5 chilling details about The Stanford Prison experiment 

The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth, directed by Juliette Eisner, is a three-part docuseries that will air on National Geographic on November 13, 2024.

The infamous Standford Prison Experiment, which was carried out from August 15-21 1971, was a failed attempt to understand and examine the psychological effects of ‘powerlessness’ and ‘authority’ in a mock prison setup. This experiment will be the subject of The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth on Nat Geo.

Before we get into the details of the experiment, here is how Stanford Libraries, describes this experiment:

"Carried out August 15-21, 1971 in the basement of Jordan Hall, the Stanford Prison Experiment set out to examine the psychological effects of authority and powerlessness in a prison environment...Twenty-four students were carefully screened and randomly assigned into groups of prisoners and guards."

It continues:

"The experiment, which was scheduled to last 1-2 weeks, ultimately had to be terminated on only the 6th day as the experiment escalated out of hand when the prisoners were forced to endure cruel and dehumanizing abuse at the hands of their peers."

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5 key details about The Stanford Prison Experiment

1) One of the participants was stripped naked

Douglas Korpi, one of the participating members of the Stanford Prison Experiment, ( Prisoner #8612) was first stripped naked and then tied to another prisoner. He was also beaten by the guards, who were also a part of the experiment. Doug tried to leave the experiment by saying he had a stomach ache. However, he wasn’t allowed to quit at that time.

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2) Douglas Korpi also had a mental breakdown, which he later claimed to be fake

As revealed in the docuseries, on the third day of the experiment, a prisoner named Douglas Korpi had a mental breakdown and decided to quit the experiment.

While having the breakdown inside his cell, he said:

"Jesus Christ, I'm burning up inside" and "I can't stand another night! I just can't take it anymore!"

But in 2017, Korpi recanted his statements and said that the breakdown was fake and that he did it to get out of the mock prison.

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3) The experiment had to be terminated after day 6

The Standford Prison Experiment in 1971 had to be stopped after six days because the guards in the mock prison environment began to brutally abuse and treat the prisoners in an inhumane manner. The experiment led by Phillip Zimbardo (a psychology professor), was supposed to be two weeks long, according to the original plan.

However, after Christina Maslach (a psychologist) visited the mock prison for a psychological assessment of the inmates, she asked Zimbardo to put an end to this experiment as it was disturbing.

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4) The inmates were taken into custody by actual police

The participants of the Stanford Prison Experiment were recruited by printing advertisements in newspapers and were to be paid $15 daily. The 25 participants selected were all male, caucasian, and appeared to be mentally stable. After a psychological assessment of the volunteers was done, they were assigned randomly to be either guards or prisoners.

To commence the experiment, the prisoners were mock-arrested by the real police, without their prior knowledge, after which they were searched thoroughly, brought to the prison, and given their inmate identification numbers. The guards, on the other hand, were given uniforms and were told to make sure that the prisoners didn’t escape.

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5) Chaos ensued on day 2 itself in the Stanford Prison Experiment

Around 2:30 am on August 16, the second day of the experiment, the inmates reportedly took off their inmate tags, mistreated the guards, and refused to leave their cells to eat in the communal yard. This occurred when the guards arrived at night and used clanging batons and whistling to rouse the inmates.

The guards responded by spraying the prisoners with fire extinguishers, stripping them down, and taking away their mattresses.

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Watch The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth, to learn more about this experiment.