]

Any suggestions for future Dark side of Science videos? Let me know.

[deanisplemoni]

I think the biggest problem with this 'study' is that the scientists ended up asking the 'guards' to be more aggressive. it really had no point.

[scriptorpaulina]

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

[AsTheStormRises]

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.

[Sage-Thyme]

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.

[ditdot]

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.

[___LC___]

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.

[masterkey]

"College students getting arrested is not a unique thing" ... "by their university"
Agreed. That's how they get their funding.

[DarkestVampire]

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".

[qston]

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.

[stephentaylor]

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.

[BestBoiA]

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.

[TrueUnderDawgGaming]

I still don't understand what this experiment aimed to prove. The outcome was what everyone already knew would happen

[CatNyan]

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.

[kae]

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~

[dustyfan]

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.

[ada]

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.

[shellshell]

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. 😅

[OctagonalSquare]

Wild that the one lady chastised him for basically allowing/causing the abuse, yet then married him within a year

[lozajay]

This channel has gotten me through a lot of long shifts. Keep up the good work