[6][7] In particular, Thibault Le Texier has established that the guards were asked directly to behave in certain ways in order to confirm Zimbardo's conclusions, which were largely written in advance of the experiment.

"I had been conducting research for some years on deindividuation, vandalism and dehumanization that illustrated the ease with which ordinary people could be led to engage in anti-social acts by putting them in situations where they felt anonymous, or they could perceive of others in ways that made them less than human, as enemies or objects," Zimbardo told the Toronto symposium in the summer of 1996.

For further information and applications, come to Room 248, Jordan Hall, Stanford U.75 men applied, and, after screening assessments and interviews, 24 were selected to participate in a two-week prison simulation.

[19] Digitized recordings available on the official SPE website were widely discussed in 2017, particularly one where warden David Jaffe tried to influence the behavior of one of the guards by encouraging him to participate more and be more "tough" for the benefit of the experiment.

[17]The study was criticized in 2012 for demand characteristics by psychologist Peter Gray, who argued that participants in psychological experiments are more likely to do what they believe the researchers want them to do, and specifically in the case of the SPE, "to act out their stereotyped views of what prisoners and guards do.

[25] In 2018 Thibault Le Texier, a French researcher, in his book, Histoire d'un Mensonge (The History of a Lie), questions the scientific validity and merit of the SPE.

In particular, he has established that the guards were asked directly to behave in certain ways in order to confirm Zimbardo's conclusions, which were largely written in advance of the experiment.

[31] The BBC prison study has indicated the importance of direction, of the form displayed by Zimbardo when briefing guards in the Stanford experiment, in the emergence of tyranny.

[32][33] In 2005, an article was published by Carlo Prescott in The Stanford Daily, explaining that the antagonistic tactics used by the guards were ones that he experienced during his time spent in San Quentin.

[34] Zimbardo has stated that he believed that the article was not written by Prescott, but rather by the screenwriter and producer, Michael Lazarou, who had attempted unsuccessfully to get the movie rights to the story of the SPE.

Prisoners refused to leave their cells to eat in the yard, ripped off their inmate number tags, took off their stocking caps and insulted the guards.

The day was scheduled for visitations by friends and family of the inmates in order to simulate the prison experience.Zimbardo and the guards made visitors wait for long periods of time to see their loved ones.

[19]: 13–16 Due to Maslach's objections, the parents' concerns, and the increasing brutality exhibited by guards in the experiment, Zimbardo ended the study on day 6.

Later, the physical components of the Stanford County Jail were taken down and out of the basement of Jordan Hall as the cells returned to their usual function as graduate student offices.

Using this situational attribution, the results are compatible with those of the Milgram experiment, where participants complied with orders to administer seemingly dangerous and potentially lethal electric shocks to a shill.

[35] Critics have disputed the validity and merit of the research findings, arguing that the experiment was affected significantly by demand characteristics and selection bias.

[18][25] Psychologists Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher conducted the BBC Prison Study in 2002 to examine Zimbardo's themes of tyranny and resistance, and they published the results in 2006.

Unlike the SPE's invitation to participate, Haslam and Reicher advertised their study as a university-backed social science experiment to be shown by television.

[32][33] Zimbardo initially regarded Haslam and Reicher's study as a reality show as both prisoner and guard knew they were being televised and probably over-acted in their role for the purpose of entertaining watchers of the documentary.

They urged people to continue research into toxic behaviors, arguing that their studies were unique and need replications to demonstrate reliability and significance.

[44] Eventually, Zimbardo became involved with the defense team of lawyers representing one of the Abu Ghraib prison guards, Staff Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick.

[45] Zimbardo drew from his participation in the Frederick case to write the book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, which deals with the similarities between his own Stanford prison experiment and the Abu Ghraib abuses.

Italian moviemaker Carlo Tuzii was the first director to film a story based on the experiment when, in 1977, he directed the television movie La gabbia ('The cage'), for Rai 1.

Tuzii's original story called for a group of twenty young people from various social backgrounds, who were divided randomly into "guards" and "prisoners" and instructed to spend one month on opposite sides of an enormously high gate, with barbed wire on top, built in the middle of a large park.

Before principal photography started, however, some concerns from RAI executives forced Tuzii and the screenwriters to alter the script into a very similar story to the actual Stanford experiment, including the outcome.

Miguel Bosé featured as prisoner Carlo; progressive pop music band Pooh scored the movie and had a hit in Italy with a 7-inch edit of the theme tune.

It was remade in 2010 in English as The Experiment[46][47] and was directed by Paul T. Scheuring and starred Adrien Brody, Forest Whitaker, Cam Gigandet, Clifton Collins, Jr., and Maggie Grace.

[49] In Season 3, Episode 2 of the television series Veronica Mars, entitled "My Big Fat Greek Rush Week", a similar experiment is featured.

[clarification needed] By that time, numerous details were forgotten; nonetheless, Zimbardo has concluded from his follow-up research that participants experienced no lasting negative effects.

[59] In 1967, The Third Wave experiment involved the use of authoritarian dynamics similar to Nazi Party methods of mass control in a classroom setting by high school teacher Ron Jones in Palo Alto, California with the goal of demonstrating vividly to the class how the German public in World War II could have acted in the way it did.