Who was Philip Zimbardo? A look at the man behind the Stanford Prison Experiment as Netflix revisits his controversial study in a reality TV show

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo conducted his infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. The controversial study has been highlighted recently as Netflix is revisiting after 55 years as a reality TV show. The series the ‘New Stanford Prison Experiment’ is now available to stream on the platform.

Netflix has made several changes to the original study, which ended in only six days. The producers have talked about adding safeguards to the flawed experiment. These include making it more representative, with extensive background checks. The series also had medics and psychologists present on the set.

What was the original Stanford Prison Experiment?

The original Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted on 24 college students, who had been hand-picked by Zimbardo. These students had been picked from a total of 70 students who had responded to a newspaper advertisement for a psychological study for $15 each day.

The study took place in the basement of a Stanford University building in August 1971. The basement was turned into a mock prison to stimulate the environment, while the selected students were divided randomly into guards and prisoners. According to Britannica, the study was aimed at measuring the impact of role-playing, labeling and social expectations on human behavior. The experiment was supposed to last for two weeks.

The ‘prisoners’ who had been “arrested” from their dorm rooms and homes, were cuffed and taken to the mock prison. They were made to wear dresses and carrying around a chain padlocked to one of their ankles to simulate the environment and “atmosphere of oppression” of a real prison.

The ‘guards’ were refrained from indulging in physical abuse of the prisoners and given mirrored glasses to prevent eye contact with the ‘prisoners’. However the study was cut short after things spiralled out of control. The ‘guards’ began acting out, forming a system of rewards and punishments, while several of the ‘prisoners’ were depressed and had mental breakdowns.

According to Britannica, within only the first four days, three prisoners had to be released after they had been traumatized. The experiment was only stopped after an outside observer, psychologist Christina Maslach, objected to it to Zimbardo, who had been swept away in his role as the prison’s ‘superintendent’.

According to Zimbardo, the study showed how the ‘guards’ became tyrannical and sadistic due to the experiment’s ‘social forces’. However the conclusion has been called into question by several researchers who claim the students might have been coached by Zimbardo and his team to behave in such ways.

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Who was American psychologist Philip Zimbardo, the man behind the experiment?

Philip Zimbardo was an American psychologist and a professor at Stanford University. Zimbardo was born in New York City in 1933, as the eldest of four siblings. The family lived in poverty in the Bronx. He attended Brooklyn College and completed his graduate studies in psychology at Yale. He went on to pursue his master’s degree in experimental psychology in 1955 and a doctorate in social psychology in 1959, both at Yale. He later joined Stanford as faculty in 1968.

His research spanned over five decades with the Stanford Prison Experiment as one of its most controversial part. Zimbardo studied a range of psychological topics including, persuasion, cognitive dissonance, hypnosis, attitude and behaviour change, cults, alienation, time perspective and shyness. He also founded the ‘Heroic Imagination Project’, a non-profit organization aimed at promoting heroism in daily life. He was also behind the ‘Stanford Shyness Clinic’, one of the first programs offering a treatment for shyness.

Zimbardo has authored several psychology books, many of which are now used as introductory texts for students in the field. These include, ‘Shyness’, ‘The Lucifer Effect’ and ‘The Time Paradox’. He died in October 2024.

What is Netflix’s ‘New Stanford Prison Experiment’?

Netflix’s new reality TV series is a recreation of the original experiment. The series has selected 30 people to enter a real prison, with assigned roles as ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ for a period of two weeks, similar to what the original study intended.

The ‘prisoners’ had reportedly also been given a safe word, pineapple, to pull themselves out of situations, among additional safeguards. The reality TV series aims to test if people would conform to their assigned roles, however, mimics others based on similar concepts like ‘Big Brother’ and ‘Love Island’.