this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 125 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

"We just learned" is a bit of a stretch. Here is a Medium post from 2020, which cites previous interviews and Jon Ronson's 2015 book "So You've Been Publicly Shamed," that explains the problems with the infamous experiment: https://medium.com/invisible-illness/have-we-gotten-the-stanford-prison-experiment-all-wrong-fad09471e79c

Edit: Ah, title is straight from the Vox title, and that article is from 2018

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Before your edit I was about to say that maybe the journalists just saw the video fact checking all Somerson videos where they learned that the research was a fraud.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yup. My psychology/sociology classes 5+ years ago were teaching that this experiment was super flawed