All language subtitles for T S P E U t T S01E02 2160p WEB h265-EDITH_track3_[eng].1

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

[Producer] In the 50 years
since the experiment,

no one had done as extensive
research as you.

[Thibault Le Texier] Yes.

It started as a side project.

I used to do
found footage films.

♪ ♪

And I discovered
the Stanford Prison Experiment.

I've heard about it,
but never really digged into it.

I decided to fund
a trip to Stanford

to go through the archive,

because I wanted to be able
to film from the archive.

I thought it was fascinating
to investigate this.

The narrative is very striking.

It's really a story
about good and evil,

about these innocent
young students

behaving like tough guards

just because they were given
power in the situation.

It plays on the inner fears
of people

that there's a monster
inside of all of us.

Maybe all men are
potential rapists.

Maybe we are all
potential Nazis.

[Man] The monster
isn't out there.

It's in you.

[Le Texier]
The Stanford Prison Experiment

became rapidly famous.

[Jon Stewart] The famed...
[Amy Goodman] Stanford...

-Prison...
-Experiment.

[Joe Rogan] Are you aware of
the Stanford Prison Experiment?

[Melissa Harris-Perry]
Dr. Z, this is a high nerd
moment for me.

I know all of your work
very well.

[Philip Zimbardo] My legacy is
to make psychology appetizing

to the general public.

[Le Texier] You have a rock band

called the Stanford
Prison Experiment.

You have series
talking about it.

[Actor] In your cell!

[Le Texier] And you have
feature films,

a German one, an American one.

[Zimbardo] It's important
to get it right, but for me,

it's equally important
to make it interesting.

[Le Texier]
It was in many books,

books about group violence,
World War II, obesity.

It was told in colleges,
everywhere in the US.

[Student] I'm Dr. Zimbardo.

We're recreating
the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Let's go, prisoner.

[Student] I have six
participants involved

in something I call
the Stanford Prison Experiment.

[Eminem]
♪ Hi! My name is... ♪

[Man] Zimbardo.

[Le Texier] It has become
more of a pop culture item

than a scientific item.

[Zimbardo]
I want to reach the world.

[Host] His Holiness,
the Dalai Lama

and Professor Phil Zimbardo.

[applause]

[Le Texier] Zimbardo says that
the Stanford Prison Experiment

explains how millions of people
could agree with mass murdering.

[Zimbardo] In Rwanda,
people killed

800,000 of their neighbors.

That's the power
of the situation.

[Le Texier] He has
a very simple explanation

to this very complex
world event.

[Zimbardo] Maybe it was a bad
barrel that corrupted them.

[Le Texier] You really feel like
you understand human nature

after you've learned about
the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Zimbardo became worldwide famous
from this and other topics.

[Newscaster] Philip Zimbardo.

[Newscaster] Dr. Zimbardo.

-Philip Zimbardo.
-Phil Zimbardo.

-Phil Zimbardo.
-Dr. Zimbardo.

[multiple voices] Philip.
Philip. Philip. Philip.

Philip. Philip. Philip. Philip.
Philip. Zimbardo.

[Zimbardo] Yes. Philip Zimbardo.

[Le Texier] But after going
through the archive,

I started to realize that the
official narrative was a lie.

[Zimbardo]
I hope that the message gets
carried to the public.

[Newscaster] It just did.

[Dave Eshleman] Well, you know,
the popular narrative

for this thing,
as you probably know,

is that you take
these normal people

and you put them
in this evil environment

and suddenly they become evil.

But, you know, I just, I don't
think you can draw conclusions

from it because of the way
that it was done.

And the effect that he had in
tipping the scale, so to speak.

[Doug Korpi] Zimbardo had a
perspective he wanted to advance

when he did the experiment, that
the guards did do evil things

and the prisoners did
become more passive

than they might otherwise,
but it's not the whole story.

[John Mark] If you want
to have an experiment

where everyone's the same,
you should use fruit flies.

[Eshleman] We all behave
because we have reasons

to behave the way that we do.

It's very good theater,

but I don't think it qualifies
as good science.

♪ ♪

[Le Texier] At Stanford,
in the archive,

you have pretty much everything
that was recording

during the experiment.

You had the forms that
the prisoners and the guard

had to fill, reports that the
guards had to write every day.

A lot of press.

There was about
six hours of films

and 15 hours of audio material.

For the next two weeks, I sat
every morning at the library

and went through these boxes.

I also went through
all the articles and books

written by Zimbardo.

I discovered in the archive
elements that I found shocking.

[Producer]
Can you walk me through

what happened on day one?

[Le Texier] It depends
on what you call day one.

I found in the archive

that there was a whole
training day for the guards.

And Zimbardo talked about this
training day in his articles

and in his books,

but he's saying that
it's just to restrain them

from using violence,
for instance.

[Lester Holt] Were they given
guidelines at all?

[Zimbardo] They were given
very simple guidelines.

If the prisoners escape,
the study is over,

maintain law and order,
but no physical abuse.

Essentially they were given no
training in how to be a guard.

[Le Texier]
Actually, in the archives,

you can see that it was
a real training session.

[Zimbardo] We got these clubs.

They'll have no privacy.

We have total power
in the situation.

It's totally controlled by us.

[repeated]
Totally controlled by us.

[Le Texier] And the discovery
of Kent Cotter

was another red flag.

[Kent Cotter] I'm the guy
that you never heard about

that you should be
hearing about,

because I am the guy that quit.

[Producer] Why is it important
to know about you?

[Cotter] Well, not everybody
participated.

I would think there would be...

that should have come up
at some point.

♪ ♪

I was born in the Midwest

and came to California
as soon as I could,

because California
was the place to be.

Everybody's doing drugs
and smoking pot.

And so I came out
to move to Palo Alto.

I did odd jobs, handyman stuff.

And I was doing
experiments at Stanford.

In fact, I don't really
remember any of them.

I just remember
making the money,

and that was a good thing, other
than the, the prison experiment.

I signed up for this experiment
and walked into this room

and found out that I'd
been chosen as a guard.

They had all the guards
come to this meeting

to explain what they were
doing in the experiment.

[Cotter]
My feeling about Zimbardo

was distrust and suspicion.

There was something
about the way

that he conducted himself
in the meeting.

[Cotter] To me, it seemed
like the whole thing,

we were being pushed
in a direction.

That that's why we were there,
to do what they expected.

It sort of escalated, you know,

it was like guys are
really getting into it.

You could do this and, you know,
you can control them like that,

and it was hard for me
to listen to it,

but also I felt more and more
isolated from that group.

I just decided I wasn't
gonna participate in it.

So, I started thinking right
then, how do I bail out of this?

Right after the meeting,
I went into his office

and I told him I just couldn't
see myself doing this.

I had a real problem with
what the guards were saying.

His initial reaction to me was,
"Well, why don't you stay, then?

Why don't you stay
and redirect this?"

And I said, "I don't think
it can be redirected."

I felt like this was set up
for the guards to abuse.

So how could it go
any other way?

[Le Texier] Zimbardo wanted
people to believe

that the participants were
spontaneously responding

to the situation,
whereas the case of Kent Cotter

showed that even before
starting the experiment,

the participant could
really easily guess

what Zimbardo wanted to prove.

What's also a red flag is
that Zimbardo always pretended

that the guards made up
their own rules.

[Zimbardo] First thing the
guards said is, "We need rules."

And so they set about

to make up the systematic
number of rules.

[Interviewer]
The guards made the rules?

[Zimbardo] Oh, oh, absolutely.

[Interviewer] Not you?
[Zimbardo] Oh, no, not at all.

[Le Texier] But in the archives,
I discovered a lot of evidence

showing that the guards
were given the rules

that they were to enforce.

They knew what punishments
they could impose to prisoners.

And in their own reports, they
wrote at the end of each day,

schedule followed
pretty closely.

Punishment.

They were following a script.

They were not reacting
spontaneously to the situation.

[Zimbardo]
Oh, this is all spontaneous.

The only thing we told
the guards were,

"We want to maintain
a prison here for a week,

do whatever you have
to maintain law and order."

[Eshleman]
After all of these instructions,

I felt that we were all
on the same page

with what we wanted to see
come out of this,

and that was proof that prisons
are an evil environment.

Given the times and given
the fact we were students

and very anti-establishment,
we would have done anything

to prove that this prison system
was an evil institution.

We were happy to play that role.

[guitar playing]

[Man] Test one, two.

[Eshleman in British accent]
Uh, okay.

When you do your mic cable, if
you bring it down around here,

come around to the left.

Can you do that?

My stage name is Nigel.

This is Nigel and Clive
and the British Invasion.

♪ ♪

Come to my dressing room.

And here I must leave you.

♪ ♪

Really, really nice there.

The hair is growing out a bit,

covers the bald spot,
doesn't it?

Which ones do you prefer?
Do you like these here?

Or these?

These are a bit smaller,
aren't they?

♪ ♪

You're a star.

Go out and knock 'em dead.

Let's do some music.

A one, two, three.

♪ ♪

In high school,
I got very much into theater.

I was in every play,
every musical, the choir.

And then I decided
I wanted to be an actor.

My acting teacher always said,
"Do not break character,"

and that is the goal.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Are you wearing
your hearing aid?

The way that I was portrayed
in the experiment by Zimbardo

was that I step
into this evil environment

and suddenly I become
this evil character,

when in fact before I stepped
into the experiment,

I stay outside
and I get in character.

And when I'm ready, I enter,
and now I am my character.

[Zimbardo] You see how quickly
the good boys

become brutal guards.

[Eshleman] It's like
it never occurred to them,

like they've never been
to improv class.

[Prisoner] One, two, three...

[Eshleman] So, I decided
I would become Strother Martin

from Cool Hand Luke.

He said, "You know, man,
I can be a nice guy..."

[Strother Martin] Or I can be
one real mean son of a bitch.

[Eshleman] I would bang
my nightstick against my hand.

I would say,
"I'm gonna hit you so hard,

it's gonna kill
your whole family."

And I kept a straight face.

[Jerry Shue]
He was pretty convincing.

[chuckles]

[John Loftus] "What we have here
is a failure to communicate."

Prisoners thought
it was hilarious.

[Eshleman]
I never broke character.

That would have destroyed
the whole effect

that I was going for.

I like to stir it up.

You know, I was kind of a jerk
in that way, frankly.

[Zimbardo] He was creative
in his evil.

He would think of very
ingenious ways to degrade,

to demean the prisoners.

[Eshleman] A lot of
the behaviors that appeared

in the experiment,
maybe given a couple of months,

you would have seen
the same thing happen,

I just made them happen
in a couple of days.

I was very sympathetic to what
I thought their goals were,

and that was to prove that
prison was a lousy place.

Turn it around. Push-ups.

So, I may have made
an impact on, you know,

the understanding of
human nature with my acting job.

Thank you, 416.
[bang]

-Over there.
-Oh, that's perfect.

[Korpi] Not all the guards
became sadists; only some did.

Phil makes it into like
everybody became a sadist.

[Zimbardo] He became a sadist.

Guards behaved sadistically.

What it brang out was the worst.

Cruel, sadistic, dominating.

Going way beyond the rules
that they had set.

[Korpi] You had
different feelings

toward different guards.

Some of you were worse [bleep]
than the others.

You're all [bleep],
but you're a really bad [bleep],

you're a medium [bleep].

Some were really, really
deeply into their [bleep].

[Zimbardo] These good guards
were totally into the role

of being sadistic,
controlling, dominant.

[Korpi]
They're different people.

But Phil doesn't think
they're different.

♪ ♪

[Mark] Professor Zimbardo truly
believes that there is an evil

that lurks in every human.

He was using this experiment
to make his point.

He said it's part
of human nature.

It wasn't even true
of the nine guards.

I didn't like being
a guard at all.

I had a lot of compassion
for the prisoners.

[ding]

When I had been at Stanford
in France,

I was smoking pot every day.

We smoked openly on the campus.

My first quarter, I took
Buddhism, Confucianism,

and Daoism, Jewish mysticism,
and Chinese art,

but I also just absorbed
what I could absorb.

I'd had very close encounters
with getting arrested for hash,

so when I saw
this prison experiment,

it just really felt like
it'd be a way

to have a cathartic experience
of what it would have been like

had I been incarcerated.

When I was a guard,
I thought pretty much every day

about giving some joints
to the prisoners.

I wanted to be one of them.

[Guard] Three.
[Prisoners] Three.

[Guard] Four.
[Prisoners] Four.

[Guard] Too slow!

[Guard] Five.
[Prisoners] Five.

[Mark] One day, the warden,

who was a graduate student
of Professor Zimbardo,

took me aside and he said
that they had noticed

that I wasn't acting tough.

[Mark] They thought I was
kind of laying back

and kind of letting others
take the lead,

and I was pretty neutral.

All of which was true.

[Mark] He kind of gave me
a pep talk about how I needed

to help out my fellow guards and
how to help out the experiment.

[Mark] They did try and
interfere with the way

the experiment was going

and they tried to mold it
to their expectations.

[Mark] They could say
whatever they wanted to say,

but I wasn't gonna
change anything.

[Le Texier]
Real scientific experiment,

you would not intervene to
produce the results you want.

And you can see
the experimenters

really putting their hands
into the material

that they're supposed
just to watch.

This is bad
scientific methodology.

Unfortunately,
when you produce science

just in order to make
something striking,

that's when you're
on a slippery slope.

With his team, Zimbardo was
not behaving as a scientist.

He was behaving as someone

who really wanted
to shock the world.

What's more is that the ethical
dimension of the experiment

wasn't questioned at all.

You have the feeling that
the prisoners could get out

at any moment and,
which was not true.

Actually, the participants, they
had signed a document saying

that they could only get out

with the authorization
of Zimbardo.

One prisoner, Doug Korpi, is
trying to rebel and get out,

and Zimbardo tells him
he cannot leave.

[Korpi] Zimbardo told me
that I couldn't

get out of the experiment
with a tummy ache.

All I'm thinking is,
"[bleep], this is for real.

These people don't
want to let me out."

And I'm pissed off.

[Korpi] They threw me
in the hole.

[door slams]

I was in this closet...

[Guard] Don't let him in.

[Korpi] ...on my side,
lying down

in the dark.

And I remember being really
like, "Oh, [bleep].

I can't get out
of this experiment."

Somebody had control
over my life.

I'm in this emotional state.

[bleep]

And then I got desperate.

I had to be creative.

And that's when I decided
I had to act like I was crazy.

I thought, well, there's
three things you need to do.

You need to be agitated
in your body,

you needed to be screaming, and
you needed to generate tears.

I want out! I want out!
I want out!

All I was thinking was,
keep this up, keep this up.

Try not to give in
too quickly to saying,

"Oh, I'm faking it to get out."

You don't just sit and be upset.

You, you have to act upset.

I was acting agitated.

And it's a lot of work.

Somehow traumatizing
to, to rev yourself up

into that mental state.

It was yucky.

[Zimbardo] In 36 hours,
the first prisoner

had an emotional breakdown.

[Eshleman] If you listen to the
tape of the mental breakdown...

[Eshleman] It does sound a
little suspect, I'll be honest.

[Prisoner Actor] I'm burning up
inside, don't you know that?

This door isn't locked.

[laughter]

So, if I touch this,
it doesn't lock?

[Guard Actor] No, I don't think
it, I don't think it does. No.

[Prisoner Actor]
So, I should hit this one?

[Producer] Starting on, he says,

"At some point,
I was lying down."

Just at some point,
you're lying down.

[Prisoner Actor] You want me
to just start lying down?

[Producer] Yeah.

[Guard Actor] In the action,
you just woke up, but--

[Prisoner Actor]
Okay. Sounds great. Yeah.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

[Le Texier] Zimbardo explained
that he had a lot of material,

but actually,
he recorded only six hours

of over 150 hours of experiment.

He recorded mostly
the spectacular,

the most violent parts
of the experiments.

This is also the way Zimbardo
wanted it to happen.

[Guard Actor] Come on out.

[Stephen Scott-Bottoms]
One of the things that most

interested me
about this experiment

is that what you have is people
who are being asked to play

the roles of guards
and prisoners

in a simulated setting.

[Producer] This is cell two
and this is cell three.

This is the cell room...

[Scott-Bottoms] And this
basically, immediately

is comparable to any number
of improvisation exercises

that happen in acting workshops.

[Producer]
And see what we want to happen.

[Scott-Bottoms]
Which is a bit like saying

is there a difference between
experiment and experience,

which are almost the same word.

[Guard Actor]
Guess we'll never know!

[Scott-Bottoms] In French, they
are the same word, expérience.

And what really interests me

about these
behavioral experiments

is that the way they get
written about by the scientists

is always from this completely
objective, distant perspective.

The subject behaved
in this manner,

as if they're rats in a maze.

Nobody's actually asking
the rats what they think

is happening, because that's
not how scientists do it.

♪ ♪

[Korpi] This is all B-roll.

[Producer] How do you think
the experiment has affected Doug

over the years?

[Theresa Hanna] He gets some
gratification out of being able

to tell his side of the story,
because his side of the story

is quite different from
Zimbardo's side of the story.

And if Zimbardo had his way,

no one would say anything
but what Zimbardo proposes.

It gives you some power

over what was a terribly
disempowered situation.

The fact that one of the
prisoners had a mental breakdown

because of the "treatment"
of the guards,

it gave the whole experiment
a huge pop, you know?

It's like, "Oh, look,
even after five hours

of very mild oppression,

we can cause mental breakdowns
in people."

Well...

[Korpi] Why didn't he understand

I was just trying to get
out of a bad job?

[Hanna]
Because he didn't want to.

That didn't fit his narrative.

His girlfriend at the time said,
"This is out of control."

And he goes,
"Oh. Oh. Yeah, okay.

You mean I can't have them
kill each other?"

No, you can't.

So that's when he finally--

But I think up till that moment,
he was, he was in heaven.

[Korpi] Yeah. He really was.

[Producer] What is
your understanding

as to why the experiment
ended early?

[Eshleman] What I'd been told
was that Christina Maslach,

after witnessing my supposed
magical transformation

from normal kid
to sadistic bastard,

that she went to Philip
and demanded

that he stop torturing
these boys

and call an end
to the experiment.

[Shue] Probably there was
good reason to shut it down,

not to mention that his
girlfriend chastised him

for doing this.

That made a good headline.

[Christina Maslach] I just began
to feel sick to my stomach.

I had this just chilling,
sickening feeling

of watching this,
and I just turned away.

[Guard Actor]
Down, up, down, up.

[Zimbardo] She came down,
saw that madhouse and said,

"You know what? It's terrible
what you're doing to those boys,

and you are responsible."

And I ended the study
the next day.

The good news is
I married her the next year.

[laughter]

[Shue] The woman with fresh eyes

saw the inhumanity
and woke him up.

[chuckles] God.

Wonder if he scripted that, too.

[Le Texier] It wasn't until
15 years after the experiment

that Zimbardo created
this narrative,

saying that Christina made
the experiment stop.

He wanted drama
and a Hollywood ending.

[Clay Ramsay] At first,
Zimbardo had implied

that this had gone overboard,
so we reined it in.

It was clear that this was not
a structure built to last.

It was built to stay hanging
there for long enough

to get certain kinds
of images of behavior.

That was its purpose.

He now had a lot of material,
a lot of video, a lot of audio,

and he might just have gone,
"This is good."

[tape rewinding]

[beep]

[Scott-Bottoms] The very first
version of the story

that he tried to tell
was the version that says,

"Prisoners are badly affected
by prison conditions.

Look what happened to our
prisoners inside a week."

And there's a truth to that,
but it didn't sell,

because a lot of people
turned around and said,

"Why did you do that
to those kids?"

And so, almost immediately
you get the Attica Uprising,

the bloodiest prison riot
in American history,

which happened the month
after the Stanford Experiment.

[Newscaster] Nine hostages
and 28 convicts were killed,

perhaps 100 convicts injured,

as the authorities moved in
with force to bring an end

to a revolt which started
last Thursday.

[Scott-Bottoms] I don't think we
would be talking about this now

if not for Attica,
which made the prisons

this enormous thing
in the popular culture.

[crowd chanting]

We want to know why the guards
and the state troopers

have gone in there
with shotguns and tear gas

and killed that many prisoners.

What could be going on there?

[Protester] What about
the thousands of prisoners

who die all over the country?

[Scott-Bottoms]
Zimbardo realized that

it's a much better way
to spin the story

if you look at
what the guards did,

so let's tell the story
that way.

[Zimbardo]
Guards have total power.

Getting away with murder.
Evil of prison.

Prison. Prison. Prisons.

[Scott-Bottoms] This is what
Zimbardo is brilliant at

is finding an angle in order
to get people to talk about

the thing underneath it
that matters.

[applause]

[Zimbardo] We wanted to ask
the question what happens

if you take people,
all of whom are good,

and put them in a bad place?

Does the goodness of people
dominate the bad place,

or does the bad situation come
to corrupt the good people?

And the sad answer
was the latter.

[Karl Van Orsdol] I did not
believe that we were part

of the experimental subjects.

I believed we were helping
implement the experiment.

[Chuck Burton] You know,
they never said anything about

that they're studying us, too.

That doesn't excuse
lots of my behavior,

but it's a backdrop
for some of my behavior.

[Eshleman]
If it was made clear to us

that we're there to be studied,
not to help study prisoners,

we would have acted
completely differently.

[Le Texier] In the archive,

several guards say they've been
shocked to discover

that they were a subject
in the experiment.

Zimbardo, he pretended
that they were not observed.

[Guard] It's been a pleasure.

[Le Texier]
And the guards, they thought

they were a part
of the experimenters,

they were not part of
the subjects, which is a lie.

They thought they were
like theater actors,

and the experiment was not
about their behavior,

it was about
the prisoners' reactions.

But they were part
of the experiment, too.

He had this agenda, let's make
something very striking,

very graphic, very extreme.

Let's go to the media
with this argument.

The Stanford Prison Experiment
was like a media event.

It was not planned really
as a scientific experiment.

It was more like
producing material

that could be used
by the journalist.

The media was
a central character

in the aftermath
of the Stanford Experiment.

Right after the end
of the experiment

Zimbardo was invited on KRON-TV,

which was a local station
in San Francisco.

And there he met a TV producer,
Larry Goldstein.

He had the idea of doing a piece
on the experiment.

Zimbardo is telling him that
there have been ups and downs,

but what Larry Goldstein
would like to show

is the situation building up,

the violence
growing and growing,

and in so he's pushing Zimbardo
to change his narrative

and to have a narrative
which is more linear.

[Zimbardo] On day two,
the prisoners rebelled.

[Zimbardo] By day three,
the guards were exerting control

over every aspect
of the prisoner's life.

[Zimbardo]
Only four days had passed,

and the guards' sense of moral
value had been totally altered.

Things had gotten so bad

that we no longer had
a group of prisoners.

What we had were individuals
struggling for survival.

[Le Texier]
He's streamlining the story.

And that's how, in November,

they screened the piece on
the Stanford Prison Experiment.

It gave a national publicity
to the experiment.

[Ramsay] Some of this video
is just really compelling.

It has the feel of pornography
without really going there,

and it has a moral justification

for why you're watching
this thing.

And that kind of combination

becomes one of the ancestors
of reality TV.

[Korpi] This was unscripted,
free flowing.

It was creative.

It was a great idea.

And he knew it would get press.

[Eshleman]
This particular experiment

really made a name for him,

and I think that
he basks in the limelight.

[applause]

He really built
his career on this.

[Korpi] Zimbardo,
for years and years,

told this story to the media.

[John Davidson] Please welcome
Dr. Philip Zimbardo.

[applause]

[Zimbardo] The guards then began
to escalate their use of power.

Brutal, sadistic. Some of them
creatively sadistic.

They were often here
with no clothes on.

You can't see someone's eyes.

This prison is about to erupt.

[Korpi] He's a genius
at figuring out

what will attract
media attention.

[Zimbardo]
In this demonstration,

we want to see whether ordinary
people blindly obey someone

who seems like an authority

when he asks them to do
something potentially dangerous.

[taser clicking, yelling]

What just happened?

[Announcer] What makes
good people do bad things?

[applause]

[Dr. Phil]
You've been at this a while.

[Zimbardo] I've been creating
evil for a long time.

[Holt] Welcome back, everyone.
Right now at MSNBC,

charges of abuse
of Iraqi prisoners.

[Newscaster] These powerful
images lie at the heart

of the prisoner abuse scandal.

Naked Iraqis forced to create
a human pyramid

while US soldiers
look on grinning.

[Goodman] The pictures
were leaked to the press

and first revealed to the world
in May of 2004.

[Holt] Many of us are just
trying to figure out

what happened to make
apparently normal soldiers

to do the things
depicted in the pictures.

[Anderson Cooper] You might
wonder what kind of person

could participate
in those situations.

[Ramsay] When the news came out
about the Abu Ghraib prison,

Zimbardo implied that Abu Ghraib

was the replication
of his experiment.

[Zimbardo] I had seen
those images 35 years ago.

My good guards did that
in our mock prison

the same way these
Army reservists did it

in Tier 1A Abu Ghraib.

[Shue] That might be
a little bit of a stretch.

[Loftus] If we were killing
other students,

that might be a valid judgment.

[Stephen Reicher] Zimbardo acted
as witness for the defense.

[Goodman] You testified
in the court martial

in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

[Zimbardo] Yes, I did.
I was part of the defense team.

Coming to the defense
of Chip Frederick,

what that gave me
the opportunity to say,

"Were these bad apples

or were these good American
soldiers put in a bad barrel?"

Before Chip Frederick went down
in that dungeon in Abu Ghraib,

he was as normal, healthy
as the good guards in my study.

And within several weeks,
he was as bad as the worst ones.

[Korpi] At Abu Ghraib,
politically he's saying,

"Look, it's not the individual,
it's the [bleep] institution."

[Eshleman] Does it excuse any
bad behavior you may have done?

You know, beyond my control,

you know, I was,
I was following orders.

[Reicher]
Now, we have this narrative,

the scenes of sort
of homoerotic humiliation

that went on in the SPE are
so much like those pictures

that we saw of the prisoners
in Abu Ghraib.

[Le Texier] Zimbardo started
talking about sexual abuse

in the Stanford
Prison Experiment

right after
the Abu Ghraib scandal.

[Zimbardo] Our guards were
forcing the prisoners to engage

in simulated sodomy,
exactly as in, in this prison.

[Le Texier] He's pretending
that guards made some prisoners

play sexual games in the
Stanford Prison Experiment.

[Le Texier] Zimbardo
exaggerated these games,

because it was very useful

to match the Stanford
Prison Experiment

with the Abu Ghraib scandal.

But we know that's
not what happened.

[Ramsay] Abu Ghraib revived
interest in the experiment,

and Zimbardo saw the opportunity
for a book.

[Newscaster] Stanford University
psychologist Philip Zimbardo.

[Goodman] It's called
The Lucifer Effect.

[Stephen Colbert] The book is
The Lucifer Effect.

[Stewart] Now, when you say
the slow descent of man

from good to evil,
it took a week, did it not?

[Zimbardo]
No. It actually took 36 hours.

[laughter]

[Ramsay] Without Dr. Zimbardo
continually pressing his case,

the Stanford Prison Experiment
would have lapsed into the haze

where most previous social
psychology experiments exist.

It takes continuous pumping
to keep the bicycle going.

[applause]

[Le Texier] When I started doing
research on the experiment,

I never thought
about debunking it.

Zimbardo was a reputed
Stanford professor who did it,

and nobody debunked
the experiment in 50 years,

so I thought, "Okay, it's not
me, this French guy from nowhere

who is going to debunk this."

When I went through the archive,

I had no idea that
the official narrative

was not what really happened.

But when you do science, you
have a commitment to the truth,

and you cannot let something
false circulate like this.

Maybe I'm a bit old-fashioned,

but for me, it's a duty
to make things right.

I decided to write a book

and to get in touch
with the participants.

[Eshleman]
I got a call from Thibault.

[Shue] Thibault.

[Korpi] Thibault.

[Mark] Thibault.

[Korpi] Oh. Thibault.

Thibault, Thibault,
Thibault, Thibault.

[Producer] Thibault.
[Korpi] Thibault.

[Mark] He's very bold.

He wrote a book that was
very damning in picking apart

the experiment
and the methodology.

And I think as a result
of his book,

other researchers are looking
at the experiment

with a more skeptical eye.

[Producer] I noticed, John,
that sometimes

you, you close your eyes
when you speak.

Is that something
that you do often?

[Mark] If it's normal
conversation, no.

If it's thoughtful, yeah.

[Reicher]
I'm a social psychologist

at the University
of St. Andrews,

and I have been studying
human social behavior,

in particular group
and collective processes,

for more years than I would
like to remember.

Around 1999, the BBC came to us
and it said,

"We now have the technology,
which we didn't have before,

to observe behavior
systematically

and want to use that to revisit
the Stanford Prison Study."

So, we took the same
basic setup.

[Man] 15 men randomly divided
into two groups.

One group of men given power
over the other.

[Reicher]
We thought that the guards

would impose their authority.

And we were rather surprised to
find that didn't happen at all.

They hated being guards.

[Guard] I don't want to be
a guard, to be honest, really.

I'd rather be a prisoner,
really, in all honesty.

[Reicher] We began to realize
that actually leadership

was absolutely critical,

because the more you look
at Zimbardo's study,

you realize that the guards

didn't just become guards
willy-nilly.

He acted as leader
to tell them what to do.

But without leadership,

you don't get the types
of toxic behavior

we saw in Zimbardo's SPE,
and we don't see in our study.

♪ And how'd we let ourselves
get duped like this? ♪

♪ No, no ♪

♪ No, no ♪

♪ Childish leaders
who cannot lead ♪

♪ Wealthy plutocrats
consumed by greed ♪

♪ Hate groups growing ♪

When I went to college,

I wanted to stay in
the arts and theater,

and I ended up in a place down
in Southern California

called Chapman University, had
a very good music department.

♪ President ♪

I love my music,
and I create things.

I write plays, I direct them.

I'm a very nonviolent guy.

I can't even be mean to my cats.

And I think that comes from,
a lot from my father,

who grew up almost Amish.

He's extremely gentle

and would never even show anger,

unless we really
pushed him to the brink.

And I think that's
who I've become

is kind of more like my father.

I'm mellow.

People really need
to learn the difference

between a role somebody's
playing and who they are.

Because of the experiment, I
still get hate mail from people.

People that say,
"You sick [bleep].

You sadistic bastard.
I hope you rot in hell."

And you know,
somebody going as far

as to go on to like my business
page and talk about how,

you know, they went to get
a loan from me in my business,

and I ended up, you know,
torturing them

or something like that.

You know what I mean? Come on.
This is my business.

[Reporter] Dave, you've probably
had one of the most

notorious reputations.

They called you John Wayne

because they said you were
brutal and you were sadistic.

[Eshleman] Mm-hmm.

It's been fascinating to see
how the interest

never seems to go away.

I mean, here we are,
it's been 50 years,

and, you know, I'm still talking
about it.

I get asked to come and give
a lot of talks,

do a lot of interviews.

What most people are surprised
at is the level of humiliation

that we tried to put
the prisoners through.

I started inventing
my own daily humiliations.

When you give somebody
the absolute power

to control what
other people are doing,

then they're gonna
use that power.

I go talk to
high school classes.

The teacher will announce,
"Oh, you know,

we've been talking about
the prison experiment,

and I have one of the guards,

you know, coming in
to talk to us.

The guy that they would call
John Wayne."

And the students goes,
"He's coming here?

Oh, my god. What do we do?"

You know, it's like,
"Is he gonna torture us?"

So, I think they're always
surprised to find

that, you know,
I'm a pretty easygoing guy.

It bothers me that they don't
take the time to look beyond,

you know, the very surface.

And that's one of the problems,
of course,

I think with the way the
experiment has been perceived

and has been disseminated
in popular culture by Zimbardo.

[Phil Donahue]
Dr. Philip Zimbardo

is professor of psychology
at Stanford University,

and several years ago engaged
in a fascinating experiment

wherein he chose
middle-class students,

put them all in a group.
How many?

[Zimbardo] Well, there were
a dozen guards and 10 prisoners.

[Donahue] Okay.

[Korpi] 50 years later, the
experiment should be irrelevant,

but I'm still pissed at Phil.

[Zimbardo] What happened
that's not in the film

is that within 36 hours,
the first prisoner had

what could be called
an emotional breakdown.

[Korpi] It wasn't the experiment
that pissed me off.

It was a stupid experiment.

There was a bunch of
obvious manipulation of us.

But then he kept calling
after that

to get me on all these TV shows.

They don't take your bed
and your clothes in prison!

It was so many things.

[Donahue] You were a prisoner?

Okay.

That was you just yelling?

[Korpi] I mean, year after year,
he's retraumatizing you.

I didn't like that I had to work
so hard to get him to back off.

[Woman] I was wondering how
the prisoners' attitudes

towards each other changed
during this experiment.

[Korpi] I was only
in the experiment

a day and a half or two days.

I got out quick.

I don't want to talk
to that guy.

I don't want to deal with him,
and I had to.

He would come at me
this way and that way.

And he was articulate
and he's well-published

and he's gonna give me work.

[Zimbardo] I think that we are
vulnerable to the conman.

We are vulnerable to influence.

[Korpi] The control of
the narrative has been Phil's.

He can't help that.

He's just a narcissistic
[bleep].

That's Phil.

[Mark] Professor Zimbardo
was kind of a clown.

[Reicher] I think the
traditional narrative of the SPE

needs to be challenged.

[Korpi] Anybody that tried
to reduce human behavior

to such simple notions is fraud.

[Reicher] Fraud.
[Eshleman] Fraud.

[Shue] Fraud.

[Loftus] Kind of fraudulent.

[Scott-Bottoms]
And that's what Zimbardo did.

[Zimbardo] So, I'm looking
at the camera?

In the last year,
the Stanford Prison study

has received lots of criticism.

"The Stanford Prison Experiment
is a lie."

"Zimbardo is a fraud."

And none of their
criticisms hold up.

Zero.

-♪ See no evil ♪
-♪ See no evil ♪

-♪ Hear no evil ♪
-♪ Hear no evil ♪

-♪ Speak no evil ♪
-♪ Speak no evil ♪

[Burton] I am Chuck.

[Korpi] I'm Doug.
[Burton] Doug.

[Eshleman] Gentlemen,
good morning.

[Shue] Morning.
[Eshleman] I'm Dave.

[Burton] There's the man.

[Eshleman] Do you?
[Korpi] And you are?

[Shue] I'm Jerry Shue. 5486.

[Burton] Okay.
[Ramsay] Hi, Dave.

[Eshleman] Dave.
How are you, Clay?

[Ramsay] Hi. I'm Clay.

[Van Orsdol] Clay. Karl.

♪ Not today ♪

[Korpi] Isn't this incredible?