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Stanford Prison Experiment Transcript

Speakers: Dr. Steve Taylor, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Male

(Music)

DR. STEVE TAYLOR: If you go to Google and type in the word "Experiment," one of the first things you'll see is the Stanford Prison Experiment. It's probably the best known psychological study of all time.

It all began in West Coast America on a summer's day back in 1971, when college students grew their hair long, protested against their government, were pro-peace and totally anti-authority, or so we thought until Philip Zimbardo.

(Music)

DR. PHILIP ZIMBARDO: So the Stanford Prison Study very simply is an attempt to see what happens when you put really good people in a bad place.

We put an ad in the city newspaper, wanted students for study of prison life lasting up to 2 weeks. We're going to pay you $15 a day. This is back in 1971. It's pretty good money, and we picked 75 volunteers, gave them a battery of psychological tests, and we picked two dozen who in all dimensions were normal and healthy to begin with. And then we did what is critical for all research. We randomly assigned half of them to the role of playing guards or the role of playing prisoners. It's literally like flipping a coin.

And then what we did is we told the guards, “Come down a day early,” and we had them pick their own uniform. We had them help set up the prison so they'd feel like it was their prison, and the prisoners were coming into their place. The prisoners, we simply said, “Wait at home in the dormitories.” Well, what we didn't tell them, which is a little bit of the deception of omission, is that they were arrested by the city police.

MALE: Right there, they took me out the door. They put my hands against the car. It was a real cop car. It was a real policeman that took me to the police station, the basement of the police station.

DR. PHILIP ZIMBARDO: I had told the policeman to put a blindfold on the prisoners. Since they had never been arrested, they didn't know that doesn't happen. The reason for the blindfold is my assistants would come, put them in our car, bring them down to our prison, and they'd be in our prison now blindfolded. The guards would strip them naked, delouse them, pretending that they were lice. It's kind of a degradation ritual. And after the first day, I was about to end it because nothing was happening.

[End of audio]

From “Classic Studies in Psychology.” Copyright 2012 by Films Media Group. All rights reserved. Adapted with permission.

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