standfort prison experiment film

The Stanford Prison Experiment

Students of high school or university psychology classes are probably familiar with the Stanford Prison Experiment. Run in 1971 at the behest of the U.S. Navy, the experiment intended to investigate the cause of conflict between guards and prisoners in military correctional facilities. Dr. Philip Zimbardo and his team chose 24 male Stanford students and divvied them up into guards and prisoners. Turning the basement of one of the student halls into a makeshift prison, Zimbardo placed his subjects under surveillance and watched as the prisoners became passive and the guards exhibited authority by way of sometimes sadistic psychological torture. Zimbardo ended the experiment 6 days into its 2-week run, mostly due to the objections of his fiancée. She felt Zimbardo had become an unhealthy part of his own experiment.

A documentary about this could potentially be fascinating, as some of the actual experiment exists on film. Unfortunately, "The Stanford Prison Experiment" is a dramatization, and no matter how much it may adhere to the well-documented specifics of Zimbardo's work, it is a massive failure. It prefers to abstract the experiment from any psychological theories or details, opting instead to merely harp on endless, repetitive scenes of prisoner abuse. One particular guard, who thinks he's Strother Martin in " Cool Hand Luke ," abuses the prisoners. The prisoners take the abuse, rebelling once or twice before becoming passive. Zimbardo glares at a TV screen doing nothing while his guards break the rules of the contract everybody signed at the outset. Repeat ad nauseum.

These scenes are supposed to shock the viewer, but they did not work for me, because I just didn't care. The film reduces the entire experiment to a Dead Teenager movie whose slasher just roughs them up. Prisoners are referred to by numbers in order to strip them of their personal identities, and the film keeps them at this level of distance. We never get to know any subject outside of brief sketches, so the victims become disposable. Despite the best efforts of the actors on both sides of the law, the film is completely clinical in its depiction, striking the same note for over 2 hours. It gets real dull, real fast.

I didn't care because this isn't remotely like an actual prison; it's a bunch of privileged kids playing dress-up for $15 a day. Even a priest Zimbardo hires as a prison chaplain tells the doctor "it's good that these privileged kids experience prison life." The actual reasons for the experiment (and its military involvement) are never expressed in Tim Talbott 's screenplay, so the priest's comment almost serves as the reason for these tests. And the film takes great pains to tell us that nobody in the experiment suffered "long term psychological damage" after it was abruptly cancelled. I'm sure someone who has experienced the harsh realities of actual prison life would feel relieved that these young men weren't scarred.

The best scene in "The Stanford Prison Experiment" deals with an actual prisoner and serves to highlight my disdain for how the film trades emotion and details for exploitative shocks. The fantastic Nelsan Ellis (last seen in " Get On Up ") plays Jesse, an ex-con brought in by Zimbardo's team as an expert witness to their proceedings. At a mock parole board hearing, Jesse rips into an inmate, treating him as inhumanely as possible while verbally shredding the inmate's explanation for why he should be paroled. After the stunned inmate is sent back to his cell, Jesse reveals that he was recreating his own parole board treatment. He tells Zimbardo that playing the role of his own tormentor "felt good, and I hated that it did." This, in a nutshell, is what the actual experiment sought to explore, that is, the nature of even the nicest human beings to commit evil. Jesse's revelation, and the psychological toll it takes on him, is more effective than anything else the film conjures up. If only the movie had spent more time interacting with the Strother Martin-wannabe's own thoughts rather than trudging him out only for sadism.

The film reduces Zimbardo to some kind of megalomaniac who doesn't know what he is doing. This makes his research seem half-assed and unethical. He watches the guards strike the prisoners (a direct violation of the rules) and the film paints him as the biggest villain of all. He challenges anyone who questions his methods and authority, and at one point, he absurdly sits in a hallway like a low-rent Charles Bronson hoping for the return of a subject who might jeopardize his research. (In the actual case, Zimbardo simply moves the prison to a location unknown by the subject.) And though his intentions are to "feminize" the prisoners by giving them "dresses" that barely hide their genitalia, "The Stanford Prison Experiment" implies that Zimbardo's sole reason for stopping the experiment was the moment when his guards forced the inmates into a gay sex pantomime. Violence and hog-tying inmates were OK, but none of that gay stuff, the movie seems to say.

Billy Crudup deserves some kind of medal for his attempt to breathe life into his one dimensional character, as do actors like Ezra Miller and Olivia Thirlby . But they are undermined by a poor script, horror movie-style music and ripe dramatizations that exist solely to make the viewer feel superior. I despise movies like this and " Compliance " because they pretend to say something profound about their scenarios but are, at heart, cynically manipulative trash designed to make audiences pat themselves on the back for not being "like those people." Had we been forced to identify with anyone, prisoner or guard, the film might have achieved the palpable discomfort of forcing us to look at ourselves. That was one of the goals of the actual Stanford Prison Experiment. This movie just wants to superficially disturb, and it's not even successful at that.

Odie Henderson

Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

• Keir Gilchrist as John Lovett
• Tye Sheridan as Peter Mitchell - Prisoner 819
• Ezra Miller as Daniel Culp - Prisoner '8612'
• Moisés Arias as Actor
• Billy Crudup as Dr. Philip Zimbardo
• Gaius Charles as Banks
• Thomas Mann as Prisoner 416
• Michael Angarano as Christopher Archer
• Olivia Thirlby as Christina Zimbardo
• Nelsan Ellis as Jesse Fletcher
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• Kyle Patrick Alvarez
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The Stanford Prison Experiment

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The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015)

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• Billy Crudup
• Ezra Miller
• Michael Angarano
• Tye Sheridan
• Johnny Simmons
• Olivia Thirlby
• Thomas Mann

So disturbing, intense and believable that it's easy to forget we're watching a movie. — Justin Gerber, Consequence of Sound

A masterful film. Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez deserves all the praise in the world for the way he cranks up this pressure cooker script. — Jordan Hoffman, The Guardian

One of the best, most harrowing films of the year. — Brent McKnight, Cinema Blend

Chilling. A riveting, powerful, provocative film. — Kyle Smith, New York Post

Presented by IFC Films | United States | Jul 17th, 2015 | 122 MINS | R

What happens when a college psych study goes shockingly wrong? In this tense, psychological thriller based on the notorious true story, Billy Crudup stars as Stanford University professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who, in 1971, cast 24 student volunteers as prisoners and guards in a simulated jail to examine the source of abusive behavior in the prison system. The results astonished the world, as participants went from middle-class undergrads to drunk-with-power sadists and submissive victims in just a few days. Winner of two awards at the Sundance Film Festival, including Best Screenplay, and created with the close participation of Dr. Zimbardo himself, The Stanford Prison Experiment is a chilling, edge-of-your-seat thriller about the dark side of power and the effects of imprisonment. Featuring an extraordinary cast of rising young actors, including Ezra Miller, Olivia Thirlby, Tye Sheridan, Keir Gilchrist, Michael Angarano, and Thomas Mann.

• Kyle Patrick Alvarez
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• Lizzie Friedman
• Greg Little
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• Tim Talbott

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50 Years On: What We've Learned From the Stanford Prison Experiment

The experiment generated important research into unexplored territories..

Posted August 16, 2021 | Reviewed by Tyler Woods

• What Is Shyness?
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• I developed 3 new areas of research after the Stanford prison experiment (SPE): good and evil, time perspective, and shyness.
• The SPE was closed down after 6 days because the "guards" became so brutal and as Superintendent, I was too caught up in my role.
• The Heroic Imagination Project teaches people how to be Everyday Heroes and take effective actions in challenging situations.

Fifty years ago this month I conducted a research experiment that could have been a blight to my career . Instead, what has become known as the Stanford prison experiment (SPE) drove me to extensively pursue the question: Why do good people do evil things? After three decades of research on this subject, I recorded my findings in The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (Random House, 2007).

But the SPE also led me to research three new topics that hadn’t previously been studied:

1) Heroism: Why, in difficult situations, some people heroically step forward to help others, oftentimes complete strangers, while others stand by and watch.

2) Time Perspective: The psychological time warp experienced by participants of the SPE—not knowing if it was day or night or what day it was—led to my research in people’s individual time perspectives and how these affect our lives.

3) Shyness : Rethinking shyness as a self-imposed psychological prison led me to conduct research on shyness in adults, and then create a clinic in the community designed to cure shyness.

The Experiment in a Nutshell

In August 1971, I led a team of researchers at Stanford University to determine the psychological effects of being a guard or a prisoner. The study was funded by the US Office of Naval Research as both the US Navy and the US Marine Corps were interested in the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners. In the study, 24 normal college students were randomly assigned to play the role of guard or inmate for two weeks in a simulated prison located in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department building. But the guards quickly became so brutal, and I had become so caught up in my role as Superintendent, that I shut down the experiment after only six days.

Challenging the Truth

There seem to be powerful silent barriers to dealing with new truths emanating from psychological laboratories and field experiments that tell us things about how the mind works, which challenge our basic assumptions. We want to believe our decisions are wisely informed, that our actions are rational, that our personal conscience buffers us against tyrannical authorities. Moreover, we want to believe in the dominating influence of our good character despite social circumstances. Yes, those personal beliefs are sometimes true, but often they are not, and rigidly defending them can get us in trouble individually and collectively. Let’s see how.

Denial and Finger Pointing

When we discover two or three ordinary American citizens administered extreme electric shocks to an innocent victim on the relentless commands of a heartless authority, we say, “no way, not me.” Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram’s obedience to authority research has been in the public arena for decades, yet we ignore its message of the power of unjust authority in undercutting our moral conscience. Similarly, the SPE research made vivid the power of hostile situational forces in overwhelming dispositional tendencies toward compassion and human dignity. Still, many who insist on honoring the dominance of character over circumstance reject its situational power message.

In 2004, people around the world witnessed online photos of horrific actions of American Military Police guards in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib Prison against prisoners in their charge. It was portrayed as the work of a “few bad apples” according to military brass and Bush administration spokespeople. I publicly challenged this traditional focus on individual dispositions by portraying American servicemen as good apples that were forced to operate in a Bad Barrel (the Situation) created by Bad Barrel Makers (the System).

I became an expert witness in the defense of the Staff Sergeant in charge of the night shift, where all the abuses took place. In that capacity, I had personal access to the defendant, to all 1,000 photos and videos, to all dozen military investigations, and more. It was sufficient to validate my view of that prison as a replica of the Stanford prison experiment on steroids, and of my defendant, Chip Frederick, as really a Good Apple corrupted by being forced to function for 12 hours every night for many months in the worst barrel imaginable. My situation-based testimony to the military Court Martial hearings helped reduce the severity of his sentence from 15 years down to only four years.

The January 6, 2021 insurrection is a recent example of some Good Apples being corrupted by a Bad Barrel. In this case, the Bad Barrel is the insidiousness of fascism led by the former president and other fraudulent politicians as well as media personalities. These “leaders” have been generously dumping poison in the Barrel and over the Apples with lies that feed the Apples’ deepest fears.

“The Stanford Prison Experiment” Film

In 2015, The Stanford Prison Experiment was made into a film starring Billy Crudup as me and Olivia Thrilby as Christina Maslach, the whistle-blowing graduate student (whom I later married) who pointed out the experiment had gone awry and had changed me to such a degree that she didn’t know who I was anymore. Her personal challenge led me to end the study the next day. The film received two awards at the Sundance Film Festival: best screenwriting and best science feature.

The Stanford Prison Experiment movie enables viewers to look through the observation window as if they were part of the prison staff watching this remarkable drama slowly unfold, and simultaneously observe those observers as well. They are witnesses to the gradual transformations taking place, hour by hour, day by day, and guard shift by guard shift. Viewers see what readers of The Lucifer Effect book account can only imagine. As these young students become the characters inhabited in their roles and dressed in their costumes, as prisoners or guards, a Pirandellian drama emerges.

The fixed line between Good, like us, and Evil, like them, is relentlessly blurred as it becomes ever more permeable. Ordinary people soon slip into doing extraordinarily bad things to other people, who are actually just like them except for a random coin flip. Other healthy people soon get sick mentally, being unable to cope with the learned helplessness imposed on them in that unique, unfamiliar setting. They do not offer comfort to their buddies as they break down, nor do those who adopt a “good guard” persona ever do anything to limit the sadistic excesses of the cruel guards heading their shifts.

Finally, the movie also tracks the emotional changes in the lead character (me) as his compassion and intellectual curiosity get distilled and submerged over time. The initial roles of research creator and objective observer are dominated by power and insensitivity to prisoners' suffering in the new role of Prison Superintendent.

Visit the official Stanford Prison Experiment website to learn more about the experiment.

Heroic Imagination

I should add that, along with continuing research in time perspectives and time perspective therapy , my new mission in life has been to empower everyone to wisely resist negative situational forces and evil by becoming Everyday Heroes in Training. Our non-profit Heroic Imagination Project (HIP) teaches ordinary people how to stand up, speak out and take effective actions in challenging situations in their lives.

Rosemary K.M. Sword and Philip Zimbardo are the authors, along with Richard M. Sword, of The Time Cure: Overcoming PTSD with the New Psychology of Time Perspective Therapy.

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What happens when a college psych study goes shockingly wrong? Based on the notorious true story, THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT stars Billy Crudup (Watchmen) as Stanford University professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who, in 1971, cast 24 student volunteers as prisoners and guards in a simulated jail to examine the source of abusive behavior in the prison system. The results astonished the world, as participants went from middle-class undergrads to drunk-with-power sadists and submissive victims in just a few days. Featuring an extraordinary cast including Ezra Miller, Olivia Thirlby, Tye Sheridan, Keir Gilchrist, Michael Angarano, and Thomas Mann, and created with the close participation of Dr. Zimbardo himself, THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT is a chilling, edge-of-your-seat thriller about the dark side of power and the effects of imprisonment.

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• Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ NR (Not Rated)
• Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 2.4 ounces
• Item model number ‏ : ‎ 35225379
• Director ‏ : ‎ Kyle Patrick Alvarez
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ Widescreen, Multiple Formats, NTSC, Color
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 2 hours and 2 minutes
• Release date ‏ : ‎ November 17, 2015
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Olivia Thirlby, Ezra Miller, Nelsan Ellis, Matt Bennett, Ki Hong Lee
• Studio ‏ : ‎ IFC Independent Film
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B013W7LTL6
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
• #5,296 in Drama DVDs

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Season 1 – The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth

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Philip G. Zimbardo, one of the world’s most renowned psychologists, died Oct. 14 in his home in San Francisco. He was 91.  

Broadly, Zimbardo’s research explored how environments influence behavior. He is most known for his controversial 1971 study, the Stanford Prison Experiment, with W. Curtis Banks, Craig Haney, and David Jaffe. The study, intended to examine the psychological experiences of imprisonment, revealed the shocking extent to which circumstances can alter individual behavior. To this day, it is used as a case study in psychology classes to highlight both the psychology of evil as well as the ethics of doing psychological research with human subjects.

Yet Zimbardo’s research went far beyond the prison experiment. In a career that spanned over five decades, Zimbardo examined topics including persuasion, attitude change, cognitive dissonance, hypnosis, cults, alienation, shyness, time perspective, altruism, and compassion. 

“Phil Zimbardo is one of the most prolific and influential psychologists of his generation – a true pioneer of the field of social psychology,” said Claude Steele, the Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, Emeritus, and professor of psychology. “Virtually all of Phil’s research shows how important phenomena of real-life human behavior can be studied scientifically. For a young science like social psychology, this has been an especially important contribution.” 

Situational forces: Stanford Prison Experiment

Zimbardo first received national attention for his 1969 study that examined the causes of vandalism. He believed that anonymity and a lack of community could lead to antisocial behavior. 

Zimbardo then examined the influence of the situation on human behavior in his now-notorious Stanford Prison Experiment. While he wanted to know more about the dynamics of prison life, Zimbardo was particularly interested in the influence of social roles on human behavior.

“Most people go about their daily life assuming that they have more control over their behavior than they actually do,” said Zimbardo in a 1971 Stanford News Service press release written at the onset of the experiment. He went on: “We are often unaware of the tremendous power which social situations exert upon us to shape, guide, and manipulate our behavior.” 

In the study, Zimbardo and a team of Stanford graduate students created a mock prison in the basement of the Department of Psychology building. Some two dozen participants – young, healthy college-aged men – were recruited to spend two weeks in the prison as either prisoners or guards. (Roles were decided by a coin toss.) 

Zimbardo was the prison superintendent – a role he was criticized for assuming because he was no longer a neutral observer but an active participant in the study.

As the experiment progressed, conditions rapidly deteriorated, and the line between role-playing and reality collapsed. The outcome, as Zimbardo later acknowledged, was “ shocking and unexpected ” and “ out-of-control .” Some guards became tyrannical and abusive in their behavior toward prisoners. For the prisoners, the experience led to acute anxiety, emotional depression, crying, and rage. 

The experiment, intended to last two full weeks, was shut down after six days due to the psychological abuses that transpired.

Philip Zimbardo in 1994 | L.A. Cicero

Shyness as imprisonment 

Zimbardo saw aspects of prison behavior mirrored in other areas of life, from schools to marriages to even emotions like shyness, which he studied after the Stanford Prison Experiment.  

In an article he co-authored in 1975 , Zimbardo described how “shyness becomes a form of imprisonment, in which the person plays both the role of guard who constantly enforces restrictive rules and the role of prisoner who sheepishly follows them (and is thus not respected by the guard).” 

He founded the Stanford Shyness Clinic and wrote prolifically on the topic, and in 1977 he authored Shyness: What It Is, What To Do About It . That same year, Newsweek described Zimbardo’s research into this topic as “pioneering,” and two decades later, he was credited with launching a whole new area of psychological study . 

Monsters and heroes 

Zimbardo was also considered one of the leading experts on the bystander effect – the theory that in the presence of others, individuals are less likely to step in and help someone in need. Much like the Stanford Prison Experiment, Zimbardo attributed behavior to situational and systemic forces. 

Zimbardo’s pursuit of understanding how external forces shape human behavior led him to also explore mind control and the appeal of cults, including the Peoples Temple and its leader Jim Jones, who orchestrated what is now known as the Jonestown Massacre.

While curious about how situations can draw out the worst in people, Zimbardo also wondered about how they can bring out the best. He believed that inside everyone there exists an “ordinary hero.” In a 2006 news article Zimbardo co-authored with Zeno Franco , he asked: “Is it also possible that heroic acts are something that anyone can perform, given the right mindset and conditions?”

The question inspired Zimbardo to establish the Heroic Imagination Project , a nonprofit organization that seeks to prepare people for a moment to help others in a time of need. 

Personal life, professional accomplishments  

Philip George Zimbardo was born March 23, 1933, in New York City.

He grew up in poverty in the Bronx – an upbringing he said influenced his outlook. He was the eldest of four children.

In high school, he established a lifelong friendship with fellow classmate Stanley Milgram , who also went on to become a well-known psychologist. 

Zimbardo attended Brooklyn College and went on to do his graduate work in psychology at Yale University where he earned a master’s degree in experimental psychology in 1955 and a doctorate in social psychology in 1959. 

Zimbardo joined the Stanford faculty in 1968 after having taught at New York University and Columbia University. He was known for his inspiring teaching and mentorship. 

“Phil was a highly decorated teacher,” said Mark Lepper, the Andrew Ray Lang Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, and former chair of the Department of Psychology. “In quarters when he taught Introduction to Psychology , lines formed around the Main Quad with students wanting to take his course.”

Another colleague, Ewart Thomas, professor emeritus of psychology and former dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences , noted that Zimbardo was “famous for inspiring many of his students to pursue research and teaching careers in which they, like their mentor, were recognized for their distinguished teaching.” 

In 2002, he was elected president of the American Psychological Association, and in 2012, the association awarded him its Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in the Science of Psychology. Among his many awards are the 2006 Havel Foundation Prize  for his lifetime of research on the human condition and the 2015 Kurt Lewin Award for his contributions to the social sciences.

Zimbardo retired in 2003. The Stanford Alumni Association named Zimbardo the 2007 recipient of the Richard W. Lyman Award for exceptional volunteer service to the university. 

Zimbardo is survived by his wife of 52 years, Christina Maslach Zimbardo; his son Adam (C. Jezzie, Jessi) from his first marriage to the late Rose Zimbardo and daughters Zara (Patrick Reinsborough) and Tanya (Michael Doyle); and four grandchildren he adored: Clay Doyle, Philip and Victoria Zimbardo, and Taylor Epstein-Bliss.

For more information

In lieu of flowers, donations in Zimbardo’s name can be made to the nonprofits Heroic Imagination Project and the Social Psychology Network . The Zimbardo family invites sharing tributes on Zimbardo’s Legacy web page and visiting philipzimbardo.com . Learn more about Zimbardo in his own words through his interview with the Stanford Oral History Project. Stanford Libraries houses his papers .

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