Wait, What?! The Stanford Prison Experiment was pre-tested?


With the recent news regarding the questionable nature of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, we thought it was purdent to republish one of our earlier blog articles drawing attention to the issue. The piece below appeared on our blog in 2012. A blogpost by the Neurocritic suggests that the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) was based on a pre-test in which participants behaved equally cruel. Job van Wolferen summarizes this post and highlights another disturbing point the Neurocritic raises: the experimenters might have given the guards ideas and suggestions on how to treat the…