The Stanford Prison Experiment 

My favorite dude was the one going “There’s no difference if you close your eyes or open them.” 👁👄👁. ➖👄➖

*_I am still not paying for RU-vid Red._*

I want to see the flipside of michael's experiment where they choose only people who are pre-disposed and see what happens before and after demand characteristics are introduced. I'd also love to see the most neutral individuals with no predisposition to either violence or kindness.

that guy who was noted as the most neferious guard is such an evil guy

Vsauce was given enough budget to produce high-quality psychological studies in exchange for RU-vid premium and he just decided to make it free for all of us to watch. What a legend

"Dr Zimbardo" sounds like some sketchy character from classical scooby doo and i love it

A weakness of this experiment is its lack of validity. While they reduced demand characteristics, normative social influence and conformity still played a part. Once one person pressed their button, the others may have felt inclined to press their control if they were nervous about being the first to do so out of fear of being seen as 'cruel'. While Vsauce was basing the groups on having similar personalities, no two people are the same and will have other aspects of themselves playing a part in their individual decision-making.

the noise experiment doesn't say much because the team knew that they were going to be buzzed too by the noise, meanwhile the guards in the prison knew they would suffer no consequences due to their actions and cruelty, and i think that these people from the noise experiment would have been more cruel if they were prison guards and would have also been dehumanized sooner or later

having dark rooms like that is dangerous, mobs could spawn

"Give somebody a mask and they will show their true face."

I'm surprised that nobody was suspicious of the 'up till level 7 it's not dangerous' thing. That they have been told they could bother the other team with a sound that could permanently damage someone's hearing should have made it obvious that it was fake. Maybe that's also why team 2 figured it out. After that experiment with the fake painful shocks and Stanford, a lot of ethical restrictions were made. I do think Michael's criticism of the Stanford experiment is totally valid.

You need incentive for this to work. If you did this exact same experiment but said if they finished their puzzle before the other team they would get $1000 I guarantee you the results would be wildly different. Them incentive role is fulfilled in the Stamford prison experiment partly by Zambardo telling them to be more like a guard.... while not the same as monetary incentive its still gives the "guards" a reason to act like guards. This was missing from your experiment.

"It's so weird, there's no difference if you... close your eyes or open them, it's really weird." - this guy was my favorite

I think the reason they didn't become "sadistic" or cruel is because they couldn't see the affects of their actions. I think that's where sadistic behavior comes from. They can see the effects of their actions and they enjoy it. This experiment in my mind is more so how people react to being annoyed.

12:41 Michael: “I would love to do the experiment again.” Jared: (almost gets up and walks away)

Something important to note here is they're called "guards" and "prisoners", if you called them "carers" and "people who need care" you'd get a completely different result, even if everything else was the same.

Everybody: this is so annoying, we should retaliate. One guy: dude closing your eyes is so weird

Controversial experiment: exists Vsauce: *lets do it again*

I remember watching Vsauce as a kid, and now I realize this channel is the whole reason why I ended up developing such a passion for scientific research as an adult now. I feel like a kid all over again, thanks for making us curious.

It would be interesting to see if the test groups were not selected based on their compassion. Zimbardo said the Stanford experiment had a fairly average distribution of personality characteristics, which surely plays an integral role in the outcome of the experiment. The cloak of anonymity and demand characteristics obviously plays a huge role, but in this experiment the most aggressive behaviour we saw was retaliatory even if they COULD turn the volume up and intensify the frequency without repercussions in the second phase. Now, imagine if the test group had a more average distribution of characteristics AND more subjects. 4 people in a dark room becomes very intimate and even though you can't see eachother I assume they didn't TRULY feel completely anonymous due to the groups small size. An observation I made was that the subjects often told the group what they were doing. How high they turned it and "I'm not going to let go of the button....ok that's enough". Which tells me that these people sought feedback from the group about wether what they were going to do was acceptable or not. My hypothesis is that a bigger group creates a larger sense of anonymity and the need for feedback from the group would not be as strong. Another hypothesis is that in a group of more evenly distributed personality traits there would be someone that has less of a problem increasing the volume and intensity, which COULD result in others being more willing to accept using a higher volume and intensity as well. We've all probably heard or used some version of the "They did it, so I did it too" argument. We all want to conform(heard mentality) to a group regardless of if we feel anonymous or not and that need for conformity can make us do things we normally wouldn't do. The bystander effect also comes into play. The bigger the group the less likely someone are to intervene even if they consider it to be wrong. So no, EVERYONE isn't inherantly sadistic if given anonymity, power and instruction, but that doesn't mean they don't have it in them if someone around them "sets the bar". In other words, the experiment was flawed in the sense that subjects were intentionally selected and that helped to achieve a specific outcome, but it does tell us that anonymity, power and direction alone does not inherantly mean that the subjects will resort to abuse of power and sadism. If this expriment would have had larger test groups and a wider distribution of personality traits my hypothesis is that the results would have been very different. I'm not and expert, however I have studied psychology.

12:16 Vsauce: ..., can anonimity, power and depersonalization alone lead to evil? Me: * points at twitter *

Zimbardo sounds so much like a cartoon villain

"I would love to so the stanford prison experiment again" -Michael, Vsauce. Lol

The perspective Dave is able to have is amazing. He's able to discuss the influences to his behavior while still taking accountability.

"Give someone a mask and they'll show you who they are"

"People are quick to be cruel if an authority figure suggests that doing so will serve a greater cause", see Germany 1939-45

As someone with autism, I've always wanted to know what these kinds of experiments would show about people that are neurodivergent. How would they act differently considering many of the common neurotypical behaviors don't apply to them

I was a bill collector for 13 years. I did not know at the time, but I have a neurological disorder. I was “Too nice” for phone work, so I had other rolls in the department. I did observe some of the things the collectors would do or say. The successful collector said stuff over the phone they wouldn’t say to people face to face. They made it their business why people didn’t pay their bills and even how they will pay. One gal asked “do you smoke” the debtor said yes. She told the debtor to pay their bill instead of smoke. Another collector told a debtor to collect bottles to take back to pay the bill. This one collector called in because she was in the hospital. A different collector called the hospital to make sure. Anonymous can create evil. Because collectors got monetary bonuses, behavior became more cruel to get more money.

I can see my self as the dude seeing no difference between closing his eyes and having them open

Lincoln said: “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”

This video with it’s interview context is just as much part of Psychology History as the Experiment it’s self, Thank you Michael!

The most tragic thing about this "experiment" is that it didn't even have to happen at all since there are actual people in those situations already. Just go to any prison already in operation and record and interview actual guards and prisoners if you really want to know what it's like in them.

“I wouldn’t do that to my worst enemy” that line kind of set the moral guideline for that group.

I was in prison for 16 years. Lived in 7 different prisons in California. Each prison had a different culture. Ranging from somewhat pleasant to the worst. I've seen rookie guards come into the job with a good personality and overtime succumb to being influenced by the harshness of the veteran guards or inmates. However I've seen rookie guards who've stayed with their moral integrity intact despite the bad influences.

The Stanford experiment was like a micro sample of what the naxys did to Germany after ‘33. The modern study used the best of a personality scale while Stanford used moderate to borderline. I like learning about this topic and psych in general including pharmaceutically. Nice video

I think an important part of the original prison experiment was the prisoner/guard roles...maybe people have preconceptions about prisons but that doesnt mean they have to be cruel guards. Now if they were indeed instructed or led to believe being cruel was required or expected that definitely skews the results. But it would be interesting to repeat the experiment with average personalities and no instruction for how to act other than the basic expectations of a prison. I also think an important aspect of this dynamic, as they found, was personality, and its well known that people who want to be prison guards in real life tend to have authoritarian, and even abusive or violent personalities...

this would be insanely popular on Netflix.

I love how one guy is just closing and opening his eyes, and then glasses girl is just going *HAM* on that button

Found this after looking for a clip of the actual experiment and am now fascinated to know more! Humans are so complex and I really appreciated learning from your experiment! Be so interested to see other personality types going through the experimant too as well as introducing more demand charateristics! Thanks for the learnings!

I think that the experience of having power over somebody consists in knowing that the other has not as much power as us, but also in looking at the consequences of it. One feels really powerful when he sees his effects on another. So coming up with a team over whom the actual one could exercise a power, but not giving the actual team the opportunity to look at it, maybe it made people feel their power in a less concrete way. This imaginary team supposedly had the same power as the actual one at the beginning, but then lost it without knowing. What if: there were an other team made of actors, in an adjacent room, ready to fictionally react to the sounds ? And what if there were a one way mirror, and the actual team were informed that the other team (of actors) could not see them while they could ? It would be pretty interesting. Not saying people would necessary come out as sadistic, but it’s much easier when you look at the effect of your power. Plus, the thought of seeing without being seen can be extraordinarily empowering. And what if, at some point, the actual team were informed that the other team could not use the buttons

How intresting would it be if in the prison experiment at the end they switched roles...

I’m glad the guard was truly honest about what he felt. That really helps Michael’s hypothesis be as accurate as possible. Well done.

Im not a psychologist or anything, but I think that pressure, personality and background plays a major role. The experiement has great concepts in which if you take someone who takes their role very seriously they would put so much dedication in it. But if you take someone whos less invested or being idle into things you would get average or more below average results. edit I think the psych test you put to filter the participants was unnescessary to have a more wider result. Thats like picking day care employees to be prison guards in that matter. These experiments would be a lot better if Dr Zimbardo tests extremely hardened excons to be guards or day care employees or caregivers.

20:30 I think one flaw with this experiment was the retaliation element. While the noise level *is* anonymous, all the participants are aware of the fact that their opponents can make a level 12 noise in retaliation, which could cause hearing damage.

How has nobody been like "MICHAEL, FROM VSAUCE??? IS THAT YOU?" yet? I can only imagine how I would react if I was in a dark room, the lights turned on, and I saw the patron saint Michael himself standing there.

Imagine how awkward it was after the experiment and being in the same class as one of the guards.

I think that randomly picking a person, running the experiment and just after that doing the psychological tests would be a really good way to see if the group becoming sadistic (or not) is related to a predisposition or if it's related to the task they were given.

i tip my hat to dave eshelman for acknowledging and learning from his actions in the experiment especially coming to be interviewed on the matter not a lot of men have the courage to face themselves to become a better man and also share their growths so publicly

Zimbardo doesn’t seem to want to admit that his experiment was flawed.

I don’t have RU-vid premium, so I absolutely cherish whenever Mindfield episodes are free to watch. Doubt you’ll see this, Michael, but if you do: your work is fantastic!

I absolutely love how honest the "guard" is. It really is detrimental to the authenticity of the science experiment.

YOUR A FREAKING LEGEND you could have easily made this not free and no one would judge you thanks so much for making it free

Michael : *picks kind people* People : *being kind* Michael : * Surprised Pikachu *

my main issue with this is that, unlike the stanford prison experiment, the participants didn't get to directly see how their actions were impacting the other team

A better way to do it would be to mix the personalities and see if a aggressive person can convince the others to be aggressive and so on.

I think this experiment would be really cool if repeated with the same personality type i.e. high morality etc and if some participants acted cruelly. I think it would probably show a mob mentality kind of result but I think it would be really cool just because (and I'm speculating here) it could be that even though the other team members didn't see if the dial was turned up maybe they still felt like they should hold back? So what if one person selected for for cruel personality or a plant that would increase it above 7, would the team members look down on them because of morality or would they join because of mob mentality? I think this video was honestly great, good job guys!!

I'd be interested to see a study on how people can be cruel online, because while the participants in this experiment couldn't see each other, I felt that just being in the presence of others could have influenced their morality.

11:00 Guard: "I cannot say that I did not enjoy what I was doing" Michael: 👀👄👀

The problem is that in Zambardo‘s study they were told to be harsh, that it was even necessary. It makes it impossible to know what impact it had or didn’t have. Zambardo‘s study was more like a repeat of Stanley Milgram‘s experiments.

I think it also depends hugely where the participants are during the experiment, a room full of other people and a game is calmer and more relaxing than a prison cell with walls between and a closed space …the participants know what a prison cell is, so their brains produce more fear in the participants

'people were mean to each other' i think mean is a bit of an *UNDERSTATEMENT*

So why not test also 'cruel' personalities? Really expected the second group to be a control :(

I really enjoyed this. It made me think of people that murder in groups,or when couples murder. Would the other person of committed such brutal acts if they never met the other person(s)??..this really brings to mind infinity lol.. I love this channel one of the best I have found. Now I get easily distracted & Michael has managed to keep me intrested in whatever subject he has covered,so far,as I haven't watched all of his video's..Thanks Michael/Vsauce.

this was very interesting, i wonder what would’ve happened if they added just 1 person who wasn’t ranked so high on valuing moral. i wonder if it would be easy to sway their morals if encouraged by someone who appears to be on their team is doing it, like maybe they can do it too. the girl hitting the buzzer in the second team started doing it more after saying she thought there was no other team, and the guy also started hitting it after she said that. like if he believed it too and that’s why it was okay to try it out.

'Everybody hates power until you offer them some' - The Constant

when you realize that $15 in 1971 is like $95 today

Props to the man for not turning into a psychopath after getting all the hate mail

Have to appreciate Dave's honesty. If I was in his place I'd try to get away with attributing all the blame to the experimenters

That first group seemed so chill, I love when they just ended up chatting lol

They are missing a CRUCIAL piece! One of the most important part is being able to see the reaction of the prisoners!

the first session was so wholesome i like seeing them all work together and put out a few jokes

I would love to see an inverted study where there are 2 teams of people competing to solve the puzzle first in their own separate rooms, cant see each other or the other teams (we maintain anonymity and depersonalisation). The first team to solve it, wins a grand. Then there is a button available to each person which if triggered sends a hint to solve the puzzle to the other team. And it is told to the participants that no one has ever solved the puzzle. This will show how kindness and selfishness works in such an environment. Also such a study should have atleast 3 types of groups: highly moral, neutral, sadistic.

Can we talk about how hard that puzzle has to be when you can't see anything.

Standford experiment : controversial experiment with psychological torture Vsauce : yeah we're gonna do this again

I think in the first stage the fear of getting hit back with a high level intensity noise might have stopped them from sending anything too high. had they told them from the beginning only they could send noise and maybe adding visuals of the other teams progress so a real competitive feeling arises might have been better

12:54 Michael is interviewing himself in 15 years.

I think one crucial element that wasn't mentioned was the idea that the guards could see how as a consequence of their actions, they could see the suffering of the prisoners.

The cold malice when the guy says he got off on torturing prisoners… yikes.

I think that if they could have brought in a third or fourth group with personalities that were meaner, they could of had a more conclusive idea of whether or not the groups folded to be cruel because of those personalities, or because the situation wasn't set up right. Also if they created a situation where there was only one person in the group that wasn't an actor, then they could have looked into how peer pressure creates creulty, or if peer pressure creates kindness, and (not for this show but) if done with more subjects then they could work out, which side people tend towards.

People: “this was wrong” The American education system: “here’s a little lesson in trickery”

Michael's experiment really should've included a group predisposed to sadism. I bet they would've popped that dial up to 12 almost immediately.

Truly amazing and interesting video! My question though is if Vsauce (& colleagues) are truly neutral in this experiment. Aren't they the 'guards' in this experiment? Shouldn't their reactions and temptation to cause the 'blast' be considered as data too?

Conduct the same study again over a matter of 6 days, select less passive more neutral participants. Have the buzzers interrupt sleep and general functioning and I believe you'll have greater clarity on your question. Close enough to the original test while still controlling for your variables.

Would have been interesting to bring in a 3rd group to try the puzzle experiment with those on the complete OPPOSITE end of the personality test.

I think the experiment was missing an important factor. While people were given the opportunity to be cruel, they could not see anyone feel the pain. It might be more satisfying to a sadist to see someone suffer, than just to know that someone is suffering.

As someone studying psychology (specifically social psychology): Demand characteristics are a *huge* issue. I think that they may have played a role in the Stanford Prison Experiment, especially given that the “guard” participants were told that they were a part of the experiment, not the participants. There was a BBC Replication study done in 2006 that found very different results from the original. They found that people adhered to their social roles more in relation to the supposed “other,” and that having a group to identify with gave the “prisoners” the confidence to retaliate against the “guards.” I think that the “experiment” done in this episode introduced a confounding variable by picking the “best” people to be participants. If the participants had been chosen at random, or if they had tried to pick the most “average” people, then that confound likely wouldn’t exist and you would get a more accurate view of how the average person might behave.

There's a major flaw in this experiment. There is a gratification in seeing the torment that you are inflicting on others, if you're so inclined. It is a power trip. By using the buzzers and not witnessing a response they're not getting the reward from the punishment, which was the feedback that made the Stanford prison experiment so powerful. Not only were they tormenting people, but they were getting off on it. Without being rewarded for the bad behavior these people pushing the buttons did not have as much of an incentive to do so thus rendering your findings innacurate.

There are a few factors to consider in this specific experiment. 1) You never gave the team the chance to see the 'other team's ' reaction and response to their actions. Part of the sense of power is what the person perceives. For example in the Stanford Prison Experiment: The guards could see how their actions were taking effect over the prisoners which would have enticed more of this power behaviour. The guards would not have been aggressive if they didn't see or get the response from the prisoners. This behaviour is commonly seen in a workplace where the boss or supervisor throws their weight (Power) to get people to do their bidding. The aftermath of their power results in people being shy, timid, afraid, cautious and these are all visible to the person in power, therefore this creates the need to exercise the power more and more creating the so-called evil described in the Stanford Prison Experiment. 2) You never adjusted the volume to properly reenact human behaviour and choice. Because you always made it volume 3 out of the potential 1-12 there's no sense that the 'other team' were being spiteful or malicious. If the 'other team' were not exercising their power then why should anyone else do the same? The biggest indicator for this was team 2 where number 2 always pressed 3 instead of a higher or lower number due to the receiving sound being the same and saw no need to retaliate nor exercise any more power than need be, only creating an equilibrium. 3) Part 2 from both teams was a null and void section because of what I said in my first factor. One of the experimentee's even noted that there is no other team because no one got the sense of power towards another person due to no response. There is no such thing as power when you cannot personally gauge your dominance and influence over another. Power is perceived and not felt or measured in any other form. A few examples of that are: A nuclear bomb, if a nuclear bomb video has never shown the shockwave effect of destruction, you never saw the crater from the fireball, never saw a mass of water being moved and never heard it. YOU COULD NEVER gauge the power of a nuclear bomb. Same goes for earthquakes, I have never experienced an earthquake, therefore I can not understand the power of an earthquake. I can look at what it can do damage wise, but that is as far as my understanding goes. Again, power is perceived and without that perception, you cannot run an experiment to get people to maliciously exercise their power and rights over others. Thank you for reading, I hope I got my points across. And thank you for the video, was interesting, despite the flaws.

The only thing I have learned is that all psychologists are Bald

if you’re a nice person , you won’t treat someone like crap

“Questioning methods and interpretations is not a personal attack, it's how we prove our confidence in what we know.” That struck a cord with me. I feel like Vsauce just dismantled all of the bullshit of the political system with one sentence.

what if when he came in and someone heard him and just said “is that vsauce?”

Would've been great if after turning the light on again you bursted into the room yelling "HEY VSAUCE MICHAEL HERE"

A really interesting study. The factor of an demanding authority really made me think about the various historical regimes that did purely vicious things e.g. nazi germany. I wonder how much could've been prevented without this potent factor of an demanding authority throughout history. Though after all every step was a step forward in history in fact as cruel as it sounds if it wouldn't have been for those steps we'd never know how terrible people can behave and thus we'd never be aware to prevent them in the way we are today.

The major difference between this and Prison Experiment was that in the prison experiment, the guards didn't see themselves as the part of the people being studied, they thought of themselve as the people who were "responsible" for making the correct "condition" for the study- whereas here, these people were sure that the study is being conducted on them. Also, from what I see/feel, it's not about how "nice" people are that will lead to them becoming evil, but rather how much tendency there is in the person to 'people please', since in prison experiment, the guard COULD hear the drs. wispering something or another when they went rougher on the prisoners, making them go even harsher. If I were you, then instead of making it as such, I'd make it such that there was a class of students. And then you "select" (and NOT elect) two class representatives who will be responsible for keeping the class quiet when there are no teachers in there, and then- the teachers may come in, tell the students that 'the class next to yours, is so much more quiet.... Which is so, so nice.', now the thing is, in the prison experiment, and this class experiment, the idea of how strict/good the prison/class is directly linked to the responsibility of the guards/representatives. Thus, if the gaurds/representatives were ambitious, wanted to please the teacher(like the guards pleasing the drs.), then they *definately* would be, oh-so-much more stricter... So, in conclusion, I'd say this was *not* replicating the prison experiment...

who the heck doesn't recognise vsauce when they do these experiments and he walks in

Imagine buzzing it to 12 and the other team goes silent for the rest of the experiment

Iv been binge watching this series, I love Michael's content. Iv enjoyed every episode so far. Not just because the topic of each video and the conclusion that is made in the end, but what I like most is the process of scientific analysis that the team chooses for each experiment. However this episode does not match with the usual method of the series. I believe if we are going to make a conclusion, we should have a control group, just like micheal has always shown us. to see if the morality of this individuals actually plays a role in the equation. For example we should have a control group of individuals that showed sadistic tendencies, or just a random unfiltered group might have been the better choice. Im relatively sure that micheal would agree that we could have had a more certain conclusion here if we had a reference for our theory. but mindfield is clearly a much bigger project than the normal vsauce content, so it is understandable that there are compromises to be made along the way. And in all the episodes Iv watched so far, this was the only instance that I felt the method may not be optimal, so thats a still a pretty awesome quality ratio. The vsauce channel is pretty huge, It may be too improbable but I hope micheal sees my comment. Thanks again for the great content.

There was no real purpose, reward or sense of fulfilment that drove these people to do the things… even the guard literally said he could not say he didn’t enjoy it and it was interesting for him.

So basically the Standford Prison Experiment was the first reality tv show.