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Selects: How the Stanford Prison Experiment Worked · Stuff You Should Know

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