Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How the Stanford Prison Experiment Worked
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, We're coming to Salt Lake City, Utah and Phoenix,
- 0:03Speaker 1: Arizona this fall. Yeah, October, we're going to be at
- 0:06Speaker 1: Salt Lake Cities Grand Theater and then the next night
- 0:09Speaker 1: October will be in Phoenix. And we added a second
- 0:13Speaker 1: show to our Melbourne show, right, that's right, a second
- 0:16Speaker 1: earlier show in Melbourne. So you can get all the
- 0:19Speaker 1: information for all of these shows at s y s
- 0:22Speaker 1: K live dot com. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
- 0:27Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey you, and welcome
- 0:36Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W.
- 0:39Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there. So why don't you pull
- 0:42Speaker 1: up a chair, kick back and tell us about your problems?
- 0:45Speaker 1: Because this is psychology stuff. We should just call this
- 0:50Speaker 1: episode the Stanford Prison Experiment a k a. Perhaps the
- 0:57Speaker 1: happiest experiment of all time, and it's really not an
- 1:01Speaker 1: experiment anyway, but it's the most famous psychology experiment ever. Yeah.
- 1:07Speaker 1: I got kind of ticked off while I was researching this,
- 1:10Speaker 1: you should, man, because I used to think it was cool, like,
- 1:12Speaker 1: oh man, what a cool experiment. Yeah, everybody's evil and
- 1:15Speaker 1: it's core. Yeah. Then I researched it, and I was like,
- 1:18Speaker 1: this is a bunch of bs, all of it. This
- 1:21Speaker 1: is one of the worst executed experiments I've ever heard of.
- 1:24Speaker 1: That is so funny because I while I was researching this,
- 1:27Speaker 1: I was like, I'm gonna have to keep it together.
- 1:29Speaker 1: Maybe at the end I can really go off from
- 1:31Speaker 1: let's go off at the beginning. That's great. Man. I
- 1:34Speaker 1: watched the movie today to yeah, how was it? How
- 1:38Speaker 1: was Billy crude up? Because I loved him in almost
- 1:41Speaker 1: famous Well, I'm a fan, he's he was good. Um,
- 1:45Speaker 1: But like, I don't know, the movie A was pretty
- 1:49Speaker 1: sensationalized as far as the violence. Like they showed a
- 1:52Speaker 1: lot of straight up physical violence in the movie which
- 1:56Speaker 1: supposedly didn't occur, um, like beating them with billy clubs
- 2:01Speaker 1: and hog tying them in like like real violence. How actually,
- 2:06Speaker 1: these days I should say at Lanta, Yeah, Uh, y'allywood
- 2:11Speaker 1: is what they call it. Oh, there you go. Perfect,
- 2:14Speaker 1: That's that's perfect. That sounds like a Norman Reda's creation.
- 2:17Speaker 1: It might have been uh and then uh, what was
- 2:23Speaker 1: I saying? Oh? Um, I don't feel like it came
- 2:26Speaker 1: down hard enough on on this Yahoo. What was the
- 2:31Speaker 1: guy's name? Zimbardo. Yeah, Zimbardo for just crafting a really
- 2:37Speaker 1: poor doing a very poor job at crafting its supposedly
- 2:40Speaker 1: scientific experiment. No, he was like the driving force behind
- 2:43Speaker 1: that movie getting made. Apparently he'd been trying to get
- 2:45Speaker 1: a movie made in America. He seems to be a
- 2:48Speaker 1: pretty frameless self promoter decades. Yes, Yeah, it's not a
- 2:51Speaker 1: good quality in a social psychologist. No, so we're gonna see.
- 2:56Speaker 1: I guess we'll let the cat out of the bag.
- 2:57Speaker 1: But well, we shall see that. Um. The Stanford prison
- 3:03Speaker 1: experiment one of the most famous experiments in the Annals
- 3:08Speaker 1: of Psychology. It's not an experiment at all. It's it's
- 3:13Speaker 1: findings are wide open new interpretation, and it was conducted
- 3:18Speaker 1: by a showman. Basically. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's
- 3:22Speaker 1: a red flag when you don't publish your findings in
- 3:25Speaker 1: a medical journal. You published them in New York was
- 3:28Speaker 1: a New York magazine, New York Times magazine, Hodgeman's rag. Well,
- 3:33Speaker 1: great rag, But that's not the place to go publish
- 3:37Speaker 1: scientific findings. No peer of viewed journals are, and they
- 3:40Speaker 1: circumvented that, but for very good reasons. All right, so
- 3:44Speaker 1: let's let's talk about the outline. So let's go back
- 3:46Speaker 1: to the beginning, right, Yeah, back to the year of
- 3:48Speaker 1: my birth and Stanford at Stanford University, which is what
- 3:57Speaker 1: Palo Alto. Yeah, uh find being sequoia is what is there?
- 4:02Speaker 1: They have like a big old sequoia on their logo.
- 4:05Speaker 1: I think it's like a and then they have a
- 4:08Speaker 1: uh sequoia with its fists up. That's Notre Dame I'm
- 4:13Speaker 1: thinking of. I do feel like it has something. Chuck's
- 4:17Speaker 1: looking it up everybody, so let me stall. It is
- 4:19Speaker 1: a tree, the Stanford Tree. I don't know what the
- 4:22Speaker 1: mascot is, but there's definitely a tree associated. I looked
- 4:25Speaker 1: it up, the Stanford Tree. Okay. And the first question
- 4:29Speaker 1: is why is it a tree? Huh? Well, what's the answer. Well,
- 4:32Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure it's just because of where it
- 4:35Speaker 1: is in California, But that doesn't answer the real question,
- 4:38Speaker 1: which is why would you have a tree? Right Phillips
- 4:41Speaker 1: Embardo sitting there like quit stall and get to the
- 4:44Speaker 1: get to the heckling. He's still around, Yeah he is,
- 4:48Speaker 1: so um, all right, we're at Stanford. It's nine Yeah.
- 4:51Speaker 1: We're actually in the basement of one of the buildings
- 4:54Speaker 1: at Stanford, Stanford University. I think like Campbell Hall or
- 4:56Speaker 1: something like that. And I think August of nineteen seventy one,
- 5:00Speaker 1: there were um twenty four young men, almost all of
- 5:05Speaker 1: them one I think one of them was Asian American,
- 5:08Speaker 1: and um, they are doing something pretty bizarre in this
- 5:12Speaker 1: basement in August of They've been divided into two groups,
- 5:18Speaker 1: guards and prisoners supposedly average kids, right, and they are
- 5:23Speaker 1: um acting out this basically role playing game of guards
- 5:31Speaker 1: versus prisoners for fifteen bucks a day in a simulated
- 5:34Speaker 1: prison in the basement of this this hall at Stanford University. Yeah,
- 5:38Speaker 1: which would be about nine dollars today, funded by the
- 5:42Speaker 1: U S Office of Naval Research. Is that right? So
- 5:45Speaker 1: it would be ninety three bucks a day, and it
- 5:47Speaker 1: was originally gonna be two weeks. So I'm sure some
- 5:49Speaker 1: of these guys were like, hey, yeah, yeah, I mean
- 5:52Speaker 1: I kind of forgot what it was like to be
- 5:53Speaker 1: a college student that that would be, uh, you know
- 5:56Speaker 1: what between twelve and four bucks darting off your summer
- 6:01Speaker 1: it would be about dollars if my quick math is correct,
- 6:07Speaker 1: good scratch for year old. Yeah, two weeks on summer break,
- 6:12Speaker 1: that's right. So Uh, you were divided into two lots,
- 6:15Speaker 1: like you said. Um, they asked people, um, supposedly what
- 6:19Speaker 1: you wanted to be, unless this was purely a movie creation,
- 6:22Speaker 1: and they did try and look up and try and
- 6:24Speaker 1: find out the differences. Um, But they supposedly asked him.
- 6:28Speaker 1: In most everyone said, or in fact everyone said prisoner. Uh.
- 6:33Speaker 1: In one of the reactions from who ended up being
- 6:35Speaker 1: the bad guard, the guy said, they asked him why,
- 6:39Speaker 1: and he's like, because nobody likes cards. It's like, why
- 6:42Speaker 1: would anyone want to be a guard? Because they thought
- 6:45Speaker 1: we'll just be prisoners, because they just will lay around
- 6:48Speaker 1: smoke cigarettes. So we'll we'll and we'll kind of unpack
- 6:52Speaker 1: what that suggests later on. Sure. Okay, so you've got
- 6:55Speaker 1: these these guys and they're down here for this experiment,
- 6:58Speaker 1: and so coming at it from the way. This is
- 7:00Speaker 1: the popular interpretation of what happened at the Stanford Prison experiment. Okay,
- 7:06Speaker 1: you've got you've got twelve guards and twelve prisoners. The
- 7:10Speaker 1: prisoners had been arrested, by the way, by the real
- 7:13Speaker 1: Palo Alto police. Yeah, they weren't told when, but like
- 7:16Speaker 1: the real cops came by arrested each one of them
- 7:19Speaker 1: for you know, a variety of crimes, booked them at
- 7:23Speaker 1: the Palo Alto Police station and then transported them to
- 7:26Speaker 1: the jail, the fake jail in uh at Stanford. Yeah,
- 7:31Speaker 1: they call it the Stanford County Jail. And they did
- 7:33Speaker 1: a legit job. They put up signs, they had these
- 7:37Speaker 1: rooms decked out like jail cells, they had a whole um.
- 7:42Speaker 1: They did a really believable job of making this seem
- 7:45Speaker 1: like a prison environment at least so Um, you've got
- 7:49Speaker 1: these these prisoners who have been delivered, You've got these
- 7:52Speaker 1: guards who are waiting there for him, and um as
- 7:56Speaker 1: as far as Zimbardo has ever said, these these guards
- 7:59Speaker 1: were told you have to protect the prison and everything
- 8:04Speaker 1: else is up to you. The only rule is there's
- 8:06Speaker 1: no physical punishment. We're just here to observe, Like here's
- 8:10Speaker 1: your uniforms, here's your sunglasses. Yeah. And then the prisoners
- 8:14Speaker 1: were booked in with wearing smocks, no shoes, no underwear, Yeah,
- 8:19Speaker 1: naked under the smocks, chained at the ankles. And then
- 8:22Speaker 1: they wore like um, those stocking cap do rags, a
- 8:26Speaker 1: panty on their head to simulate to simulate they're having
- 8:31Speaker 1: their head shaved, right, Uh, and you know, this is
- 8:34Speaker 1: this the early seventies, so most of them had these
- 8:37Speaker 1: big afrozen long hair and stuff under these panties. Right, so, um,
- 8:44Speaker 1: this is like at first, everything's pretty normal. The guards
- 8:47Speaker 1: don't quite know what to do. They're a little timid.
- 8:50Speaker 1: The prisoners apparently relish this immediately and started like finding
- 8:56Speaker 1: where the guard's boundaries were, and they started to band together.
- 9:01Speaker 1: And there was actually, I think on day two, the
- 9:06Speaker 1: the the turnover from day one to two, there was
- 9:09Speaker 1: a prisoner riot. Yeah, I mean they m like you said,
- 9:14Speaker 1: they were sort of laughing at first, and I think
- 9:15Speaker 1: we didn't mention too and this is will end up
- 9:18Speaker 1: being very very problematic and the first sign that he
- 9:21Speaker 1: didn't do a good job. Zimbardo actually acted as the
- 9:24Speaker 1: superintendent of the prison, involved himself in his own experiment
- 9:28Speaker 1: and had one of it. He had some graduate assistants
- 9:32Speaker 1: that were assisting in the program. They acted as parole board,
- 9:35Speaker 1: and one of them was the warden that was yeah,
- 9:39Speaker 1: undergrad actually, well the warden Jaffee, his last name was Jaffee.
- 9:44Speaker 1: He was an undergrad at the time and actually he
- 9:46Speaker 1: had come up with the experiment on his own. Oh,
- 9:49Speaker 1: he was the guy, huh huh. And then um, Zimbardo
- 9:51Speaker 1: was like, this is a really good idea. Let's do
- 9:53Speaker 1: this for real. Imagine the press, right. So yeah, like
- 9:57Speaker 1: he said, it escalated pretty quickly. After kind of laughing
- 9:59Speaker 1: at first, these guards got into their roles, to say
- 10:04Speaker 1: the least, and um really kind of started being jerks
- 10:09Speaker 1: in quick order. And after the prisoners were like, hey,
- 10:13Speaker 1: this is kind of funny, like you're being you're not
- 10:15Speaker 1: being very cool, and they were you know, kind of
- 10:18Speaker 1: smacked down and and you know, made to do things
- 10:21Speaker 1: like push ups and jumping jacks and uh, they would
- 10:24Speaker 1: withhold food and eventually they would like take their beds
- 10:27Speaker 1: away from them and stuff like. It just got worse
- 10:29Speaker 1: and worse, and there was, I think, like you said,
- 10:31Speaker 1: on day two, a an uprising. They got together, threw
- 10:36Speaker 1: the cots off their beds and through the bed frames
- 10:40Speaker 1: against the door and wouldn't let them in. So there
- 10:43Speaker 1: was a prisoner riot. Yeah. That's pretty significant, right, um.
- 10:47Speaker 1: And what's equally significant is that the guards by the
- 10:51Speaker 1: second day started to show signs of like real cruelty
- 10:55Speaker 1: toward the prisoners. They started treating them very poorly. Um,
- 10:59Speaker 1: they started engage aging and basically acts of torture like
- 11:01Speaker 1: waking them up randomly in the middle of the night,
- 11:03Speaker 1: making them get up, like you said, push ups, which
- 11:06Speaker 1: is interpreted as um physical punishment because again you couldn't
- 11:10Speaker 1: you couldn't hit them with the rubber hose, you couldn't
- 11:12Speaker 1: hit them with the baton, you couldn't punch them. But
- 11:16Speaker 1: if you make somebody to do a bunch of push ups,
- 11:18Speaker 1: that's physical punishment too. Yeah, and it was within the
- 11:21Speaker 1: bounds apparently. Yeah. They were referred to only by their
- 11:24Speaker 1: prison numbers. They would never say their names. They were
- 11:27Speaker 1: made to memorize everyone else's prison number, and like they
- 11:30Speaker 1: would line them up and tell them to repeat their
- 11:32Speaker 1: numbers for like an hour. If they didn't do it
- 11:35Speaker 1: fast enough and then in reverse order, uh, they would
- 11:38Speaker 1: get punishment. They would do the kind of the classic
- 11:41Speaker 1: moves of holding one responsible for the punishment of others. Yeah,
- 11:44Speaker 1: that's a that's a big one. Like if you didn't
- 11:46Speaker 1: make your bed good enough, then no one could go
- 11:48Speaker 1: to sleep. Stuff like that. The guards also innovated um
- 11:51Speaker 1: the carrots here there too. They actually made one cell
- 11:55Speaker 1: like a good cell, like they put a bed in
- 11:57Speaker 1: it with like betting. Um, if you were in that cell,
- 12:01Speaker 1: you were eligible for like good meals better than what
- 12:04Speaker 1: the other prisoners had. And there were room for three
- 12:07Speaker 1: inmates in there at a time, and so instilled this
- 12:10Speaker 1: sense of competition and and um skullduggery, I guess backstabbery
- 12:17Speaker 1: among the prisoners to curry favor with the guards, like
- 12:21Speaker 1: by informing on the other ones so that you could
- 12:23Speaker 1: get a chance to be in like the nice cell. Yeah.
- 12:26Speaker 1: And I think even before that, like when they went
- 12:28Speaker 1: to do the when they went to stage the uprising,
- 12:31Speaker 1: I don't think there were three rooms of three and
- 12:33Speaker 1: I think six of them. Two of the rooms participated
- 12:36Speaker 1: and one of the rooms did not. And uh, because
- 12:40Speaker 1: not all the guys, um, you know, not all the
- 12:42Speaker 1: prisoners like rebelled as much. Some of them just kind
- 12:45Speaker 1: of went along with it. Interestingly, some of the guards
- 12:48Speaker 1: did not descend into cruelty. They actually some of them
- 12:52Speaker 1: did like favors, went out of their way to be
- 12:53Speaker 1: nice to the prisoners. But in um the grabster who
- 12:57Speaker 1: wrote this article points out very significantly, they didn't stand
- 13:01Speaker 1: up to the cruel guards or officially object to their
- 13:05Speaker 1: their behavior. They went along with it. But then in
- 13:09Speaker 1: their own right, in their own way, they did what
- 13:12Speaker 1: they could to retain their humanity. So there are two
- 13:15Speaker 1: huge points and one of them, there's one among the
- 13:19Speaker 1: guards and one among the prisoners. And the one among
- 13:22Speaker 1: the prisoners comes thirty six hours after the beginning of
- 13:24Speaker 1: the of the experiment, and this prisoner, his name, it
- 13:28Speaker 1: would later be revealed, was Douglas Corpy. Um, he had
- 13:33Speaker 1: an emotional breakdown, a nervous breakdown thirty six hours after
- 13:37Speaker 1: this this this experiment starts, one of the prisoners, it
- 13:42Speaker 1: becomes so emotionally involved in this simulated prison at this cruelty,
- 13:48Speaker 1: the simulated supposedly cruelty of the guards that he had
- 13:51Speaker 1: a nervous breakdown and had to be had to be
- 13:55Speaker 1: removed from them the experiment. And this is like, this
- 13:58Speaker 1: is embardos. This is the official line for the Stanford
- 14:01Speaker 1: Prison experiment and has been for decades. Yeah. He also
- 14:06Speaker 1: said that one of them broke out in a psychosomatic rash.
- 14:09Speaker 1: There was um all manner of of various levels of
- 14:14Speaker 1: psychological breakdowns happening on the other side. The big star
- 14:19Speaker 1: among the guards was a guy named John Wayne, who
- 14:22Speaker 1: you referenced earlier. Yeah, his name was Dave Eshelman, and
- 14:27Speaker 1: he was the one who he was the ringleader. He's
- 14:30Speaker 1: the one that came out as the most brutal guard
- 14:33Speaker 1: of them all, and all the other guards kind of
- 14:34Speaker 1: fell in line behind him and took their cues from him.
- 14:37Speaker 1: So this whole thing is going on, This is crazy
- 14:39Speaker 1: town in this place. In in six days, six days,
- 14:43Speaker 1: this thing descends into chaos. Supposed to be two weeks, yes,
- 14:46Speaker 1: there was. There was rumors that there was going to
- 14:49Speaker 1: be a breakout, and so they moved the experiment. Um.
- 14:53Speaker 1: There were that that guy Douglas Corpi, who had a
- 14:56Speaker 1: nervous breakdown, ended up getting put into the whole um
- 15:00Speaker 1: this broom closet for I think overnight and was finally
- 15:05Speaker 1: released because the the researchers that actually stepped in and said,
- 15:10Speaker 1: you shoulhould probably let him out. Um. It was. It
- 15:13Speaker 1: was just utter chaos. And then eventually um Phillip Zimbardo's
- 15:17Speaker 1: girlfriend at the time of a woman named Christine mass
- 15:20Speaker 1: Maslock his wife to be. Um. Oh she married him,
- 15:24Speaker 1: huh um. So she came and just dropped in to
- 15:28Speaker 1: see how things were going and was so outraged at
- 15:32Speaker 1: what she saw that she was like, you, you're so
- 15:35Speaker 1: far beyond the line. You have to stop this now,
- 15:37Speaker 1: like this is this is descended into chaos. You can't
- 15:40Speaker 1: do this. These people are treating these these prisoners horribly,
- 15:44Speaker 1: Like how are you letting this go on? Fine? And
- 15:49Speaker 1: so the next day he canceled the experiment again after
- 15:52Speaker 1: six days, and it was scheduled to go on for
- 15:54Speaker 1: two weeks. And so he comes out tells the world
- 16:00Speaker 1: in this New York Times magazine, guys, if I took you,
- 16:04Speaker 1: if I took you josh and I took you Chuck
- 16:07Speaker 1: and put you as guarden prisoner in an even a
- 16:10Speaker 1: simulated prison, and put a smock on josh and took
- 16:14Speaker 1: his underwear off and uh put a stocking on his head,
- 16:18Speaker 1: and gave Chuck a baton and some glasses. Chuck would
- 16:21Speaker 1: beat Josh up, and Joshua probably have his spirit broken
- 16:25Speaker 1: and have a nervous breakdown. It's in everybody. Evil is
- 16:29Speaker 1: in everybody crumbling at the first sign of adversity. Isn't
- 16:32Speaker 1: everybody We're all just pathetic weaklings? Stanford Prison experiment and
- 16:37Speaker 1: he ran off and said, I'm famous. All right, that's
- 16:40Speaker 1: a great setup. So we'll take a break here and
- 16:44Speaker 1: come back and talk a little bit about the more
- 16:46Speaker 1: about the experiment and the realities of it right after this.
- 17:10Speaker 1: All right, So you've got John Wayne in there. I
- 17:13Speaker 1: don't think we mentioned that he took on the persona
- 17:15Speaker 1: of the prison boss and cool hand Luke. He did
- 17:19Speaker 1: a fake Southern accent and everything and dove right into
- 17:22Speaker 1: this role. Um, if you talk to Dave Eshelmann today,
- 17:26Speaker 1: he will say he's very much on record of saying,
- 17:30Speaker 1: I'm not some jerk, uh, And I didn't get off
- 17:33Speaker 1: on being sadistic. He said, I wanted to do what
- 17:37Speaker 1: they paid me fifteen dollars a day to do, which
- 17:39Speaker 1: was to be a prison guard and to treat these
- 17:42Speaker 1: guys poorly. And so I you know, he said, I
- 17:45Speaker 1: did some drama in high school, and I literally acted
- 17:47Speaker 1: this part as well as I could. That was I
- 17:51Speaker 1: felt was expected and wanted from me, right, And I
- 17:55Speaker 1: put on this fake Southern accent. And if you like
- 17:58Speaker 1: asked people friends and family today, they would laugh at
- 18:00Speaker 1: this because I'm really not this guy at all, right,
- 18:02Speaker 1: Because he really comes off as as a bit of
- 18:04Speaker 1: a villain in this movie. For sure. Well, he perpetrated
- 18:08Speaker 1: real cruelty on other people and we'll get to that later.
- 18:14Speaker 1: And he should because the other people actually did suffer
- 18:18Speaker 1: under this guy's leadership as the ringleader of the mean guards,
- 18:23Speaker 1: like they wore pink on Wednesday. It was terrible everywhere, right, So, um,
- 18:28Speaker 1: he really should feel bad, and apparently he does. I
- 18:31Speaker 1: saw that all over the place too, that he feels
- 18:33Speaker 1: bad for it. But the point is is that he
- 18:36Speaker 1: has said, like, this didn't happen organically, like I I wasn't.
- 18:43Speaker 1: I wasn't I felt encouraged to play this role. That's
- 18:47Speaker 1: a big deal because the findings of the Stanford prison
- 18:50Speaker 1: experiments say, if you take some people and say you're
- 18:52Speaker 1: a guard empower and you will turn evil, they will
- 18:56Speaker 1: turn evil within a day. A day they said about
- 19:00Speaker 1: this guy. And this guy's like, no, I was, just
- 19:02Speaker 1: like you said, doing my job. But they're paying me
- 19:05Speaker 1: fifteen bucks a day for Let's put that one to
- 19:07Speaker 1: the side. In that Let's go visit with Douglas Corpi,
- 19:10Speaker 1: who was the prisoner who in thirty six short hours
- 19:14Speaker 1: of this simulated prison experiment lost his marbles and had
- 19:19Speaker 1: a nervous breakdown and had to go home. Right, one
- 19:23Speaker 1: of the other two pillars of the findings that people
- 19:26Speaker 1: are either evil or easily crumble in the face of
- 19:28Speaker 1: adversity from the Stanford prison experiment. And again, this is
- 19:32Speaker 1: how this thing has been taught for like fifty years. Okay, Yeah,
- 19:35Speaker 1: So Corpy comes out and says, I was faking that,
- 19:39Speaker 1: and I put on a big act so I could
- 19:41Speaker 1: get out of there because it sucked and I didn't
- 19:44Speaker 1: want to be there anymore. So I fake like I was.
- 19:47Speaker 1: And he he like one of his quotes was I
- 19:50Speaker 1: don't have it here, but basically said like any trained
- 19:53Speaker 1: clinician would have been able to see right through this.
- 19:56Speaker 1: Like when I hear the tapes years later, it's like,
- 19:59Speaker 1: I'm not an actor. I wasn't like apparently the John
- 20:02Speaker 1: Wayne guy at least had been in like high school
- 20:04Speaker 1: plays in college too, I think, yeah, And he was like,
- 20:06Speaker 1: I was not an actor. And it was so clear
- 20:08Speaker 1: to me looking back at these tapes that I was
- 20:11Speaker 1: faking it, faking a nervous breakdown, faking a nervous breakdown
- 20:14Speaker 1: to get out of there. So the reason why he
- 20:17Speaker 1: said later that he did fake this nervous breakdown is
- 20:20Speaker 1: because he took the job because he thought he'd just
- 20:22Speaker 1: be laying around, like you said, smoking cigarettes, being a prisoner,
- 20:26Speaker 1: and he would get to study for the g r E.
- 20:28Speaker 1: He was inner grad school and well they said, no,
- 20:31Speaker 1: you can't have your books. Now. They didn't give him anything,
- 20:34Speaker 1: and this guy was like, whoa, whoa, Wait a minute,
- 20:36Speaker 1: this is day one. He's like, whoa, whoa whoa, Like,
- 20:38Speaker 1: I need those books. I'm taking the g r E,
- 20:40Speaker 1: basically leaving here after two weeks and going to take
- 20:43Speaker 1: the test, like I've got to spend this two week studying.
- 20:46Speaker 1: They're like, you can't have your books. So he quickly
- 20:49Speaker 1: saw that the only way out was to fake this
- 20:52Speaker 1: nervous breakdown. And Billy crude Up went in there and said,
- 20:54Speaker 1: why is everyone saying whoa whoa whoa? Only I can
- 20:57Speaker 1: say whoa whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa. Uh yeah, so
- 21:02Speaker 1: we've kind of poo pooed the two major findings from
- 21:05Speaker 1: the study already. So that's that's a huge deal, right,
- 21:08Speaker 1: because again the idea is that if you put people
- 21:11Speaker 1: any random people, Remember these are just average like middle
- 21:14Speaker 1: middle class white kids, um, which is another problem. Right
- 21:18Speaker 1: if you put if you put any, well, that means
- 21:21Speaker 1: everybody that's the whole world. Right, If you put anybody
- 21:24Speaker 1: in the world in this situation, they're going to either
- 21:26Speaker 1: turn evil or lose their marbles. So, um, those are
- 21:31Speaker 1: the two findings. That's what everybody took it as at first.
- 21:34Speaker 1: It later came out, now this guy was acting. This
- 21:37Speaker 1: guy was faking. So what else do we have? Then, Well,
- 21:40Speaker 1: we have this idea that Zimbardo insinuated himself as part
- 21:47Speaker 1: of the experiment, and that actually created the findings from
- 21:50Speaker 1: the Standford prison experiment. So should we put a pin
- 21:54Speaker 1: in that. You want to talk about that now? No, No,
- 21:56Speaker 1: I want to go. I want to go where you
- 21:57Speaker 1: want to go. All right, let's put a pin in
- 21:59Speaker 1: that then and talk about a little bit more about
- 22:01Speaker 1: what went on that week. Um, they had everything from
- 22:06Speaker 1: visitation like you could write a letter to your family
- 22:09Speaker 1: or girlfriend or whoever you want to come visit you
- 22:12Speaker 1: to ask for visitation rights, and the family came in
- 22:15Speaker 1: and they did. They came in and visited for an
- 22:17Speaker 1: hour and they were in some cases parents were like
- 22:20Speaker 1: I don't know about this. This is like this just
- 22:23Speaker 1: seems like a really weird thing. And Zimbardo will be like,
- 22:27Speaker 1: oh no, it's totally fine, Like you know, they're the psychologists. Yeah,
- 22:30Speaker 1: like they want to be here, like ask them and
- 22:32Speaker 1: the the kids. You know, they did say that they
- 22:36Speaker 1: wanted to stay okay, which is which is important? Okay,
- 22:42Speaker 1: so what all? What else is importantess Like, no one
- 22:45Speaker 1: in the visiting hour. I don't think we're like, get
- 22:47Speaker 1: me out of here. They're like no, this is all
- 22:49Speaker 1: part of the part of the act. Essentially. Um, they
- 22:53Speaker 1: had parole hearings inside the course of a week. Somehow
- 22:57Speaker 1: they said that if they they could be released, if
- 23:00Speaker 1: they would forfeit the money. Uh. And this is after
- 23:03Speaker 1: I don't know how many of the six days. But um,
- 23:06Speaker 1: they could not get paid if and be paroled if
- 23:10Speaker 1: they went in front of the parole board. They went
- 23:12Speaker 1: in front of the parole board, some of them did,
- 23:14Speaker 1: and most of the prisoners said that they would give
- 23:16Speaker 1: up their money. In fact, and the parole members like, uh,
- 23:20Speaker 1: like I said, they were the graduate assistants. They even
- 23:22Speaker 1: had one um former prisoner, this guy that like it
- 23:27Speaker 1: was a fifteen year yeah inmate, fifteen or seventeen year
- 23:30Speaker 1: inmate on the board that I guess him Zimbardo. I
- 23:34Speaker 1: want to call him Zamboni. So he actually was a
- 23:37Speaker 1: friend of Jaffi's, the guy who originally actually as an undergrad,
- 23:42Speaker 1: so he brought him in on it, right, So he
- 23:44Speaker 1: was on the parole board, and he was kind of
- 23:46Speaker 1: one of the ones, um at least in the film
- 23:48Speaker 1: version that was kind of saying like, no, this is
- 23:51Speaker 1: like how it is, like, you should keep it going.
- 23:54Speaker 1: But I don't know how much of that was dramatized.
- 23:56Speaker 1: I don't either. That's a that's a That's one of
- 23:58Speaker 1: the problems with this is, you know, so much of
- 24:01Speaker 1: the documentation has been not released over the years, and
- 24:04Speaker 1: when it does get released, it contradicts the official line.
- 24:06Speaker 1: And um, it's very tough to separate truth from fiction,
- 24:10Speaker 1: especially when you introduce a Hollywood movie into the whole thing,
- 24:13Speaker 1: just to just to drive those nails in the coffin too. Yeah,
- 24:17Speaker 1: and so reality in fact, there's been a lot of
- 24:20Speaker 1: in the years since, a lot of complaints that a
- 24:22Speaker 1: lot of these you know, kids were screaming, I want
- 24:25Speaker 1: to go home, I want to go home. And for
- 24:27Speaker 1: his part, Zimbardo said, in the contract it says I
- 24:31Speaker 1: want to exit the experiment, as the official line to say,
- 24:36Speaker 1: and they could have gone home and he was like,
- 24:38Speaker 1: but you hear no one ever said I want to
- 24:39Speaker 1: exit the experiment. They would say I want my mommy,
- 24:42Speaker 1: or I'm going crazy, or my god, please stop this,
- 24:45Speaker 1: please stop this, but they never said those exact words,
- 24:48Speaker 1: this safe phrase. Let's say, yeah, the safe phrase. But
- 24:51Speaker 1: it turns out that's bunk to right. Yeah, it turns
- 24:54Speaker 1: out that if you look at the contract that they
- 24:56Speaker 1: had that he's referencing that that say the rules and
- 24:59Speaker 1: everything in the emit there's no safe word to be mentioned.
- 25:03Speaker 1: Certainly doesn't say if you say I want to quit
- 25:05Speaker 1: the experiment, you get released from the experiment. So he's
- 25:08Speaker 1: just flat out lying about that. Then that's from what
- 25:10Speaker 1: I understand. Yes, and what article was this that you sent?
- 25:14Speaker 1: There's a really good takedown um in medium called the
- 25:18Speaker 1: The Lifespan of a Lie um and it's based on
- 25:23Speaker 1: that titles based on a I think a documentary by
- 25:28Speaker 1: a documentary or book by a French filmmaker um which
- 25:34Speaker 1: who titled his version The Birth of a Lie and
- 25:38Speaker 1: it's basically about how the Stanford prison experiment was just
- 25:42Speaker 1: basically it was bunked from the get go, which will
- 25:44Speaker 1: kind of pick that apart in a little bit, and
- 25:47Speaker 1: that it's just fascinatingly has been perpetuated over again, basically
- 25:51Speaker 1: fifty years. It just entered the cultural zeitgeist and just
- 25:56Speaker 1: stayed like an infection. All Right. Some other things that
- 26:00Speaker 1: happened to make it realistic. They brought in, um, a
- 26:03Speaker 1: lawyer when parents asked for one, and played along like
- 26:07Speaker 1: it was real. They brought in a chaplain who came
- 26:09Speaker 1: in to speak to prisoners. Uh, and he played along
- 26:13Speaker 1: with it too. Uh. They basically did everything that you
- 26:18Speaker 1: would think would happen in a real prison um on
- 26:22Speaker 1: on a slightly scaled down level. Right, But the upshot
- 26:25Speaker 1: of all of this is Zimbardo saying, like, do you
- 26:28Speaker 1: see what's going on here? Everybody? Like I just put
- 26:32Speaker 1: some guys in, like nine guys in at a time,
- 26:35Speaker 1: or twelve guys as guards, twelve guys as prisoners, and
- 26:38Speaker 1: their parents came for visiting hours, a lawyer came. That's
- 26:43Speaker 1: the that's how real the simulated prison became in people's minds.
- 26:46Speaker 1: Just imagine what a real prisons like, right. So um
- 26:51Speaker 1: and he was saying they could have left at any
- 26:52Speaker 1: time if they just said the safe word, and no
- 26:54Speaker 1: one ever said the safe word. There is some evidence
- 26:57Speaker 1: that these people were basically kept there against their will,
- 27:01Speaker 1: especially after Douglas Corpy basically faked his emotional breakdown and
- 27:08Speaker 1: then was thrown into broom closet and retaliation for it.
- 27:14Speaker 1: Um that he should have very very clearly should have
- 27:17Speaker 1: been left or allowed to leave. And to even be
- 27:21Speaker 1: led to think that you couldn't leave, which is apparently
- 27:24Speaker 1: the idea that spread throughout the prisoners. Um, that would
- 27:28Speaker 1: be like keeping someone against their will. Yeah, and he
- 27:30Speaker 1: did leave, but was supposed to agree to come back, supposedly,
- 27:34Speaker 1: uh to like play a different role as a prisoner
- 27:38Speaker 1: who like maybe escaped and came back I think, but
- 27:41Speaker 1: didn't come back, right, And um, I think five people
- 27:45Speaker 1: were released early before the whole experiment was called off,
- 27:49Speaker 1: all prisoners. No guards left the experiment, which is telling well,
- 27:53Speaker 1: and they were working in shifts that which is important. Okay,
- 27:55Speaker 1: that is a big one too. Um. But but if
- 27:58Speaker 1: you consider that no one asked to be a guard,
- 28:00Speaker 1: they all has to be prisoners. But then none of
- 28:03Speaker 1: the guards left the experiment, that's to me, that's interesting
- 28:07Speaker 1: on its face, right, there's something to that, but um,
- 28:10Speaker 1: they're the whole thing just kind of falling apart after
- 28:15Speaker 1: Zimbardo's girlfriend Um at the time, came um the idea
- 28:21Speaker 1: that up to this point, these people had engaged in
- 28:24Speaker 1: this fantasy and thought that they couldn't leave when they
- 28:27Speaker 1: really could. That's controversial in and of itself, because again
- 28:32Speaker 1: there's evidence that they were led to believe they couldn't leave,
- 28:35Speaker 1: and that's different. That changes things entirely. So you want
- 28:41Speaker 1: to take another break and then pick this part some more. Yeah,
- 28:44Speaker 1: let's do it. Kind of fun alright, the final takedown.
- 29:09Speaker 1: I'm I'm waiting for I'm waiting for Phillipsimbardo to release
- 29:12Speaker 1: a book about like our Jackhammer episode. That's fine, I
- 29:17Speaker 1: would read it, all right, So where are we here? Basically,
- 29:21Speaker 1: we're at the point where uh he is he has
- 29:24Speaker 1: into the experiment and now we're dealing with the fallout
- 29:27Speaker 1: since nine and how this should be viewed. One of
- 29:31Speaker 1: the big things that came out of that French book,
- 29:33Speaker 1: The Birth of a Lie, is the um the filmmaker
- 29:38Speaker 1: unearthed a recording that was I don't know where he
- 29:43Speaker 1: found it, but they he found it and released the
- 29:47Speaker 1: transcript of it that clearly has Um, if not Zimbardo
- 29:52Speaker 1: at least Jaffee. Definitely Jaffee coaching the um the guards
- 29:57Speaker 1: to be more brutal, Right, be a tough guard. Just
- 30:01Speaker 1: think of like how the pigs do it, and do
- 30:03Speaker 1: it like that, I think is what the quote was, right, Yeah,
- 30:06Speaker 1: when the whole idea of this thing is to try
- 30:07Speaker 1: and prove that without any influence, Yes, this is what happens. Right,
- 30:12Speaker 1: So there's a couple of things that happened method Methodologically,
- 30:15Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that happened the moment they
- 30:17Speaker 1: started coaching those guards. Number one, they took any organic
- 30:22Speaker 1: nous out of their behavior. They were then doing what
- 30:24Speaker 1: they thought they were expected to do, like John Wayne
- 30:27Speaker 1: for sure, who just went over the top is what
- 30:28Speaker 1: it was, um. And then number two, they made them
- 30:33Speaker 1: co experimenters. Like the whole thing was supposed to be
- 30:36Speaker 1: guards and prisoners, and we're going to watch as test
- 30:38Speaker 1: subjects or participants. And when you coach the guards, you're
- 30:44Speaker 1: their co experimenters. Now, now the experiments entirely on the
- 30:47Speaker 1: on the prisoners, which you can say, okay, well then
- 30:50Speaker 1: those findings still worked. Well, that gets thrown out when
- 30:53Speaker 1: you base the whole thing on a guy who is
- 30:54Speaker 1: faking right. But but you you make the guards co
- 30:58Speaker 1: experimenters and you just completely take out any objectivity from
- 31:02Speaker 1: this experiment. That's problem one with the methodology. Well, and
- 31:06Speaker 1: the fact we already mentioned that one of one of
- 31:08Speaker 1: the researchers was a warden and zim uh keep on
- 31:12Speaker 1: to call m Zambrano. That's fine. Zimbardo Zamboni himself was
- 31:17Speaker 1: the superintendent, like the minute he decided to do that,
- 31:21Speaker 1: Like I looked up. I think he's like in his
- 31:23Speaker 1: late thirties when he did this. How did he not like,
- 31:26Speaker 1: was he that bad and doing his job? How did
- 31:29Speaker 1: he not know? Like, wait a minute, this will taint
- 31:31Speaker 1: the experiment. Do you want to talk about why the
- 31:34Speaker 1: people think that he was so? Yeah, okay, so he
- 31:38Speaker 1: was a uh he wasn't. I think still is a
- 31:41Speaker 1: social activist for sure, And he had decided, um, and
- 31:45Speaker 1: I can't really disagree with them that prisons were brutal
- 31:48Speaker 1: places where brutality lived, and that they were inherently brutal.
- 31:53Speaker 1: And so if you take somebody and put them into
- 31:55Speaker 1: this place, you're doing a real disservice to humanity by
- 31:58Speaker 1: by throwing somebody in a bruutal place that you know,
- 32:01Speaker 1: is brutal. His aim was to get reformed to happen. Yes,
- 32:04Speaker 1: from the outset. Well, I mean, I can't fault that,
- 32:06Speaker 1: but you can't call it a scientific experiment either. And
- 32:10Speaker 1: it actually supposedly backfired as well, because one interpretation of
- 32:15Speaker 1: his findings is that it's all or nothing with prisons.
- 32:20Speaker 1: Prisons are inherently brutal, or you can't have them. So
- 32:25Speaker 1: either you have prisons and you have brutal prisons, or
- 32:27Speaker 1: you have no prisons. And so, faced with that choice
- 32:31Speaker 1: and with rising crime rates in the seventies, um a
- 32:34Speaker 1: lot of people double down on getting tough and made
- 32:37Speaker 1: prisons even worse and built more prisons and said, t yes,
- 32:40Speaker 1: we're not even gonna try to like reform you anymore,
- 32:43Speaker 1: but we're just gonna send you to these brutal places
- 32:45Speaker 1: that are inherently brutal and there's nothing we can do
- 32:47Speaker 1: about it. So it would have it would have backfired
- 32:50Speaker 1: in that sense, but in in in the idea that
- 32:53Speaker 1: he was doing something with the best interests of his
- 32:56Speaker 1: fellow people at heart. Again, like you said, it's it's
- 33:00Speaker 1: tough to fault him for that. He just really really
- 33:04Speaker 1: gave social psychology a black eye. Yeah. So one of
- 33:08Speaker 1: the other things he did wrong, UM, and this one
- 33:11Speaker 1: I just can't figure out either, is he didn't have
- 33:13Speaker 1: a control group and one of his Um, this guy
- 33:17Speaker 1: wasn't in the experiment, but one of his colleagues came
- 33:20Speaker 1: by one day and was like, you know what, what's
- 33:23Speaker 1: your control what's your independent variable? Yeah, and he was
- 33:26Speaker 1: like what, Yeah, He's like, I don't have one. So
- 33:29Speaker 1: if you if you run a an experiment of any sort,
- 33:33Speaker 1: um grabstre uses a great analogy where if you're trying
- 33:36Speaker 1: to figure out what the effects of radiation are on tomatoes,
- 33:40Speaker 1: you pick a bunch of tomatoes, you weigh them, you
- 33:42Speaker 1: check them for color, um, you make sure that they're
- 33:45Speaker 1: identical to another set of tomatoes. So you have two
- 33:49Speaker 1: sets of basically identical tomatoes. One you radiate, one you
- 33:52Speaker 1: do not, and after a set amount of time you
- 33:54Speaker 1: go back and see what the differences are. And then
- 33:57Speaker 1: you can say probably that when you read the eight tomatoes,
- 34:00Speaker 1: these are the effects, and the effects are the differences
- 34:02Speaker 1: between the two. Same thing with the prison experiment, what
- 34:06Speaker 1: would you have here two different cell blocks and one
- 34:10Speaker 1: that literally isn't coached and completely left alone. That's what
- 34:13Speaker 1: I would have done for sure. And then one where
- 34:15Speaker 1: you're saying, hey, be brutal, and yeah, we'll see if
- 34:18Speaker 1: everyone falls into these roles exactly that that would have
- 34:20Speaker 1: been great. And actually some researchers in two thousand one
- 34:24Speaker 1: they did exactly that. They basically ran the experiment with
- 34:28Speaker 1: just that control group you suggested. Um, it was called
- 34:31Speaker 1: the BBC Prison Study. Yeah, has Lem and Riker. Yeah,
- 34:35Speaker 1: and basically they did the same thing. They they they
- 34:38Speaker 1: did not do any coaching, they didn't do any intervention.
- 34:41Speaker 1: They did the the thing exactly like you're supposed to,
- 34:44Speaker 1: or like Zimbardo should have from the outset. And um,
- 34:47Speaker 1: they found that again they made the control group to
- 34:50Speaker 1: the original Stanford prison experiment, they found that the exact
- 34:54Speaker 1: opposite happened. The prisoners stayed banded together, the guards were
- 34:58Speaker 1: totally in disarray, um and disorganized. The brutality never emerged. Um,
- 35:04Speaker 1: and there wasn't any violence from what I understand. And
- 35:06Speaker 1: this is where it gets really scummy. If he asked me.
- 35:09Speaker 1: Zimbardo found out about this, and supposedly Hasselman Reicher said
- 35:14Speaker 1: they discovered he was privately writing editors, uh to keep
- 35:18Speaker 1: them from getting published and claiming that they were fraudulent. Yeah,
- 35:22Speaker 1: in the journal that they they released their findings, and
- 35:25Speaker 1: he wrote in an appendage to their their article and said,
- 35:30Speaker 1: these are they just don't even listen to these guys.
- 35:33Speaker 1: I'm Philip Simbardo. Man. So yeah, I thought that was
- 35:37Speaker 1: pretty scummy too if he did that. Um, so you've
- 35:40Speaker 1: got methodologically, there's even more problems too. If in the
- 35:45Speaker 1: in the original newspaper advertisement, chuck, he said, um, prison experiment,
- 35:50Speaker 1: prison experiment. Everybody sign up. Yeah, that was a problem
- 35:53Speaker 1: in itself. They shouldn't have known what they were doing, no,
- 35:56Speaker 1: exactly until they showed up, right, So you're gonna get
- 35:58Speaker 1: a big, wide swath of people, and then once they
- 36:02Speaker 1: find out what the experiment is, maybe they'll say no
- 36:04Speaker 1: thanks or whatever. But this was like attracting um. A
- 36:08Speaker 1: two thousand and seven follow up study found narcissistic, hostile,
- 36:15Speaker 1: overly aggressive authoritarian types like flies to honey or the opposite. Well,
- 36:21Speaker 1: that seems to be the case in this case, yeah,
- 36:23Speaker 1: which was in fact, one of them was a liberal
- 36:25Speaker 1: activist who kind of purposely went in there because he
- 36:29Speaker 1: thought maybe these findings could be used one day for
- 36:33Speaker 1: prison reform. Well, I think also most of the UM
- 36:36Speaker 1: what I got from Jaffee coaching the people to say, like,
- 36:39Speaker 1: think about what the pigs would do, and then do
- 36:41Speaker 1: do that, because we really got to show them how
- 36:44Speaker 1: how brutal prisons are. Um. I think everybody who showed
- 36:47Speaker 1: up basically was against prisons. But whether you're against prisons
- 36:52Speaker 1: or forum, you were automatically tainted before you even showed
- 36:56Speaker 1: up for the interview because they wrote prison experiment in
- 37:00Speaker 1: the ad. So from the outset there was biased, There
- 37:03Speaker 1: was no control group. It attracted a bias cross section
- 37:06Speaker 1: of people participated. He was a participant, and that actually
- 37:11Speaker 1: chuck led to the second set of findings that Zimbardo
- 37:17Speaker 1: had influenced this and become a participant himself. And here's
- 37:23Speaker 1: the current interpretation of all of it. Okay, this seems
- 37:27Speaker 1: to be the current dujur interpretation of the Stanford prison experiment.
- 37:32Speaker 1: Not that people are inherently cruel and inherently will just
- 37:37Speaker 1: crumble in the face of authority, although that that might
- 37:39Speaker 1: still stand, but that people will be are capable of
- 37:45Speaker 1: cruelty if they're recruited by an authority. Figure the second set,
- 37:50Speaker 1: and there's actually been three sets of interpretations. The second
- 37:54Speaker 1: set was that Zimbardo inserted himself and that it actually
- 37:58Speaker 1: demonstrated what's called situation fist theory. Yeah, and that's basically
- 38:02Speaker 1: that external circumstances are the drivers of human behavior. Right,
- 38:07Speaker 1: So the point was not that people are inherently cruel
- 38:10Speaker 1: on an individual level, but the situation that they're put in,
- 38:14Speaker 1: they will quickly find those roles if there's a power
- 38:18Speaker 1: structure above them, that is, that has normalized this and
- 38:22Speaker 1: is expecting them to fulfill those roles. And this really
- 38:26Speaker 1: tied in with you know, this is one people were
- 38:29Speaker 1: still really trying to figure out what the heck had
- 38:32Speaker 1: just happened with the Nazis. It was only like years before.
- 38:36Speaker 1: So this idea that this banality of evil, this made
- 38:40Speaker 1: perfect sense in that in that respect, right, there is
- 38:43Speaker 1: a bureaucracy that had normalized evil and you were just
- 38:47Speaker 1: following orders. That was the second interpretation of the Stanford
- 38:51Speaker 1: prison experiment. Yeah. Well, and not just the Nazis, but
- 38:54Speaker 1: everything like the Vietnam War, which was I mean, this
- 38:58Speaker 1: is one, and like the Myley massacre, and you know,
- 39:02Speaker 1: I was just following orders like this tied in this
- 39:06Speaker 1: has his fingers in a lot of relevant politics of
- 39:08Speaker 1: the day. Right, So, um, apparently it also tied in
- 39:12Speaker 1: really well to Attica, and Zimbardo must have just couldn't
- 39:15Speaker 1: believe is his good fortune that there was a there's
- 39:18Speaker 1: alotiest prison riot in American history happened like a couple
- 39:22Speaker 1: of weeks after he made the news in the New
- 39:25Speaker 1: York Times magazine with this journal art or this article
- 39:27Speaker 1: that he wrote, right, But that actually played into it too,
- 39:30Speaker 1: because apparently, following orders, a lot of guards just fired
- 39:34Speaker 1: blindly into the tear gas smoke of this prison riot
- 39:37Speaker 1: and killed tons of of unarmed prisoners and hostages. So
- 39:44Speaker 1: so Zimbard is like, Okay, that's fine, however we're going
- 39:46Speaker 1: to interpret this. I'm cool with that. But the third one,
- 39:50Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure that he would be cool with
- 39:53Speaker 1: the current one, which is bad science, I think. So
- 39:57Speaker 1: what I saw is that a lot of social psychologists
- 40:00Speaker 1: we've known this is bad science all along, but the
- 40:02Speaker 1: findings were really interesting and worthwhile, so we didn't throw
- 40:06Speaker 1: the baby out with the bathwater. The third one is
- 40:09Speaker 1: that that Zimbardo inserted himself and what this, what this
- 40:14Speaker 1: this study really showed was that people will engage in
- 40:19Speaker 1: acts of cruelty if there is a figure of authority
- 40:22Speaker 1: recruiting them to what they think is a righteous cause.
- 40:26Speaker 1: And in this case it was Zimbardo making the guards
- 40:30Speaker 1: co experiment ers by coaching them to be cruel and
- 40:34Speaker 1: in in the name of prison reform. Ultimately, when they
- 40:38Speaker 1: showed the world what happens when you put normal people
- 40:41Speaker 1: in a prison situation. Yeah, which is what the John
- 40:44Speaker 1: Wayne guy very much has said all his life since then,
- 40:47Speaker 1: is that this is what they I thought they wanted
- 40:49Speaker 1: was for me to be a bad guard so we
- 40:52Speaker 1: could prove, uh, ultimately that prisons need reform. And that
- 40:57Speaker 1: that is why he's still complicit, because he's still engaged
- 41:00Speaker 1: in these acts of genuine cruelty against the prisoners in
- 41:04Speaker 1: the study. And that's why he should still feel bad
- 41:07Speaker 1: and still does feel bad. But he did it because
- 41:10Speaker 1: he was recruited in the name of this rights is
- 41:13Speaker 1: caused by somebody who was in authority. So is this
- 41:16Speaker 1: being taught this way in classes now? I don't I
- 41:18Speaker 1: think that they, especially once it came out the Zimbardo
- 41:21Speaker 1: and at the very least his warden co experiment er
- 41:24Speaker 1: was was coaching them to do this and that the
- 41:27Speaker 1: organic cruelty is just totally out the window. I think
- 41:31Speaker 1: they don't know what to do with it right now.
- 41:33Speaker 1: They're trying to figure out like how to get these
- 41:36Speaker 1: findings across or what to make of them. Because one
- 41:39Speaker 1: one of these quotes from the article you sent the
- 41:41Speaker 1: guy said, I don't think it's scientific fraud in the
- 41:43Speaker 1: typical sense. It was never considered to be scientific. It's
- 41:46Speaker 1: typically represented in classrooms as a demonstration, uh, not an experiment.
- 41:52Speaker 1: And there's a notorious case of ethical malfeasance. So that's
- 41:56Speaker 1: almost a fourth takeaway is that it's an example have
- 42:00Speaker 1: how to not do a study correctly, which is interesting.
- 42:04Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean methodologically inserting yourself, like lying about
- 42:09Speaker 1: the findings later on, or misinterpreting the results or using spin.
- 42:14Speaker 1: It's yeah, there's a lot here. But it was approved
- 42:16Speaker 1: by the Stanford Human Rights Subjects Review Committee at the time.
- 42:20Speaker 1: Those were Zimbardo's experiments. We presented this too, uh And
- 42:24Speaker 1: there you know, he still says that it was ethical. Well,
- 42:28Speaker 1: it was at the time under the guidelines, it was ethical,
- 42:31Speaker 1: but then after they changed the guidelines, you couldn't do
- 42:34Speaker 1: this today, or at least not with like he did it. So,
- 42:39Speaker 1: I did you remember the very brief psychology is nuts serious?
- 42:43Speaker 1: Watch that I did win on the Stanford Prison Experiment. Yeah,
- 42:46Speaker 1: I watched that today, did you What do you think
- 42:48Speaker 1: it was good? Thanks? Man? Cute little background? Yeah, I
- 42:50Speaker 1: thought so too. Um and let's see you got anything else? No,
- 42:55Speaker 1: I mean, boy, I thought we were pretty scathing, but
- 42:58Speaker 1: we were. This is like vaping love all scathing. This
- 43:01Speaker 1: is way worse than vaporing. I'm sure the vapors are
- 43:03Speaker 1: like going. They were really hard on that guy. Yeah.
- 43:05Speaker 1: The movie, uh, you know, the documentary is probably a
- 43:09Speaker 1: little more accurate. But the movie wasn't bad. I mean
- 43:13Speaker 1: it's not great, Yeah, but it was okay. It felt
- 43:16Speaker 1: like a movie the week it's an airplane movie. Yeah,
- 43:20Speaker 1: watch it on your next poine. That my recommendation, Thanks buddy. Well,
- 43:24Speaker 1: if you want to know more about the Stanford Prison Experiment, um,
- 43:28Speaker 1: type those words in the search part how stuff works
- 43:30Speaker 1: dot comm and it will bring up this grab store article.
- 43:32Speaker 1: Since I said grab store, it's time for listener mail.
- 43:37Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this beautiful landscaping. Hey, guys, it's spent
- 43:40Speaker 1: in the last two years fixing up the yard. Uh
- 43:42Speaker 1: in our house. Uh in Point Pleasant, Pennsylvania. Oh, that
- 43:47Speaker 1: sounds like a pleasant place. Yeah it is. My husband
- 43:49Speaker 1: actually introducing your show a few years back, and thank
- 43:52Speaker 1: god he did, because I've literally listened to you for
- 43:54Speaker 1: hours and hours while working in the yard. It was
- 43:57Speaker 1: a huge undertaking. I have a more flexible work schedule
- 43:59Speaker 1: the he does, so I volunteered to absorb most of
- 44:02Speaker 1: the responsibility, although he did a lot of heavy looking.
- 44:04Speaker 1: To enjoyed the show so much, I stopped allowing myself
- 44:07Speaker 1: to listen to to it any other time. You were
- 44:10Speaker 1: only allowed during yard work. This made me much more
- 44:13Speaker 1: ready to get outside and get into it. You guys
- 44:15Speaker 1: were with me while I carried literally tons of red
- 44:17Speaker 1: stone uphill and buckets, hauling rocks for a firing landing,
- 44:21Speaker 1: planted uh pecky sandra ferns and hostas, and the rocky
- 44:27Speaker 1: soil I've ever had to work with, and just clearing
- 44:30Speaker 1: away over growth which it sounds like Tanya Harding training
- 44:33Speaker 1: for the Olympics, and that one that one montage, which
- 44:36Speaker 1: it turned out included a fair amount of poison ivy.
- 44:38Speaker 1: During it all, I learned about tiny adorable little creature
- 44:40Speaker 1: called it's heart degrade, the business of head transplants, the
- 44:44Speaker 1: hookworm her favorite episode, and some haunting information I cannot
- 44:48Speaker 1: and hear, such as you provided in the bullfighting and
- 44:51Speaker 1: drowning episodes. You're always very entertaining, full of information. Even
- 44:55Speaker 1: when I think it's boring, you make it fun. There
- 44:58Speaker 1: were times you had me l o l ng in
- 44:59Speaker 1: my back ard alone and covered in dirt and sweat
- 45:02Speaker 1: like a crazy person. Attached her some pictures of the progress,
- 45:06Speaker 1: all from your climate controlled studio, that is from Sharon Prashynski.
- 45:11Speaker 1: And Sharon, you did a great job. That is one
- 45:15Speaker 1: beautiful yard you got going. Yeah, for sure, it is lovely.
- 45:18Speaker 1: It is nice work. We're glad we could be there
- 45:21Speaker 1: with you to help you get up that hill. Yeah,
- 45:24Speaker 1: and down the hill and then back up the hill
- 45:26Speaker 1: and back down the hill. That's right, and then back
- 45:28Speaker 1: up again. Uh. If you want to get in touch
- 45:30Speaker 1: with us to let us know how we've helped you out,
- 45:32Speaker 1: we love hearing that kind of stuff. If you're Phillip Lombardo,
- 45:35Speaker 1: we expect to hear from your lawyer. Um. And in
- 45:39Speaker 1: the meantime you can hang out with us at our
- 45:40Speaker 1: home on the web. Stuff you should Know dot com,
- 45:42Speaker 1: where you can find all of our social links, and
- 45:45Speaker 1: you can also send us an email to Stuff Podcast
- 45:47Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
- 45:53Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
- 45:56Speaker 1: dot com