Stanford prison experiment

A 1971 study at Stanford University assigned volunteers to roles as guards and prisoners in a simulated prison. Its methods, ethics, and claims about situational power have since faced extensive criticism.

Philip Zimbardo: An American psychologist who led the Stanford prison experiment. As principal investigator and prison superintendent, Zimbardo influenced the simulated institution’s rules and daily conduct.
Lucifer effect: Philip Zimbardo’s account of how social situations and systems can lead ordinary people to harmful acts. Zimbardo used the experiment to illustrate the situational account later developed in this concept.
Stanford prison experiment criticisms: Scholarly and historical challenges to the experiment’s methods, interpretation, and public retellings. These criticisms question whether the observed behavior supports the study’s famous conclusions.
Prison simulation: A staged environment that reproduces selected features of imprisonment for research, training, or demonstration. The Stanford project belongs to this broader method of studying prison-like social settings.
Stanford County Prison: The simulated prison built in a Stanford University basement for the 1971 experiment. Its improvised cells and routines formed the setting in which assigned roles were enacted.
Situational attribution: An explanation of behavior that emphasizes circumstances and social context over personal traits. The experiment was widely presented as evidence that assigned roles and settings can transform behavior.
BBC Prison Study: A 2002 television-based study of group identity and power in a simulated prison. Its different procedures and findings challenged simple claims that prison roles automatically produce tyranny.
Social psychology: The study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by social settings and others. The experiment arose from questions about how institutional roles affect individual behavior.
Role-playing: The enactment of a character or social position, often under agreed rules. Participants were assigned guard and prisoner identities rather than placed in an actual prison.
Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse: The abuse of detainees by U.S. military personnel at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, exposed publicly in 2004. Zimbardo invoked the case when arguing that institutional conditions can foster abuse.

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