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The stanford prison experiment and its enduring lessons on authority.

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A new Nat Geo docuseries explores what really went on during the infamous Stanford Prison ... [+] Experiment.

In 1971, a groundbreaking experiment was conducted in the basement of Stanford University, aiming to unearth dark truths about power, authority, and the human psyche. This study, known as the Stanford Prison Experiment , has captivated and horrified the world for over five decades, becoming a staple in psychology courses and pop culture as a stark warning about how quickly people can become oppressive under the right conditions. But was the story as straightforward as it seemed?

I am familiar with the Stanford Prison Experiment—or at least, I am familiar with the common myths that are perpetuated about it. So, I was very interested when the Nat Geo team told me about this docuseries, and revealed that the actual participants are providing a behind-the-scenes perspective after all these years.

The new Nat Geo docuseries, “The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth,” revisits this infamous study with fresh eyes, revealing untold perspectives and challenging the entrenched narrative around it. Through candid interviews with former participants, we see a new angle on the experiment’s ethical ambiguities and its complex psychological impact.

I had an opportunity to speak with two of them, Dave Eshleman (a “guard”) and Clay Ramsay (a “prisoner”). Their reflections paint a picture of manipulation, blurred ethical lines, and a study that may have revealed less about human nature than about the dangers of constructed power dynamics.

Breaking Down the Myth

The Stanford Prison Experiment is often summarized as a stark demonstration of how easily ordinary people can commit extraordinary cruelties when given authority. Under Dr. Philip Zimbardo's guidance, 24 students were assigned roles as either guards or prisoners and were placed in a simulated prison environment that was ostensibly planned to run for two weeks. What followed were six days of escalating mistreatment by the guards, leading Zimbardo to end the experiment prematurely. Over the years, this has been taken as proof that anyone, under the right conditions, can become an oppressor.

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RECREATION - A Stanford Prison Experiment guard blows a whistle in prisoners faces. (National ... [+] Geographic/Katrina Marcinowski)

But as Eshleman and Ramsay reveal, the reality was more complicated. Eshleman recalls that he adopted his “mean guard” persona to meet Zimbardo’s expectations. "After the first day, I sensed that, unless things changed, the experiment would not succeed,” he shared, explaining that he felt compelled to push boundaries, partly influenced by his background in theater. According to Eshleman, his portrayal of a brutal guard wasn’t merely a descent into cruelty—it was a performance, shaped by the perceived demands of the experiment’s leaders. As he reflects, he sees himself as having been manipulated into fulfilling a role more than revealing a dark truth about himself.

Ramsay, who was assigned the role of a prisoner, was equally shocked by the conditions he encountered. When he first entered the “prison,” he anticipated a controlled academic study, not the intense psychological strain he endured. His decision to go on a hunger strike was born out of frustration with what he saw as the experiment’s exploitative nature. “I did that only because I was certain that I had to create some kind of fear of consequences in the experimenters,” he shared. Reflecting on the psychological toll, Ramsay now feels that much of the trauma came not from the experiment itself but from its ongoing notoriety and the way Zimbardo used their experiences to bolster his career and reputation in psychology.

RECREATION - Stanford Prison Experiment prisoners attempt an escape. (National Geographic/Katrina ... [+] Marcinowski)

Together, these perspectives dismantle the simplistic narrative of ordinary people revealing latent cruelty, instead suggesting a story of manipulation and carefully constructed roles. Eshleman and Ramsay’s accounts, as well as the insights from other participants throughout the docuseries, raise significant questions about whether the behaviors exhibited were the result of human nature or the design of the experiment itself.

Power, Authority, and the Manipulation of Human Behavior

The Stanford Prison Experiment was intentionally set up to enforce rigid power hierarchies. Participants like Eshleman and Ramsay weren’t left to discover their roles naturally; instead, they were explicitly guided into behaviors that fit Zimbardo’s vision for the study. From the beginning, Zimbardo’s role as both designer and “warden” gave him immense authority, a power that likely influenced how participants felt they should behave.

RECREATION - A Stanford Prison Experiment guard deploys a fire extinguisher. (National ... [+] Geographic/Katrina Marcinowski)

Eshleman, for instance, describes feeling as though he was part of the research team rather than just a subject, and he believed it was his responsibility to ensure the experiment’s success. He recalls adopting an aggressive stance because he felt it would help Zimbardo achieve his goals. Ramsay, too, describes feeling a disconnect between his initial expectations and the intensity of his experience as a prisoner. Both felt their actions were constrained by Zimbardo’s expectations, an ethical gray area that calls into question the validity of the experiment’s findings​.

The ethical implications of these power dynamics are significant. When researchers exert authority over participants, encouraging specific behaviors, it complicates the line between observation and manipulation. In SPE, this blurred line means that the guards’ behavior may have been less a revelation of human nature and more a performance based on external pressures and perceived expectations.

Challenging the Legacy—A Critical Look at Zimbardo’s Role

Zimbardo, who recently passed away at the age of 91, has long defended the Stanford Prison Experiment as a legitimate insight into the darker side of human nature, but as the years have passed, his narrative has shifted. In this series he appears to continue justifying the study’s design, defending the outcomes as reflective of genuine psychological responses to authority. However, both Eshleman and Ramsay challenge this view. Eshleman recalls being “duped” by the experiment’s setup, manipulated into a performance that ultimately served Zimbardo’s professional aspirations rather than science. Ramsay similarly feels that the experiment’s legacy has been shaped by selective retellings that favor Zimbardo’s version of events.

For Eshleman and Ramsay, Zimbardo’s ongoing fame and evolving narrative underscore a key problem in the scientific community: the risk of “bad science” perpetuated by personal ambition. Ramsay points out that the real value of the documentary is in exposing this flaw, allowing viewers to see how scientific mythologies are constructed and maintained. The SPE has inadvertently become a case study in the ethical responsibility researchers bear, especially when their work influences public perception and societal beliefs.

Enduring Lessons on Human Nature, Authority, and Compliance

The Stanford Prison Experiment, along with other controversial studies like the Milgram Experiment , has shaped our understanding of authority and obedience for generations. Yet, the revelations shared with me from Eshleman and Ramsay suggest that the lessons we draw from such studies need revisiting. Instead of accepting that ordinary people easily succumb to cruelty, these firsthand accounts remind us to consider how authority, expectation, and environmental factors shape our actions.

Eshleman’s struggle with personal responsibility, even as he admits to feeling manipulated, adds a complex dimension to the conversation on authority. His reflections echo a broader truth: while we may find ourselves acting out roles in response to authority, we are also responsible for understanding the impact of those roles on others. Ramsay’s reflections remind us that compliance can often be a survival mechanism rather than an indication of inherent cruelty.

Together, their experiences suggest that the SPE’s real lesson lies not in some dark truth about humanity’s core nature, but in how easily our behaviors can be shaped by the authority figures and structures around us.

Rethinking Psychological Research on Authority

The Stanford Prison Experiment has long stood as a cautionary tale about human nature, but perhaps the caution should be directed at how we conduct and interpret research. The reflections in this series shared by participants reveal an experiment not of human depravity but of a flawed methodology, guided by preconceived conclusions.

In an era where the ethics of psychological research are more scrutinized than ever, the story of the SPE offers crucial lessons. Studies that shape public perception must be held to high ethical standards, ensuring that they respect participants and present findings responsibly.

As readers, we are left to question how authority shapes behavior—not just in experiments, but in our own lives. In any hierarchical structure, understanding the impact of power and responsibility is essential. The Stanford Prison Experiment remains a powerful example, not of human cruelty, but of how narratives are constructed, and of the enduring influence of authority.

“The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth” is now streaming on Disney+.

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The $5 Challenge

What would you do with $5 and 2 hours.

Posted August 5, 2009 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

What would you do to earn money if all you had was five dollars and two hours? This is the assignment I gave students in one of my classes at Stanford University , as part of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program : Each of 14 teams received an envelope with five dollars of “seed funding” and was told they could spend as much time as they wanted planning. However, once they cracked open the envelope, they had two hours to generate as much money as possible. I gave them from Wednesday afternoon until Sunday evening to complete the assignment. Then, on Sunday evening, each team had to send me one slide describing what they had done, and on Monday afternoon each team had three minutes to present their project to the class. They were encouraged to be entrepreneurial by identifying opportunities, challenging assumptions, leveraging the limited resources they had, and by being creative.

What would you do if you were given this challenge? When I ask this question to most groups, someone usually shouts out, “Go to Las Vegas,” or “Buy a lottery ticket.” This gets a big laugh. These folks would take a significant risk in return for a small chance at earning a big reward. The next most common suggestion is to set up a car wash or lemonade stand, using the five dollars to purchase the starting materials. This is a fine option for those interested in earning a few extra dollars of spending money in two hours. But most of my students eventually found a way to move far beyond the standard responses. They took seriously the challenge to question traditional assumptions, exposing a wealth of possibilities in order to create as much value as possible.

How did they do this? Here’s a clue: The teams that made the most money didn’t use the five dollars at all. They realized that focusing on the money actually framed the problem way too tightly. They understood that five dollars is essentially nothing and decided to reinterpret the problem more broadly: What can we do to make money if we start with absolutely nothing? They ramped up their observation skills, tapped into their talents, and unlocked their creativity to identify problems in their midst—problems they experienced or noticed others experiencing—problems they might have seen before but had never thought to solve. These problems were nagging but not necessarily at the forefront of anyone’s mind. By unearthing these problems and then working to solve them, the winning teams brought in over $600, and the average return on the five-dollar investment was 4,000 percent. If you take into account that many of the teams didn’t use the funds at all, then their financial returns were infinite .

So what did they do? All of the teams were remarkably inventive. One identified a problem common in a lot of college towns—the frustratingly long lines at popular restaurants on Saturday night. The team decided to help those people who didn’t want to wait in line. They paired off and booked reservations at several restaurants. As the times for their reservations approached, they sold each reservation for up to $20 to customers happy to avoid a long wait. As the evening wore on, they made several interesting observations: First, they realized that female students were better at selling the reservations than the male students, probably because customers were more comfortable being approached by young women. They adjusted their plan so that the male students ran around town making reservations at different restaurants while the females sold those places in line. They also learned that the entire operation worked best at restaurants that use vibrating pagers to alert customers when their table is ready. Physically swapping pagers made customers feel as though they were receiving something tangible for their money. They were more comfortable handing over their money and pager in exchange for the new pager. This had an additional bonus: Teams could then sell the newly acquired pager as the later reservation time grew nearer

Another team took an even simpler approach: They set up a stand in front of the student union where they offered to measure bicycle tire pressure for free. If the tires needed filling, they added air for $1. At first, they thought they were taking advantage of their fellow students, who could easily have gone to a nearby gas station to have their tires filled. But after their first few customers, the students realized that the bicyclists were incredibly grateful . Even though the cyclists could get their tires filled for free nearby, and the task was easy for them to perform, they soon realized that they were providing a convenient and valuable service. In fact, halfway through the two-hour period, the team stopped asking for a specific payment and requested donations instead. Their income soared. They made much more when their customers were reciprocating for a free service than when asked to pay a fixed price. For this team, as well as for the team making restaurant reservations, experimenting along the way paid off. The iterative process, where small changes are made in response to customer feedback, allowed them to optimize their strategy on the fly.

Each of these projects brought in a few hundred dollars, and their fellow classmates were duly impressed. However, the team that generated the greatest profit looked at the resources at their disposal through completely different lenses, and made $650. These students determined that the most valuable asset they had was neither the five dollars nor the two hours. Instead, their insight was that their most precious resource was their three-minute presentation time on Monday. They decided to sell it to a company that wanted to recruit the students in the class. The team created a three-minute “commercial” for that company and showed it to the students during the time they would have presented what they had done the prior week. This was brilliant. They recognized that they had a fabulously valuable asset that others didn’t even notice just waiting to be mined.

This is a project that I ran at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford . It is described in the first few pages of What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Way in the World. This project grew in scope and is now known as the Global Innovation Tournament .

Facebook /LinkedIn image: LightField Studios/Shutterstock

Tina Seelig, Ph.D., is a professor at the Stanford School of Engineering. Her latest book is Insight Out .

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Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment 50 years later

Ars chats with director Juliette Eisner and original study participants in new documentary series.

In 1971, Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted a notorious experiment in which he randomly divided college students into two groups, guards and prisoners, and set them loose in a simulated prison environment for six days, documenting the guards' descent into brutality. His findings caused a media sensation and a lot of subsequent criticism about the ethics and methodology employed in the study. Zimbardo died last month at 91, but his controversial legacy continues to resonate some 50 years later with The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth , a new documentary from National Geographic.

Director Juliette Eisner started working on the documentary during the pandemic when, like most people, she had a lot of extra time on her hands. She started looking at old psychological studies exploring human nature and became fascinated by the Stanford Prison Experiment, especially in light of the summer protests in 2020 concerning police brutality. She soon realized that the prevailing narrative was Zimbardo's and that very few of the original subjects in the experiment had ever been interviewed about their experiences.

"I wanted to hear from those people," Eisner told Ars. "They were very hard to find. Most of them were still only known by alias or by prisoner number." Eisner persevered and tracked most of them down. "Every single time they picked up the phone, they were like, 'Oh, I'm so glad you called. Nobody has called me in 50 years. And by the way, everything you think you know about this study is wrong,' or 'The story is not what it seems.'"

Her original intention was to debunk the experiment, but over the course of making the documentary, her focus shifted to the power of storytelling. "Even when stories are riddled with lies or manipulations, they can still capture our imaginations in ways that we should maybe be wary of sometimes," Eisner said, particularly when those stories "come out of the mouth of somebody who is such a showman, such an entertainer."

The documentary's structure reflects Eisner's research journey. The first episode ("The Hallway") focuses on the standard account of the experiment that has dominated for the last 50 years. The second ("The Unraveling") focuses on subsequent criticisms and debunkings and the accounts of original participants, many of whom have rather different takes. The third episode ("A Beautiful Lie") brings the original participants to Los Angeles for a re-enactment with professional actors and includes an interview with Zimbardo himself.

"We grappled with the structure and how to let the story unfold and decided, let's tell the audience what they think they know, and then let's take it apart," said Eisner. "And then a surprise twist, let's give you a different look at it and let the man at the center of it all defend the experiment against these claims. It was really important to me to have all these perspectives be heard, and not just one person's story as it had been for the past 50 years. Everybody had a different take on this experiment, even though they all lived it together."

For the re-enactment, NatGeo commissioned a set based on the floor plans of the Stanford basement where the original experiment was conducted. "We really needed visuals to help bring a lot of these stories to life," said Eisner. "Despite the fact that Zimbardo says he filmed the whole thing, he really only filmed six hours over the course of six days. So we needed that visual toolbox, but then it also allowed us to play with these different perspectives."

A controversial experiment

Zimbardo's research involved de-individuation and dehumanization in the context of what drives people to engage in antisocial and/or brutal acts that they would normally find morally repugnant. He designed the Stanford Prison Experiment specifically to investigate the power of roles, rules, group identity, and "situational validation of behavior." He recruited the participants via help wanted ads in the local newspapers and selected 24 young men from the 75 who applied. All were screened for criminal backgrounds, psychological problems, and physical health.

The experiment was conducted in the basement of Jordan Hall. A small corridor served as the prison yard; a janitor's closet was used for solitary confinement ("the Hole"); there were several mock prison cells designed to hold three prisoners each with cots, mattresses, and sheets; and a bigger room housed the guards and the prison warden (Zimbardo's undergraduate research assistant David Jaffe). The guards worked eight-hour shifts and were allowed to leave the site; prisoners had to remain 24/7.

The experiment officially kicked off when the Palo Alto police conducted mock arrests of those participants designated as prisoners—something the latter was not told would happen and a breach of ethics. After being booked, fingerprinted, and sitting for mugshots, they were strip-searched and made to wear smocks with no underwear and stocking caps on their heads. Over the next six days, the guards psychologically tormented their charges with sleep disruption, spraying rebellious prisoners with a fire extinguisher, removing mattresses as punishment, forcing prisoners to drop for pushups, restricting bathroom access so that prisoners had to relieve themselves in a bucket in their cells, and so on—all accompanied by constant verbal abuse.

After 36 hours, it became too much for a prisoner named Doug Korpi ("Prisoner 8612"), who had been tossed into the Hole for insubordination. He underwent what seemed to be a mental breakdown, causing him to be released early from the experiment. On Day 5, friends and family were allowed to visit for 10 minutes; those visits were sufficiently upsetting that several parents intended to contact lawyers to get their children released from the experiment. Zimbardo's fellow psychologist and then-girlfriend, Christina Maslach, also visited the setup and was so appalled she sharply chided Zimbardo for his lack of oversight and called the experiment immoral. Zimbardo decided to end the experiment on Day 6.

One positive outcome was that the Stanford Prison Experiment led US universities to overhaul their ethical requirements for any experiments involving human subjects. But many researchers were troubled both by the methodology and the simplicity of Zimbardo's interpretations. French researcher Thibault Le Texier has been among the strongest critics, pointing out that many of Zimbardo's conclusions were written out in advance, and the experiment was carefully manipulated to produce the results Zimbardo wanted. Zimbardo dismissed Le Texier's work as an ad hominem attack that ignores any contradictory data, but the original participants interviewed for the NatGeo documentary largely confirmed many of Le Texier's claims.

Playing to the camera?

Former prisoner Clay Ramsay, for instance, replaced Korpi in the experiment and quickly became disillusioned with the situation. "It had no intellectual integrity at all," he told Ars, noting that this was particularly obvious during the staged parole board hearings the prisoners were forced to participate in. "They clearly didn't have any kind of common script," he said. "So I came up with the idea of a hunger strike, and then most of my behavior was doing nothing. It turned out to be more dramatic than it had to be."

He ended up tossed in "the Hole" for his insubordination, but rather than being traumatized, he took advantage of the isolation to grab some shut-eye to make up for all the sleep deprivation. "It's supposed to be this major penalty, then it's the only place where you can get a night's sleep in the whole joint," he said.

While Zimbardo has repeatedly insisted over five decades that he simply put college kids into a situation with little guidance and just let things evolve, that's not entirely true. The guards, most notably, participated in a lengthy training session that lasted several hours, in which they were given a daily schedule for the prisoners and tips for inflicting psychological pain, starting by referring to prisoners by number rather than name as a means of dehumanizing them.

Zimbardo also occasionally allowed members of his research team to go into the experimental environment; there is even audio of research assistant David Jaffe coaching a reluctant guard and urging him to be tougher in his treatment of the prisoners. This led many of the guards to assume they were not part of the actual experiment but were in league with the researchers.

"It was made very clear to us that we not part of the experiment," former guard Dave Eshleman told Ars. "We were there to help the researchers get the results from the prisoners that they wanted to see. So our job was to make them uncomfortable, give them a sense of fear, but not to use physical violence. We could do everything else within our power to create that fear, and I took that very seriously, because I was on board with what they were trying to do: expose the prison system as evil. Given the zeitgeist at the time, we were all on board with that. Those were the days when anybody with the establishment was automatically evil, and what more evil part of the establishment could there be but the prison system?"

There are also valid questions about whether or not the prisoners' behavior was truly authentic. Doug Korpi later claimed he faked his mental breakdown in the Hole, having become disillusioned with the study. He had thought it would give him some downtime to study for the Graduate Record Exam, but the guards wouldn't allow it. So he staged a breakdown to secure his release.

Korpi was not alone in this. Despite being the poster boy for the guards' collective brutality, "I was absolutely playing for the camera," said Eshleman. "I knew where the camera was, I knew that it was on most of the time, I could hear the researchers talking behind the wall. I was also an acting student and did a lot of improv exercises. So I treated this is an improv, and I created my character based on what my understanding was of what the researchers wanted from us." He based his character on Strother Martin, the fictional evil prison warden from Cool Hand Luke (1967); Eshleman even occasionally spoke actual lines from the film, and his antics earned him the moniker "John Wayne."

Ramsay's experience as a prisoner was a bit different. "I don't think any of the prisoners were conscious of the camera, honestly," he told Ars. "We were not entirely sure where it was, we thought we saw it sometimes. But we were not getting regular instructions, we were being fed badly, clothed badly, et cetera. In a situation like that, what the camera angle is, it's the least of your worries."

In retrospect, the Stanford Prison Experiment may have more in common with reality TV; the industry term has evolved into "unscripted" TV because of the countless ways the final product is manipulated and shaped over the course of filming. Zimbardo even admits as much in the documentary, calling his experiment "the first ever reality TV show."

Controlling the narrative

Zimbardo's version of events has long dominated the prevailing understanding of the Stanford Prison Experiment, even though some of the original participants have frequently tried to counter that narrative; their voices just never held as much sway. While Eshleman has participated in many media interviews over the ensuing decades, he said that much of his commentary was often edited out in favor of Zimbardo's preferred narrative.

For his part, Zimbardo has said repeatedly that Korpi, for instance, was lying about faking his breakdown, pointing to the fact that Korpi became a prison psychologist because of how deeply the experiment affected him. Zimbardo also denies in the NatGeo documentary that Eshleman was acting for the duration of the experiment; his interpretation is that this is how Eshleman rationalized his behavior and dealt with the guilt.

"I think I knew if I was acting or not," Eshleman countered. "How could he not even consider the possibility that not just I, but everybody in his little demonstration was acting, that we simply fell into roles that were expected of us, to be paid $15 a day? That's what galls me. He kind of decided to throw us [the guards] under the bus after directing us to do what he wanted. Maybe he never took an acting class. Those of those in the theater department are always acting in some way." In fact, the basic scenario of the Stanford Prison Experiment has found its way into many improv classes as an exercise prompt.

"I was very fortunate that Zimbardo never really got into characterizing me," said Ramsay. "But for Dave and two or three of the others, he did. He put labels on them, ascribed motivations, and went, 'I'm a professor of psychology at Stanford University. Are you going to listen to me or to them who are driven by unconscious needs?' A lifetime of that is really insulting."

Eisner admitted that her experiences making the documentary produced some complicated feelings about the Stanford Prison Experiment. "I think that it's absolutely clear there was no scientific methodology," she said. "The data was all over the place, if you can even call it data. I think it's wrong to frame it as such. But do I think the big picture questions it asks are not true, that power does not corrupt? No, I don't think so. I've spent far too many years working on documentaries about fraud and felonies not to know that power can corrupt. But I do think it's dangerous to call to a faulty experiment in order to try to prove those things."

"I really do think there was nothing genuinely malicious in what Zimbardo was doing," said Eisner. "I wish he had been more forthcoming about certain things that he definitely glossed over. But is the experiment important? Absolutely. I love that it has this life 50 years later where now we're looking at it and re-contextualizing it in a way that is totally different from back when he actually did the study."

Ramsay and Eshleman are less charitable in their assessments. "This was the chosen vessel of Zimbardo's ambition and his extraordinary PR skills," said Ramsay. "Because that was his real gift, much more than academic research. He could drive a story, and this was the one that made his career. It gave him fame and notoriety at the same time. It's a package that he drove over the needs, requirements, and values of everybody else involved throughout his life."

"He was not somebody we felt we could question at the time," said Eshleman. "It was only later that I looked back and said, 'It was good theater, but it was not good science.' There were no controls. The conclusions that supposedly came out of this, I thought were completely faulty. The whole concept that 'Oh, we just take these innocent young kids and put them in this evil environment and suddenly they do these evil things.' That's been the narrative for 50 years, and it's BS."

Perhaps the most valuable thing to come out of the documentary project was the re-enactment, which reunited the original participants for the first time in 50 years. They were able to rehash their experiences, mend some fences, and interact with the actors playing them. Eshleman even apologized to Ramsay during the reunion for his actions during the experiment. "I sincerely meant that," he said. "I would feel terrible if anybody actually suffered any damage as a result of this big play acting that we did. I wasn't aware of it at the time."

"All of us were manipulated to an extreme but in really different ways; that's why it was all so dramatic," said Ramsay. "So the things that we ascribed to each other in the experience, it's all entangled. You can't say that any one person did this. I do think that Zimbardo was wrong. There's always an underlying moral possibility that you could always choose to do something different the next day. You can act better tomorrow."

The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth is now streaming on Disney+.

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