Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, We're coming to Salt Lake City, Utah and Phoenix,
Speaker 1: Arizona this fall. Yeah, October, we're going to be at
Speaker 1: Salt Lake Cities Grand Theater and then the next night
Speaker 1: October will be in Phoenix. And we added a second
Speaker 1: show to our Melbourne show, right, that's right, a second
Speaker 1: earlier show in Melbourne. So you can get all the
Speaker 1: information for all of these shows at s y s
Speaker 1: K live dot com. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey you, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there. So why don't you pull
Speaker 1: up a chair, kick back and tell us about your problems?
Speaker 1: Because this is psychology stuff. We should just call this
Speaker 1: episode the Stanford Prison Experiment a k a. Perhaps the
Speaker 1: happiest experiment of all time, and it's really not an
Speaker 1: experiment anyway, but it's the most famous psychology experiment ever. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got kind of ticked off while I was researching this,
Speaker 1: you should, man, because I used to think it was cool, like,
Speaker 1: oh man, what a cool experiment. Yeah, everybody's evil and
Speaker 1: it's core. Yeah. Then I researched it, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this is a bunch of bs, all of it. This
Speaker 1: is one of the worst executed experiments I've ever heard of.
Speaker 1: That is so funny because I while I was researching this,
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm gonna have to keep it together.
Speaker 1: Maybe at the end I can really go off from
Speaker 1: let's go off at the beginning. That's great. Man. I
Speaker 1: watched the movie today to yeah, how was it? How
Speaker 1: was Billy crude up? Because I loved him in almost
Speaker 1: famous Well, I'm a fan, he's he was good. Um,
Speaker 1: But like, I don't know, the movie A was pretty
Speaker 1: sensationalized as far as the violence. Like they showed a
Speaker 1: lot of straight up physical violence in the movie which
Speaker 1: supposedly didn't occur, um, like beating them with billy clubs
Speaker 1: and hog tying them in like like real violence. How actually,
Speaker 1: these days I should say at Lanta, Yeah, Uh, y'allywood
Speaker 1: is what they call it. Oh, there you go. Perfect,
Speaker 1: That's that's perfect. That sounds like a Norman Reda's creation.
Speaker 1: It might have been uh and then uh, what was
Speaker 1: I saying? Oh? Um, I don't feel like it came
Speaker 1: down hard enough on on this Yahoo. What was the
Speaker 1: guy's name? Zimbardo. Yeah, Zimbardo for just crafting a really
Speaker 1: poor doing a very poor job at crafting its supposedly
Speaker 1: scientific experiment. No, he was like the driving force behind
Speaker 1: that movie getting made. Apparently he'd been trying to get
Speaker 1: a movie made in America. He seems to be a
Speaker 1: pretty frameless self promoter decades. Yes, Yeah, it's not a
Speaker 1: good quality in a social psychologist. No, so we're gonna see.
Speaker 1: I guess we'll let the cat out of the bag.
Speaker 1: But well, we shall see that. Um. The Stanford prison
Speaker 1: experiment one of the most famous experiments in the Annals
Speaker 1: of Psychology. It's not an experiment at all. It's it's
Speaker 1: findings are wide open new interpretation, and it was conducted
Speaker 1: by a showman. Basically. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a red flag when you don't publish your findings in
Speaker 1: a medical journal. You published them in New York was
Speaker 1: a New York magazine, New York Times magazine, Hodgeman's rag. Well,
Speaker 1: great rag, But that's not the place to go publish
Speaker 1: scientific findings. No peer of viewed journals are, and they
Speaker 1: circumvented that, but for very good reasons. All right, so
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about the outline. So let's go back
Speaker 1: to the beginning, right, Yeah, back to the year of
Speaker 1: my birth and Stanford at Stanford University, which is what
Speaker 1: Palo Alto. Yeah, uh find being sequoia is what is there?
Speaker 1: They have like a big old sequoia on their logo.
Speaker 1: I think it's like a and then they have a
Speaker 1: uh sequoia with its fists up. That's Notre Dame I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of. I do feel like it has something. Chuck's
Speaker 1: looking it up everybody, so let me stall. It is
Speaker 1: a tree, the Stanford Tree. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: mascot is, but there's definitely a tree associated. I looked
Speaker 1: it up, the Stanford Tree. Okay. And the first question
Speaker 1: is why is it a tree? Huh? Well, what's the answer. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure it's just because of where it
Speaker 1: is in California, But that doesn't answer the real question,
Speaker 1: which is why would you have a tree? Right Phillips
Speaker 1: Embardo sitting there like quit stall and get to the
Speaker 1: get to the heckling. He's still around, Yeah he is,
Speaker 1: so um, all right, we're at Stanford. It's nine Yeah.
Speaker 1: We're actually in the basement of one of the buildings
Speaker 1: at Stanford, Stanford University. I think like Campbell Hall or
Speaker 1: something like that. And I think August of nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: there were um twenty four young men, almost all of
Speaker 1: them one I think one of them was Asian American,
Speaker 1: and um, they are doing something pretty bizarre in this
Speaker 1: basement in August of They've been divided into two groups,
Speaker 1: guards and prisoners supposedly average kids, right, and they are
Speaker 1: um acting out this basically role playing game of guards
Speaker 1: versus prisoners for fifteen bucks a day in a simulated
Speaker 1: prison in the basement of this this hall at Stanford University. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which would be about nine dollars today, funded by the
Speaker 1: U S Office of Naval Research. Is that right? So
Speaker 1: it would be ninety three bucks a day, and it
Speaker 1: was originally gonna be two weeks. So I'm sure some
Speaker 1: of these guys were like, hey, yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I kind of forgot what it was like to be
Speaker 1: a college student that that would be, uh, you know
Speaker 1: what between twelve and four bucks darting off your summer
Speaker 1: it would be about dollars if my quick math is correct,
Speaker 1: good scratch for year old. Yeah, two weeks on summer break,
Speaker 1: that's right. So Uh, you were divided into two lots,
Speaker 1: like you said. Um, they asked people, um, supposedly what
Speaker 1: you wanted to be, unless this was purely a movie creation,
Speaker 1: and they did try and look up and try and
Speaker 1: find out the differences. Um, But they supposedly asked him.
Speaker 1: In most everyone said, or in fact everyone said prisoner. Uh.
Speaker 1: In one of the reactions from who ended up being
Speaker 1: the bad guard, the guy said, they asked him why,
Speaker 1: and he's like, because nobody likes cards. It's like, why
Speaker 1: would anyone want to be a guard? Because they thought
Speaker 1: we'll just be prisoners, because they just will lay around
Speaker 1: smoke cigarettes. So we'll we'll and we'll kind of unpack
Speaker 1: what that suggests later on. Sure. Okay, so you've got
Speaker 1: these these guys and they're down here for this experiment,
Speaker 1: and so coming at it from the way. This is
Speaker 1: the popular interpretation of what happened at the Stanford Prison experiment. Okay,
Speaker 1: you've got you've got twelve guards and twelve prisoners. The
Speaker 1: prisoners had been arrested, by the way, by the real
Speaker 1: Palo Alto police. Yeah, they weren't told when, but like
Speaker 1: the real cops came by arrested each one of them
Speaker 1: for you know, a variety of crimes, booked them at
Speaker 1: the Palo Alto Police station and then transported them to
Speaker 1: the jail, the fake jail in uh at Stanford. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they call it the Stanford County Jail. And they did
Speaker 1: a legit job. They put up signs, they had these
Speaker 1: rooms decked out like jail cells, they had a whole um.
Speaker 1: They did a really believable job of making this seem
Speaker 1: like a prison environment at least so Um, you've got
Speaker 1: these these prisoners who have been delivered, You've got these
Speaker 1: guards who are waiting there for him, and um as
Speaker 1: as far as Zimbardo has ever said, these these guards
Speaker 1: were told you have to protect the prison and everything
Speaker 1: else is up to you. The only rule is there's
Speaker 1: no physical punishment. We're just here to observe, Like here's
Speaker 1: your uniforms, here's your sunglasses. Yeah. And then the prisoners
Speaker 1: were booked in with wearing smocks, no shoes, no underwear, Yeah,
Speaker 1: naked under the smocks, chained at the ankles. And then
Speaker 1: they wore like um, those stocking cap do rags, a
Speaker 1: panty on their head to simulate to simulate they're having
Speaker 1: their head shaved, right, Uh, and you know, this is
Speaker 1: this the early seventies, so most of them had these
Speaker 1: big afrozen long hair and stuff under these panties. Right, so, um,
Speaker 1: this is like at first, everything's pretty normal. The guards
Speaker 1: don't quite know what to do. They're a little timid.
Speaker 1: The prisoners apparently relish this immediately and started like finding
Speaker 1: where the guard's boundaries were, and they started to band together.
Speaker 1: And there was actually, I think on day two, the
Speaker 1: the the turnover from day one to two, there was
Speaker 1: a prisoner riot. Yeah, I mean they m like you said,
Speaker 1: they were sort of laughing at first, and I think
Speaker 1: we didn't mention too and this is will end up
Speaker 1: being very very problematic and the first sign that he
Speaker 1: didn't do a good job. Zimbardo actually acted as the
Speaker 1: superintendent of the prison, involved himself in his own experiment
Speaker 1: and had one of it. He had some graduate assistants
Speaker 1: that were assisting in the program. They acted as parole board,
Speaker 1: and one of them was the warden that was yeah,
Speaker 1: undergrad actually, well the warden Jaffee, his last name was Jaffee.
Speaker 1: He was an undergrad at the time and actually he
Speaker 1: had come up with the experiment on his own. Oh,
Speaker 1: he was the guy, huh huh. And then um, Zimbardo
Speaker 1: was like, this is a really good idea. Let's do
Speaker 1: this for real. Imagine the press, right. So yeah, like
Speaker 1: he said, it escalated pretty quickly. After kind of laughing
Speaker 1: at first, these guards got into their roles, to say
Speaker 1: the least, and um really kind of started being jerks
Speaker 1: in quick order. And after the prisoners were like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is kind of funny, like you're being you're not
Speaker 1: being very cool, and they were you know, kind of
Speaker 1: smacked down and and you know, made to do things
Speaker 1: like push ups and jumping jacks and uh, they would
Speaker 1: withhold food and eventually they would like take their beds
Speaker 1: away from them and stuff like. It just got worse
Speaker 1: and worse, and there was, I think, like you said,
Speaker 1: on day two, a an uprising. They got together, threw
Speaker 1: the cots off their beds and through the bed frames
Speaker 1: against the door and wouldn't let them in. So there
Speaker 1: was a prisoner riot. Yeah. That's pretty significant, right, um.
Speaker 1: And what's equally significant is that the guards by the
Speaker 1: second day started to show signs of like real cruelty
Speaker 1: toward the prisoners. They started treating them very poorly. Um,
Speaker 1: they started engage aging and basically acts of torture like
Speaker 1: waking them up randomly in the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: making them get up, like you said, push ups, which
Speaker 1: is interpreted as um physical punishment because again you couldn't
Speaker 1: you couldn't hit them with the rubber hose, you couldn't
Speaker 1: hit them with the baton, you couldn't punch them. But
Speaker 1: if you make somebody to do a bunch of push ups,
Speaker 1: that's physical punishment too. Yeah, and it was within the
Speaker 1: bounds apparently. Yeah. They were referred to only by their
Speaker 1: prison numbers. They would never say their names. They were
Speaker 1: made to memorize everyone else's prison number, and like they
Speaker 1: would line them up and tell them to repeat their
Speaker 1: numbers for like an hour. If they didn't do it
Speaker 1: fast enough and then in reverse order, uh, they would
Speaker 1: get punishment. They would do the kind of the classic
Speaker 1: moves of holding one responsible for the punishment of others. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a big one. Like if you didn't
Speaker 1: make your bed good enough, then no one could go
Speaker 1: to sleep. Stuff like that. The guards also innovated um
Speaker 1: the carrots here there too. They actually made one cell
Speaker 1: like a good cell, like they put a bed in
Speaker 1: it with like betting. Um, if you were in that cell,
Speaker 1: you were eligible for like good meals better than what
Speaker 1: the other prisoners had. And there were room for three
Speaker 1: inmates in there at a time, and so instilled this
Speaker 1: sense of competition and and um skullduggery, I guess backstabbery
Speaker 1: among the prisoners to curry favor with the guards, like
Speaker 1: by informing on the other ones so that you could
Speaker 1: get a chance to be in like the nice cell. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think even before that, like when they went
Speaker 1: to do the when they went to stage the uprising,
Speaker 1: I don't think there were three rooms of three and
Speaker 1: I think six of them. Two of the rooms participated
Speaker 1: and one of the rooms did not. And uh, because
Speaker 1: not all the guys, um, you know, not all the
Speaker 1: prisoners like rebelled as much. Some of them just kind
Speaker 1: of went along with it. Interestingly, some of the guards
Speaker 1: did not descend into cruelty. They actually some of them
Speaker 1: did like favors, went out of their way to be
Speaker 1: nice to the prisoners. But in um the grabster who
Speaker 1: wrote this article points out very significantly, they didn't stand
Speaker 1: up to the cruel guards or officially object to their
Speaker 1: their behavior. They went along with it. But then in
Speaker 1: their own right, in their own way, they did what
Speaker 1: they could to retain their humanity. So there are two
Speaker 1: huge points and one of them, there's one among the
Speaker 1: guards and one among the prisoners. And the one among
Speaker 1: the prisoners comes thirty six hours after the beginning of
Speaker 1: the of the experiment, and this prisoner, his name, it
Speaker 1: would later be revealed, was Douglas Corpy. Um, he had
Speaker 1: an emotional breakdown, a nervous breakdown thirty six hours after
Speaker 1: this this this experiment starts, one of the prisoners, it
Speaker 1: becomes so emotionally involved in this simulated prison at this cruelty,
Speaker 1: the simulated supposedly cruelty of the guards that he had
Speaker 1: a nervous breakdown and had to be had to be
Speaker 1: removed from them the experiment. And this is like, this
Speaker 1: is embardos. This is the official line for the Stanford
Speaker 1: Prison experiment and has been for decades. Yeah. He also
Speaker 1: said that one of them broke out in a psychosomatic rash.
Speaker 1: There was um all manner of of various levels of
Speaker 1: psychological breakdowns happening on the other side. The big star
Speaker 1: among the guards was a guy named John Wayne, who
Speaker 1: you referenced earlier. Yeah, his name was Dave Eshelman, and
Speaker 1: he was the one who he was the ringleader. He's
Speaker 1: the one that came out as the most brutal guard
Speaker 1: of them all, and all the other guards kind of
Speaker 1: fell in line behind him and took their cues from him.
Speaker 1: So this whole thing is going on, This is crazy
Speaker 1: town in this place. In in six days, six days,
Speaker 1: this thing descends into chaos. Supposed to be two weeks, yes,
Speaker 1: there was. There was rumors that there was going to
Speaker 1: be a breakout, and so they moved the experiment. Um.
Speaker 1: There were that that guy Douglas Corpi, who had a
Speaker 1: nervous breakdown, ended up getting put into the whole um
Speaker 1: this broom closet for I think overnight and was finally
Speaker 1: released because the the researchers that actually stepped in and said,
Speaker 1: you shoulhould probably let him out. Um. It was. It
Speaker 1: was just utter chaos. And then eventually um Phillip Zimbardo's
Speaker 1: girlfriend at the time of a woman named Christine mass
Speaker 1: Maslock his wife to be. Um. Oh she married him,
Speaker 1: huh um. So she came and just dropped in to
Speaker 1: see how things were going and was so outraged at
Speaker 1: what she saw that she was like, you, you're so
Speaker 1: far beyond the line. You have to stop this now,
Speaker 1: like this is this is descended into chaos. You can't
Speaker 1: do this. These people are treating these these prisoners horribly,
Speaker 1: Like how are you letting this go on? Fine? And
Speaker 1: so the next day he canceled the experiment again after
Speaker 1: six days, and it was scheduled to go on for
Speaker 1: two weeks. And so he comes out tells the world
Speaker 1: in this New York Times magazine, guys, if I took you,
Speaker 1: if I took you josh and I took you Chuck
Speaker 1: and put you as guarden prisoner in an even a
Speaker 1: simulated prison, and put a smock on josh and took
Speaker 1: his underwear off and uh put a stocking on his head,
Speaker 1: and gave Chuck a baton and some glasses. Chuck would
Speaker 1: beat Josh up, and Joshua probably have his spirit broken
Speaker 1: and have a nervous breakdown. It's in everybody. Evil is
Speaker 1: in everybody crumbling at the first sign of adversity. Isn't
Speaker 1: everybody We're all just pathetic weaklings? Stanford Prison experiment and
Speaker 1: he ran off and said, I'm famous. All right, that's
Speaker 1: a great setup. So we'll take a break here and
Speaker 1: come back and talk a little bit about the more
Speaker 1: about the experiment and the realities of it right after this.
Speaker 1: All right, So you've got John Wayne in there. I
Speaker 1: don't think we mentioned that he took on the persona
Speaker 1: of the prison boss and cool hand Luke. He did
Speaker 1: a fake Southern accent and everything and dove right into
Speaker 1: this role. Um, if you talk to Dave Eshelmann today,
Speaker 1: he will say he's very much on record of saying,
Speaker 1: I'm not some jerk, uh, And I didn't get off
Speaker 1: on being sadistic. He said, I wanted to do what
Speaker 1: they paid me fifteen dollars a day to do, which
Speaker 1: was to be a prison guard and to treat these
Speaker 1: guys poorly. And so I you know, he said, I
Speaker 1: did some drama in high school, and I literally acted
Speaker 1: this part as well as I could. That was I
Speaker 1: felt was expected and wanted from me, right, And I
Speaker 1: put on this fake Southern accent. And if you like
Speaker 1: asked people friends and family today, they would laugh at
Speaker 1: this because I'm really not this guy at all, right,
Speaker 1: Because he really comes off as as a bit of
Speaker 1: a villain in this movie. For sure. Well, he perpetrated
Speaker 1: real cruelty on other people and we'll get to that later.
Speaker 1: And he should because the other people actually did suffer
Speaker 1: under this guy's leadership as the ringleader of the mean guards,
Speaker 1: like they wore pink on Wednesday. It was terrible everywhere, right, So, um,
Speaker 1: he really should feel bad, and apparently he does. I
Speaker 1: saw that all over the place too, that he feels
Speaker 1: bad for it. But the point is is that he
Speaker 1: has said, like, this didn't happen organically, like I I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't I felt encouraged to play this role. That's
Speaker 1: a big deal because the findings of the Stanford prison
Speaker 1: experiments say, if you take some people and say you're
Speaker 1: a guard empower and you will turn evil, they will
Speaker 1: turn evil within a day. A day they said about
Speaker 1: this guy. And this guy's like, no, I was, just
Speaker 1: like you said, doing my job. But they're paying me
Speaker 1: fifteen bucks a day for Let's put that one to
Speaker 1: the side. In that Let's go visit with Douglas Corpi,
Speaker 1: who was the prisoner who in thirty six short hours
Speaker 1: of this simulated prison experiment lost his marbles and had
Speaker 1: a nervous breakdown and had to go home. Right, one
Speaker 1: of the other two pillars of the findings that people
Speaker 1: are either evil or easily crumble in the face of
Speaker 1: adversity from the Stanford prison experiment. And again, this is
Speaker 1: how this thing has been taught for like fifty years. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Corpy comes out and says, I was faking that,
Speaker 1: and I put on a big act so I could
Speaker 1: get out of there because it sucked and I didn't
Speaker 1: want to be there anymore. So I fake like I was.
Speaker 1: And he he like one of his quotes was I
Speaker 1: don't have it here, but basically said like any trained
Speaker 1: clinician would have been able to see right through this.
Speaker 1: Like when I hear the tapes years later, it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not an actor. I wasn't like apparently the John
Speaker 1: Wayne guy at least had been in like high school
Speaker 1: plays in college too, I think, yeah, And he was like,
Speaker 1: I was not an actor. And it was so clear
Speaker 1: to me looking back at these tapes that I was
Speaker 1: faking it, faking a nervous breakdown, faking a nervous breakdown
Speaker 1: to get out of there. So the reason why he
Speaker 1: said later that he did fake this nervous breakdown is
Speaker 1: because he took the job because he thought he'd just
Speaker 1: be laying around, like you said, smoking cigarettes, being a prisoner,
Speaker 1: and he would get to study for the g r E.
Speaker 1: He was inner grad school and well they said, no,
Speaker 1: you can't have your books. Now. They didn't give him anything,
Speaker 1: and this guy was like, whoa, whoa, Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: this is day one. He's like, whoa, whoa whoa, Like,
Speaker 1: I need those books. I'm taking the g r E,
Speaker 1: basically leaving here after two weeks and going to take
Speaker 1: the test, like I've got to spend this two week studying.
Speaker 1: They're like, you can't have your books. So he quickly
Speaker 1: saw that the only way out was to fake this
Speaker 1: nervous breakdown. And Billy crude Up went in there and said,
Speaker 1: why is everyone saying whoa whoa whoa? Only I can
Speaker 1: say whoa whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa. Uh yeah, so
Speaker 1: we've kind of poo pooed the two major findings from
Speaker 1: the study already. So that's that's a huge deal, right,
Speaker 1: because again the idea is that if you put people
Speaker 1: any random people, Remember these are just average like middle
Speaker 1: middle class white kids, um, which is another problem. Right
Speaker 1: if you put if you put any, well, that means
Speaker 1: everybody that's the whole world. Right, If you put anybody
Speaker 1: in the world in this situation, they're going to either
Speaker 1: turn evil or lose their marbles. So, um, those are
Speaker 1: the two findings. That's what everybody took it as at first.
Speaker 1: It later came out, now this guy was acting. This
Speaker 1: guy was faking. So what else do we have? Then, Well,
Speaker 1: we have this idea that Zimbardo insinuated himself as part
Speaker 1: of the experiment, and that actually created the findings from
Speaker 1: the Standford prison experiment. So should we put a pin
Speaker 1: in that. You want to talk about that now? No, No,
Speaker 1: I want to go. I want to go where you
Speaker 1: want to go. All right, let's put a pin in
Speaker 1: that then and talk about a little bit more about
Speaker 1: what went on that week. Um, they had everything from
Speaker 1: visitation like you could write a letter to your family
Speaker 1: or girlfriend or whoever you want to come visit you
Speaker 1: to ask for visitation rights, and the family came in
Speaker 1: and they did. They came in and visited for an
Speaker 1: hour and they were in some cases parents were like
Speaker 1: I don't know about this. This is like this just
Speaker 1: seems like a really weird thing. And Zimbardo will be like,
Speaker 1: oh no, it's totally fine, Like you know, they're the psychologists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they want to be here, like ask them and
Speaker 1: the the kids. You know, they did say that they
Speaker 1: wanted to stay okay, which is which is important? Okay,
Speaker 1: so what all? What else is importantess Like, no one
Speaker 1: in the visiting hour. I don't think we're like, get
Speaker 1: me out of here. They're like no, this is all
Speaker 1: part of the part of the act. Essentially. Um, they
Speaker 1: had parole hearings inside the course of a week. Somehow
Speaker 1: they said that if they they could be released, if
Speaker 1: they would forfeit the money. Uh. And this is after
Speaker 1: I don't know how many of the six days. But um,
Speaker 1: they could not get paid if and be paroled if
Speaker 1: they went in front of the parole board. They went
Speaker 1: in front of the parole board, some of them did,
Speaker 1: and most of the prisoners said that they would give
Speaker 1: up their money. In fact, and the parole members like, uh,
Speaker 1: like I said, they were the graduate assistants. They even
Speaker 1: had one um former prisoner, this guy that like it
Speaker 1: was a fifteen year yeah inmate, fifteen or seventeen year
Speaker 1: inmate on the board that I guess him Zimbardo. I
Speaker 1: want to call him Zamboni. So he actually was a
Speaker 1: friend of Jaffi's, the guy who originally actually as an undergrad,
Speaker 1: so he brought him in on it, right, So he
Speaker 1: was on the parole board, and he was kind of
Speaker 1: one of the ones, um at least in the film
Speaker 1: version that was kind of saying like, no, this is
Speaker 1: like how it is, like, you should keep it going.
Speaker 1: But I don't know how much of that was dramatized.
Speaker 1: I don't either. That's a that's a That's one of
Speaker 1: the problems with this is, you know, so much of
Speaker 1: the documentation has been not released over the years, and
Speaker 1: when it does get released, it contradicts the official line.
Speaker 1: And um, it's very tough to separate truth from fiction,
Speaker 1: especially when you introduce a Hollywood movie into the whole thing,
Speaker 1: just to just to drive those nails in the coffin too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so reality in fact, there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: in the years since, a lot of complaints that a
Speaker 1: lot of these you know, kids were screaming, I want
Speaker 1: to go home, I want to go home. And for
Speaker 1: his part, Zimbardo said, in the contract it says I
Speaker 1: want to exit the experiment, as the official line to say,
Speaker 1: and they could have gone home and he was like,
Speaker 1: but you hear no one ever said I want to
Speaker 1: exit the experiment. They would say I want my mommy,
Speaker 1: or I'm going crazy, or my god, please stop this,
Speaker 1: please stop this, but they never said those exact words,
Speaker 1: this safe phrase. Let's say, yeah, the safe phrase. But
Speaker 1: it turns out that's bunk to right. Yeah, it turns
Speaker 1: out that if you look at the contract that they
Speaker 1: had that he's referencing that that say the rules and
Speaker 1: everything in the emit there's no safe word to be mentioned.
Speaker 1: Certainly doesn't say if you say I want to quit
Speaker 1: the experiment, you get released from the experiment. So he's
Speaker 1: just flat out lying about that. Then that's from what
Speaker 1: I understand. Yes, and what article was this that you sent?
Speaker 1: There's a really good takedown um in medium called the
Speaker 1: The Lifespan of a Lie um and it's based on
Speaker 1: that titles based on a I think a documentary by
Speaker 1: a documentary or book by a French filmmaker um which
Speaker 1: who titled his version The Birth of a Lie and
Speaker 1: it's basically about how the Stanford prison experiment was just
Speaker 1: basically it was bunked from the get go, which will
Speaker 1: kind of pick that apart in a little bit, and
Speaker 1: that it's just fascinatingly has been perpetuated over again, basically
Speaker 1: fifty years. It just entered the cultural zeitgeist and just
Speaker 1: stayed like an infection. All Right. Some other things that
Speaker 1: happened to make it realistic. They brought in, um, a
Speaker 1: lawyer when parents asked for one, and played along like
Speaker 1: it was real. They brought in a chaplain who came
Speaker 1: in to speak to prisoners. Uh, and he played along
Speaker 1: with it too. Uh. They basically did everything that you
Speaker 1: would think would happen in a real prison um on
Speaker 1: on a slightly scaled down level. Right, But the upshot
Speaker 1: of all of this is Zimbardo saying, like, do you
Speaker 1: see what's going on here? Everybody? Like I just put
Speaker 1: some guys in, like nine guys in at a time,
Speaker 1: or twelve guys as guards, twelve guys as prisoners, and
Speaker 1: their parents came for visiting hours, a lawyer came. That's
Speaker 1: the that's how real the simulated prison became in people's minds.
Speaker 1: Just imagine what a real prisons like, right. So um
Speaker 1: and he was saying they could have left at any
Speaker 1: time if they just said the safe word, and no
Speaker 1: one ever said the safe word. There is some evidence
Speaker 1: that these people were basically kept there against their will,
Speaker 1: especially after Douglas Corpy basically faked his emotional breakdown and
Speaker 1: then was thrown into broom closet and retaliation for it.
Speaker 1: Um that he should have very very clearly should have
Speaker 1: been left or allowed to leave. And to even be
Speaker 1: led to think that you couldn't leave, which is apparently
Speaker 1: the idea that spread throughout the prisoners. Um, that would
Speaker 1: be like keeping someone against their will. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: did leave, but was supposed to agree to come back, supposedly,
Speaker 1: uh to like play a different role as a prisoner
Speaker 1: who like maybe escaped and came back I think, but
Speaker 1: didn't come back, right, And um, I think five people
Speaker 1: were released early before the whole experiment was called off,
Speaker 1: all prisoners. No guards left the experiment, which is telling well,
Speaker 1: and they were working in shifts that which is important. Okay,
Speaker 1: that is a big one too. Um. But but if
Speaker 1: you consider that no one asked to be a guard,
Speaker 1: they all has to be prisoners. But then none of
Speaker 1: the guards left the experiment, that's to me, that's interesting
Speaker 1: on its face, right, there's something to that, but um,
Speaker 1: they're the whole thing just kind of falling apart after
Speaker 1: Zimbardo's girlfriend Um at the time, came um the idea
Speaker 1: that up to this point, these people had engaged in
Speaker 1: this fantasy and thought that they couldn't leave when they
Speaker 1: really could. That's controversial in and of itself, because again
Speaker 1: there's evidence that they were led to believe they couldn't leave,
Speaker 1: and that's different. That changes things entirely. So you want
Speaker 1: to take another break and then pick this part some more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Kind of fun alright, the final takedown.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm waiting for I'm waiting for Phillipsimbardo to release
Speaker 1: a book about like our Jackhammer episode. That's fine, I
Speaker 1: would read it, all right, So where are we here? Basically,
Speaker 1: we're at the point where uh he is he has
Speaker 1: into the experiment and now we're dealing with the fallout
Speaker 1: since nine and how this should be viewed. One of
Speaker 1: the big things that came out of that French book,
Speaker 1: The Birth of a Lie, is the um the filmmaker
Speaker 1: unearthed a recording that was I don't know where he
Speaker 1: found it, but they he found it and released the
Speaker 1: transcript of it that clearly has Um, if not Zimbardo
Speaker 1: at least Jaffee. Definitely Jaffee coaching the um the guards
Speaker 1: to be more brutal, Right, be a tough guard. Just
Speaker 1: think of like how the pigs do it, and do
Speaker 1: it like that, I think is what the quote was, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: when the whole idea of this thing is to try
Speaker 1: and prove that without any influence, Yes, this is what happens. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's a couple of things that happened method Methodologically,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that happened the moment they
Speaker 1: started coaching those guards. Number one, they took any organic
Speaker 1: nous out of their behavior. They were then doing what
Speaker 1: they thought they were expected to do, like John Wayne
Speaker 1: for sure, who just went over the top is what
Speaker 1: it was, um. And then number two, they made them
Speaker 1: co experimenters. Like the whole thing was supposed to be
Speaker 1: guards and prisoners, and we're going to watch as test
Speaker 1: subjects or participants. And when you coach the guards, you're
Speaker 1: their co experimenters. Now, now the experiments entirely on the
Speaker 1: on the prisoners, which you can say, okay, well then
Speaker 1: those findings still worked. Well, that gets thrown out when
Speaker 1: you base the whole thing on a guy who is
Speaker 1: faking right. But but you you make the guards co
Speaker 1: experimenters and you just completely take out any objectivity from
Speaker 1: this experiment. That's problem one with the methodology. Well, and
Speaker 1: the fact we already mentioned that one of one of
Speaker 1: the researchers was a warden and zim uh keep on
Speaker 1: to call m Zambrano. That's fine. Zimbardo Zamboni himself was
Speaker 1: the superintendent, like the minute he decided to do that,
Speaker 1: Like I looked up. I think he's like in his
Speaker 1: late thirties when he did this. How did he not like,
Speaker 1: was he that bad and doing his job? How did
Speaker 1: he not know? Like, wait a minute, this will taint
Speaker 1: the experiment. Do you want to talk about why the
Speaker 1: people think that he was so? Yeah, okay, so he
Speaker 1: was a uh he wasn't. I think still is a
Speaker 1: social activist for sure, And he had decided, um, and
Speaker 1: I can't really disagree with them that prisons were brutal
Speaker 1: places where brutality lived, and that they were inherently brutal.
Speaker 1: And so if you take somebody and put them into
Speaker 1: this place, you're doing a real disservice to humanity by
Speaker 1: by throwing somebody in a bruutal place that you know,
Speaker 1: is brutal. His aim was to get reformed to happen. Yes,
Speaker 1: from the outset. Well, I mean, I can't fault that,
Speaker 1: but you can't call it a scientific experiment either. And
Speaker 1: it actually supposedly backfired as well, because one interpretation of
Speaker 1: his findings is that it's all or nothing with prisons.
Speaker 1: Prisons are inherently brutal, or you can't have them. So
Speaker 1: either you have prisons and you have brutal prisons, or
Speaker 1: you have no prisons. And so, faced with that choice
Speaker 1: and with rising crime rates in the seventies, um a
Speaker 1: lot of people double down on getting tough and made
Speaker 1: prisons even worse and built more prisons and said, t yes,
Speaker 1: we're not even gonna try to like reform you anymore,
Speaker 1: but we're just gonna send you to these brutal places
Speaker 1: that are inherently brutal and there's nothing we can do
Speaker 1: about it. So it would have it would have backfired
Speaker 1: in that sense, but in in in the idea that
Speaker 1: he was doing something with the best interests of his
Speaker 1: fellow people at heart. Again, like you said, it's it's
Speaker 1: tough to fault him for that. He just really really
Speaker 1: gave social psychology a black eye. Yeah. So one of
Speaker 1: the other things he did wrong, UM, and this one
Speaker 1: I just can't figure out either, is he didn't have
Speaker 1: a control group and one of his Um, this guy
Speaker 1: wasn't in the experiment, but one of his colleagues came
Speaker 1: by one day and was like, you know what, what's
Speaker 1: your control what's your independent variable? Yeah, and he was
Speaker 1: like what, Yeah, He's like, I don't have one. So
Speaker 1: if you if you run a an experiment of any sort,
Speaker 1: um grabstre uses a great analogy where if you're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what the effects of radiation are on tomatoes,
Speaker 1: you pick a bunch of tomatoes, you weigh them, you
Speaker 1: check them for color, um, you make sure that they're
Speaker 1: identical to another set of tomatoes. So you have two
Speaker 1: sets of basically identical tomatoes. One you radiate, one you
Speaker 1: do not, and after a set amount of time you
Speaker 1: go back and see what the differences are. And then
Speaker 1: you can say probably that when you read the eight tomatoes,
Speaker 1: these are the effects, and the effects are the differences
Speaker 1: between the two. Same thing with the prison experiment, what
Speaker 1: would you have here two different cell blocks and one
Speaker 1: that literally isn't coached and completely left alone. That's what
Speaker 1: I would have done for sure. And then one where
Speaker 1: you're saying, hey, be brutal, and yeah, we'll see if
Speaker 1: everyone falls into these roles exactly that that would have
Speaker 1: been great. And actually some researchers in two thousand one
Speaker 1: they did exactly that. They basically ran the experiment with
Speaker 1: just that control group you suggested. Um, it was called
Speaker 1: the BBC Prison Study. Yeah, has Lem and Riker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and basically they did the same thing. They they they
Speaker 1: did not do any coaching, they didn't do any intervention.
Speaker 1: They did the the thing exactly like you're supposed to,
Speaker 1: or like Zimbardo should have from the outset. And um,
Speaker 1: they found that again they made the control group to
Speaker 1: the original Stanford prison experiment, they found that the exact
Speaker 1: opposite happened. The prisoners stayed banded together, the guards were
Speaker 1: totally in disarray, um and disorganized. The brutality never emerged. Um,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't any violence from what I understand. And
Speaker 1: this is where it gets really scummy. If he asked me.
Speaker 1: Zimbardo found out about this, and supposedly Hasselman Reicher said
Speaker 1: they discovered he was privately writing editors, uh to keep
Speaker 1: them from getting published and claiming that they were fraudulent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the journal that they they released their findings, and
Speaker 1: he wrote in an appendage to their their article and said,
Speaker 1: these are they just don't even listen to these guys.
Speaker 1: I'm Philip Simbardo. Man. So yeah, I thought that was
Speaker 1: pretty scummy too if he did that. Um, so you've
Speaker 1: got methodologically, there's even more problems too. If in the
Speaker 1: in the original newspaper advertisement, chuck, he said, um, prison experiment,
Speaker 1: prison experiment. Everybody sign up. Yeah, that was a problem
Speaker 1: in itself. They shouldn't have known what they were doing, no,
Speaker 1: exactly until they showed up, right, So you're gonna get
Speaker 1: a big, wide swath of people, and then once they
Speaker 1: find out what the experiment is, maybe they'll say no
Speaker 1: thanks or whatever. But this was like attracting um. A
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven follow up study found narcissistic, hostile,
Speaker 1: overly aggressive authoritarian types like flies to honey or the opposite. Well,
Speaker 1: that seems to be the case in this case, yeah,
Speaker 1: which was in fact, one of them was a liberal
Speaker 1: activist who kind of purposely went in there because he
Speaker 1: thought maybe these findings could be used one day for
Speaker 1: prison reform. Well, I think also most of the UM
Speaker 1: what I got from Jaffee coaching the people to say, like,
Speaker 1: think about what the pigs would do, and then do
Speaker 1: do that, because we really got to show them how
Speaker 1: how brutal prisons are. Um. I think everybody who showed
Speaker 1: up basically was against prisons. But whether you're against prisons
Speaker 1: or forum, you were automatically tainted before you even showed
Speaker 1: up for the interview because they wrote prison experiment in
Speaker 1: the ad. So from the outset there was biased, There
Speaker 1: was no control group. It attracted a bias cross section
Speaker 1: of people participated. He was a participant, and that actually
Speaker 1: chuck led to the second set of findings that Zimbardo
Speaker 1: had influenced this and become a participant himself. And here's
Speaker 1: the current interpretation of all of it. Okay, this seems
Speaker 1: to be the current dujur interpretation of the Stanford prison experiment.
Speaker 1: Not that people are inherently cruel and inherently will just
Speaker 1: crumble in the face of authority, although that that might
Speaker 1: still stand, but that people will be are capable of
Speaker 1: cruelty if they're recruited by an authority. Figure the second set,
Speaker 1: and there's actually been three sets of interpretations. The second
Speaker 1: set was that Zimbardo inserted himself and that it actually
Speaker 1: demonstrated what's called situation fist theory. Yeah, and that's basically
Speaker 1: that external circumstances are the drivers of human behavior. Right,
Speaker 1: So the point was not that people are inherently cruel
Speaker 1: on an individual level, but the situation that they're put in,
Speaker 1: they will quickly find those roles if there's a power
Speaker 1: structure above them, that is, that has normalized this and
Speaker 1: is expecting them to fulfill those roles. And this really
Speaker 1: tied in with you know, this is one people were
Speaker 1: still really trying to figure out what the heck had
Speaker 1: just happened with the Nazis. It was only like years before.
Speaker 1: So this idea that this banality of evil, this made
Speaker 1: perfect sense in that in that respect, right, there is
Speaker 1: a bureaucracy that had normalized evil and you were just
Speaker 1: following orders. That was the second interpretation of the Stanford
Speaker 1: prison experiment. Yeah. Well, and not just the Nazis, but
Speaker 1: everything like the Vietnam War, which was I mean, this
Speaker 1: is one, and like the Myley massacre, and you know,
Speaker 1: I was just following orders like this tied in this
Speaker 1: has his fingers in a lot of relevant politics of
Speaker 1: the day. Right, So, um, apparently it also tied in
Speaker 1: really well to Attica, and Zimbardo must have just couldn't
Speaker 1: believe is his good fortune that there was a there's
Speaker 1: alotiest prison riot in American history happened like a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks after he made the news in the New
Speaker 1: York Times magazine with this journal art or this article
Speaker 1: that he wrote, right, But that actually played into it too,
Speaker 1: because apparently, following orders, a lot of guards just fired
Speaker 1: blindly into the tear gas smoke of this prison riot
Speaker 1: and killed tons of of unarmed prisoners and hostages. So
Speaker 1: so Zimbard is like, Okay, that's fine, however we're going
Speaker 1: to interpret this. I'm cool with that. But the third one,
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure that he would be cool with
Speaker 1: the current one, which is bad science, I think. So
Speaker 1: what I saw is that a lot of social psychologists
Speaker 1: we've known this is bad science all along, but the
Speaker 1: findings were really interesting and worthwhile, so we didn't throw
Speaker 1: the baby out with the bathwater. The third one is
Speaker 1: that that Zimbardo inserted himself and what this, what this
Speaker 1: this study really showed was that people will engage in
Speaker 1: acts of cruelty if there is a figure of authority
Speaker 1: recruiting them to what they think is a righteous cause.
Speaker 1: And in this case it was Zimbardo making the guards
Speaker 1: co experiment ers by coaching them to be cruel and
Speaker 1: in in the name of prison reform. Ultimately, when they
Speaker 1: showed the world what happens when you put normal people
Speaker 1: in a prison situation. Yeah, which is what the John
Speaker 1: Wayne guy very much has said all his life since then,
Speaker 1: is that this is what they I thought they wanted
Speaker 1: was for me to be a bad guard so we
Speaker 1: could prove, uh, ultimately that prisons need reform. And that
Speaker 1: that is why he's still complicit, because he's still engaged
Speaker 1: in these acts of genuine cruelty against the prisoners in
Speaker 1: the study. And that's why he should still feel bad
Speaker 1: and still does feel bad. But he did it because
Speaker 1: he was recruited in the name of this rights is
Speaker 1: caused by somebody who was in authority. So is this
Speaker 1: being taught this way in classes now? I don't I
Speaker 1: think that they, especially once it came out the Zimbardo
Speaker 1: and at the very least his warden co experiment er
Speaker 1: was was coaching them to do this and that the
Speaker 1: organic cruelty is just totally out the window. I think
Speaker 1: they don't know what to do with it right now.
Speaker 1: They're trying to figure out like how to get these
Speaker 1: findings across or what to make of them. Because one
Speaker 1: one of these quotes from the article you sent the
Speaker 1: guy said, I don't think it's scientific fraud in the
Speaker 1: typical sense. It was never considered to be scientific. It's
Speaker 1: typically represented in classrooms as a demonstration, uh, not an experiment.
Speaker 1: And there's a notorious case of ethical malfeasance. So that's
Speaker 1: almost a fourth takeaway is that it's an example have
Speaker 1: how to not do a study correctly, which is interesting.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean methodologically inserting yourself, like lying about
Speaker 1: the findings later on, or misinterpreting the results or using spin.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, there's a lot here. But it was approved
Speaker 1: by the Stanford Human Rights Subjects Review Committee at the time.
Speaker 1: Those were Zimbardo's experiments. We presented this too, uh And
Speaker 1: there you know, he still says that it was ethical. Well,
Speaker 1: it was at the time under the guidelines, it was ethical,
Speaker 1: but then after they changed the guidelines, you couldn't do
Speaker 1: this today, or at least not with like he did it. So,
Speaker 1: I did you remember the very brief psychology is nuts serious?
Speaker 1: Watch that I did win on the Stanford Prison Experiment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I watched that today, did you What do you think
Speaker 1: it was good? Thanks? Man? Cute little background? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought so too. Um and let's see you got anything else? No,
Speaker 1: I mean, boy, I thought we were pretty scathing, but
Speaker 1: we were. This is like vaping love all scathing. This
Speaker 1: is way worse than vaporing. I'm sure the vapors are
Speaker 1: like going. They were really hard on that guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The movie, uh, you know, the documentary is probably a
Speaker 1: little more accurate. But the movie wasn't bad. I mean
Speaker 1: it's not great, Yeah, but it was okay. It felt
Speaker 1: like a movie the week it's an airplane movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: watch it on your next poine. That my recommendation, Thanks buddy. Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about the Stanford Prison Experiment, um,
Speaker 1: type those words in the search part how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot comm and it will bring up this grab store article.
Speaker 1: Since I said grab store, it's time for listener mail.
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