40 Fun Facts About Stanford Prison Experiment

Which psychologist's protest ended the Stanford prison experiment, a year before she married Philip Zimbardo?

Christina Maslach was the only one of 50 or more outside visitors to question the study's morality. She had just finished her doctorate and came to help interview the participants.

The Stanford prison experiment was planned to last two weeks, but after how long was it shut down?

Six days in, Zimbardo called a halt. Videotapes had shown the guards stepping up their abuse in the middle of the night, when they thought no researchers were watching.

How much per day were the male college students who volunteered for the Stanford prison experiment promised?

$15 a day drew more than 70 applicants. One future guard said he chose the study over summer work at a pizza parlor.

In which part of the university's psychology building was the mock jail for the Stanford prison experiment built?

The basement of Jordan Hall had a corridor boarded up at each end to serve as the prison yard. Laboratory doors were swapped for specially made ones with steel bars.

Which California city's real police force staged surprise arrests to launch the Stanford prison experiment?

Palo Alto officers turned up unannounced, handcuffed the volunteers, read them their rights and drove them to the station for booking and fingerprinting.

Which item of the guards' kit in the Stanford prison experiment was inspired by the film Cool Hand Luke?

Mirrored sunglasses hid the guards' eyes and emotions, adding to their anonymity. In the film, a silent rifle-carrying overseer always wears a pair.

How were volunteers in the Stanford prison experiment sorted into guards and prisoners before the study began?

A coin flip split the group, so both sides started out alike. Most prisoners still came to believe the guards had been picked for being bigger, though average height was the same.

Abuse at which US military prison, exposed in 2004, did Philip Zimbardo liken to his Stanford prison experiment?

Abu Ghraib's guards were, Zimbardo argued, more than a few bad apples. He testified as an expert witness for Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, who still received an eight-year sentence.

Which former high-school classmate of Philip Zimbardo ran Yale's famous electric-shock obedience experiments?

Stanley Milgram sat in the same New York high school as Zimbardo. His obedience studies came a decade before the mock jail, and the two are often compared for their ethics.

Which Hollywood cowboy star's name did prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment give their most brutal guard?

John Wayne was their name for the most macho guard. Researchers later learned that a notorious guard in a Nazi camp near Buchenwald had been called Tom Mix, a cowboy star of an earlier era.

What did Philip Zimbardo say the Stanford prison experiment showed shapes behaviour more than personality?

The situation, Zimbardo argued, outweighed character. His team reported that the most and least abusive guards did not differ on personality measures such as authoritarianism.

What did guards spray at barricaded prisoners to crush the day-two rebellion in the Stanford prison experiment?

A fire extinguisher shot chilling carbon dioxide to force prisoners back from the doors. It was on hand only because a university research panel had worried about fire.

Which garment, worn with no underclothes, was the prisoner uniform in the Stanford prison experiment?

A smock with an ID on front and back was meant to humiliate quickly. Zimbardo noted that prisoners began to walk, sit and hold themselves differently once they put it on.

Which exercise did guards in the Stanford prison experiment commonly order as punishment for breaking the rules?

Push-ups struck the researchers as a mild, juvenile penalty at first. One guard made them harsher by stepping on prisoners' backs, or by having other prisoners sit on them.

What did staff in the Stanford prison experiment call the dark closet used for solitary confinement?

The Hole was about two feet wide and two feet deep, just tall enough to stand in. The guards' own rules capped a stay at one hour, a limit they later broke.

Which branch of the US military paid for the Stanford prison experiment through its research office?

The Navy funded the work as a study of antisocial behaviour, hoping to understand conflict between military guards and the prisoners they held.

Which job title in the mock jail did Philip Zimbardo give himself during the Stanford prison experiment?

Superintendent Zimbardo later admitted the role swallowed him. He caught himself pacing the yard with his hands behind his back, like a general inspecting troops.

Which Philip Zimbardo book retells the Stanford prison experiment and asks how good people turn evil?

The Lucifer Effect takes its title from the favoured angel who fell from grace. It reached the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list in 2007.

After lights-out in the Stanford prison experiment, what were prisoners often forced to use as a toilet?

A bucket was left in each cell after the 10 p.m. lock-up. Guards sometimes refused to let prisoners empty it, so the jail soon stank.

Where on the body did each prisoner in the Stanford prison experiment wear a heavy bolted chain?

On one ankle, day and night. When a sleeping prisoner turned over, the chain struck his other foot and woke him, a reminder that he could not escape even in his dreams.

Prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment wore nylon stocking caps as a substitute for which real jail practice?

Head shaving strips away individuality, since many people express themselves through their hair. Zimbardo also called it a way to get people complying with arbitrary rules.

How did Philip Zimbardo's team find the young men who took part in the Stanford prison experiment?

A newspaper ad in the help-wanted pages asked for male college students for a study of prison life. Those with a history of crime, drug abuse or psychological problems were screened out.

The first prisoner freed from the Stanford prison experiment later said he faked his breakdown to do what?

Study for an exam, said Douglas Korpi, who had planned to revise for his graduate school entrance test in his cell. Zimbardo called that later account untrue.

Which protest did late arrival Prisoner 416 stage to try to force his release from the Stanford prison experiment?

A hunger strike earned him three hours in solitary, triple the guards' own limit. Offered the choice, most fellow prisoners kept their blankets rather than free him.

Which mental state, long studied by Philip Zimbardo, were Stanford prison experiment uniforms designed to produce?

Deindividuation is the loss of self-awareness that can come with anonymity in a group. Zimbardo had spent years showing how feeling anonymous could lead ordinary people into antisocial acts.

Which term for volunteers acting as researchers want did critics apply to the Stanford prison experiment in 1975?

Demand characteristics were the charge made by Ali Banuazizi and Siamak Movahedi, who argued the students were simply acting out the roles they had been cast in.

Which US ethics panel must now approve human studies like the Stanford prison experiment before they can begin?

Institutional review board approval weighs a study's benefit to science against the risk of harm. Stanford's own human subjects committee cleared the 1971 study, yet Zimbardo later said no such simulation could be run in America again.

Which broadcaster helped Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher stage a partial re-run of the Stanford prison experiment?

The BBC aired the study as The Experiment. Its prisoners united as a group and overthrew their guards, findings very different from Zimbardo's.

Which actor played Philip Zimbardo in the 2015 film The Stanford Prison Experiment?

Billy Crudup led a cast that included Ezra Miller and Tye Sheridan as prisoners. Zimbardo's own site notes that, unlike in the film, the real guards were barred from physical violence.

At which festival did the 2015 film The Stanford Prison Experiment premiere and win a screenwriting award?

Sundance gave Tim Talbott its Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for the script. The film also took the festival's Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize.

Which actor faced Forest Whitaker in The Experiment, a 2010 thriller inspired by the Stanford prison experiment?

Adrien Brody played Travis, a proud anti-war protester. The film remade the German thriller Das Experiment, which was taken from Mario Giordano's novel Black Box.

At which California prison had Carlo Prescott, chief consultant on the Stanford prison experiment, been an inmate?

San Quentin was the yardstick Prescott used on the first prisoner to crack, warning him how much worse real inmates had it. Heading the mock parole hearings, he felt sick at becoming the kind of official who had turned him down for years.

Which New York prison erupted in a deadly riot within a month of the Stanford prison experiment ending?

Attica made prisons front-page news, and Zimbardo was soon called to testify to a congressional subcommittee on prison reform. He said he went from knowing nothing first-hand about jails to being treated as an expert.

The psychologist who halted the Stanford prison experiment later pioneered research into which workplace problem?

Burnout became her life's work after she began interviewing real prison guards and emergency-room staff about coping with their jobs. A questionnaire she co-wrote became the mainstream way to measure it.

After the Stanford prison experiment, Philip Zimbardo's team opened a clinic in Menlo Park to treat which trait?

Shyness became his next big subject: in 1972 he launched a pioneering investigation into it, hoping to use psychology to help people after the turmoil of the jail study.

In which New York City borough did Philip Zimbardo, creator of the Stanford prison experiment, grow up poor?

The Bronx was where his Sicilian-American family lived on welfare. He said the prejudice he met there first made him curious about why people behave as they do.

What did guards in the Stanford prison experiment set up after the rebellion, with beds and better food for a few?

A privilege cell let the three least rebellious prisoners wash, sleep in beds and eat special food in front of the rest. Guards then shuffled who was in it, so inmates began to suspect informers.

Besides burglary, which crime were volunteers charged with in the mock arrests for the Stanford prison experiment?

Armed robbery was the charge for the last four men picked up, burglary for the first five. None had been told the arrests were coming.

Which feature of the Stanford prison experiment did visiting colleague Gordon Bower ask Philip Zimbardo to name?

The independent variable, the thing an experimenter deliberately changes, was all Bower asked about. Zimbardo, by then thinking like a jailer, was furious, and only later saw how far into his role he had slipped.

Which outsider, invited to judge how real the Stanford prison experiment felt, urged the prisoners to get lawyers?

A Catholic priest who had been a prison chaplain interviewed each inmate, and half introduced themselves by ID rather than name. He later phoned parents to say their sons needed legal help.