To do this, we decided to set up a simulated a prison and then carefully note the effects of this institution on the behavior of all those within its walls.
We wanted to see what the psychological effects were of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The official website of the Stanford Prison Experiment describes the experiment goal as follows: On August 21, 1971, the day after SPE ended, six people died in an escape attempt and prison riot inside San Quentin State Prison. While SPE cannot ethically be replicated, actual prisons can see even more intense abuse and conflict between guards. After debriefing with his "guards" and "prisoners", Zimbardo analyzed the data and published his findings. The study was cancelled six days later on August 20. Some guards exhibited abusive behavior toward prisoners, which led Zimbardo, at the urging of Christina Maslach, to stop the experiment before it was due to conclude. The experiment began with prisoners being arrested in their own neighborhoods by real Palo Alto police. The first official day of the experiment was August 15, 1971. Certain portions of it were filmed, and excerpts of footage are publicly available. The US Office of Naval Research funded the experiment as an investigation into behavior. The day before the experiment began, Zimbardo's team coached the "guards" about their roles and what was and wasn't acceptable for them to do to "prisoners." One recurring critique of SPE is that participants were biased in their behavior based on demand characteristics. The experiment's findings have been called into question, and the experiment has been criticized for unscientific methodology. In 2019, the American Psychological Association advised of "the need for teachers and textbook authors to both revise and repurpose the coverage of the SPE in their classes and textbooks, respectively". However, the experiment's scientific validity has now been discredited and its methods described as 'deeply flawed', and 'a lie' The experiment was described in many introductory social psychology textbooks, although some exclude it due to concerns about its methodology and ethics. The controversial experiment gained a large amount of publicity over the ensuing decades. Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo led the research team who conducted the experiment.
It was intended to examine the effects of situational variables on participants' reactions and behaviors, in a two-week simulation of a prison environment. The Stanford prison experiment ( SPE) was a role-play and simulation, held at Stanford University in the summer of 1971. Plaque at the location of the Stanford prison experiment