It was scheduled for two weeks

In the last segment there's a discussion with students (from the 80s?) and Zimbardo says that what was surprising was that the symbols assigned (roles, uniforms, dark glasses, chains, even the simple concept of authority) overrode any personal feelings built up over years of education, etc. Basically, being a "guard" gives you power to abuse and being a prisoner makes you submissive.

That seems a bit simplistic. The guards had to restore order after a day 2 rebellion and from then on were in a position of fear of losing control again.

The BBC did a similar experiment a few years ago, which turned out differently: some of the prisoners were about to enact a fascist dictatorship. In that experiment, the guards were very soft on the prisoners and never really established authority over them (the prisoners didn't get the introductory humiliation of arrest, fingerprinting, strip search, etc. that those in the Stanford experiment did). They introduced a union negotiator as a prisoner, who managed to negotiate compromises between guard and prisoner and then they removed him. The prisoners and guards then formed a kind of commune, but it was abused leaving a power vacuum and rapidly detoriated from there.

Posted By: BerlinCanary, Jan 17, 20:54:57