The DOI matches its Crossref record; 50 of the 50 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
Abstract
The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) is one of psychology's most famous studies. It has been criticized on many grounds, and yet a majority of textbook authors have ignored these criticisms in their discussions of the SPE, thereby misleading both students and the general public about the study's questionable scientific validity. Data collected from a thorough investigation of the SPE archives and interviews with 15 of the participants in the experiment further question the study's scientific merit. These data are not only supportive of previous criticisms of the SPE, such as the presence of demand characteristics, but provide new criticisms of the SPE based on heretofore unknown information. These new criticisms include the biased and incomplete collection of data, the extent to which the SPE drew on a prison experiment devised and conducted by students in one of Zimbardo's classes 3 months earlier, the fact that the guards received precise instructions regarding the treatment of the prisoners, the fact that the guards were not told they were subjects, and the fact that participants were almost never completely immersed by the situation. Possible explanations of the inaccurate textbook portrayal and general misperception of the SPE's scientific validity over the past 5 decades, in spite of its flaws and shortcomings, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
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Orne, M. T. (1962) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/h0043424 · Cited by 4,041 · cited 2×
“He had quoted Martin Orne’s (1962) seminal paper on the subject early in 1971 (Zimbardo, 1971b), and he had written on it T hi s do cu m en t is co py ri gh te d by th e A m er ic an Ps yc ho lo gi ca l A ss oc ia tio n or on e of its al lie d pu bl is he rs .”
Irwin-Zarecka, I., & Bauman, Z. (1991) · Contemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews · doi:10.2307/2072918 · Cited by 2,249
The Lucifer effect: understanding how good people turn evil
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The Society of Captives, a Study of a Maximum Security Prison
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The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness
Davis, R., & Fromm, E. (1974) · Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion · doi:10.2307/1384389 · Cited by 1,447
The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison.
Weinberg, S. K., & Sykes, G. M. (1959) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2089462 · Cited by 1,367
Bauman, Z. (2023) · Social Theory Re-Wired · doi:10.4324/9781003320609-38 · Cited by 1,050
Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison.
Haney, C. W., Banks, C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973) · Cited by 952
Kling, S. G., & Clemmer, D. (1941) · Harvard Law Review · doi:10.2307/1333983 · Cited by 474
Rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC prison study
Reicher, S., & Haslam, S. A. (2006) · British Journal of Social Psychology · doi:10.1348/014466605x48998 · Cited by 401
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Vanacker, B. (2025) · Journal of Media Ethics · doi:10.1080/23736992.2025.2522039
“The Phone Booth study has failed to replicate ( See Miller, 2003, pp. 390–392), and the Stanford Prison experiment has received extensive criticism, not just for the research ethics behind it, but also for the reliability of its results ( See Le Texier, 2019).”
Quitmann, J. H., & Ulber, D. (2025) · Elsevier eBooks · doi:10.1016/b978-0-443-26629-4.00183-0
Transformative Power of Confinement and Subversion of Identity in The Experiment (2010)
GÜZEL, F. (2025) · De Gruyter eBooks · doi:10.1515/9783111474137-006
Laboratory experiments in social science
Park, J. (2026) · Elsevier eBooks · doi:10.1016/b978-0-443-26629-4.00261-6
Understanding the Dissemination of Influential Parenting Research
Pool, A. C., Doolittle, D., Laberee, N., Traurig, S., Ginsburg, K. R., Bier, M. C., & Funk, C. D. (2022) · Journal of Character Education · doi:10.1108/jced-10-2022-0006
Hatum, A., & Marchiori, E. A. (2026) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-032-23459-9_4
The Sacrifice at Aulis: Paranoid‐Schizoid Power and the Cost of Witness
Wadey, P. (2026) · International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies · doi:10.1002/aps.70063
Manufacturing Pessimism: Structural Incentives and Social Psychology’s Narrative of Human Nature
Lönnqvist, J. (2026) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/17456916261458313
Scarred, Scared, Angry, and Everything in Between: A Peace That Divides Us?
Restrepo, E. M. (2026) · Palgrave studies in compromise after conflict. · doi:10.1007/978-3-032-25717-8_4
Experiment as Spectacle: The Traitors and the Cultural Afterlives of Cold War Social Psychology
Babits, C. (2026) · Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences · doi:10.1002/jhbs.70072
Metadata
- Authors
- Le Texier, T.
- Venue
- American Psychologist
- Published
- 2019-10
- Volume
- 74
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 823-839
- ISSN
- 0003-066X (ISSN-L)
- 1935-990X
- OpenAlex
- W2964441944
- Semantic Scholar
- 25aa53ca5a6599f7d7464761d4447ca331c48cd9
- Cited by
- 127
- References
- 33
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 28 · 2022: 23 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 5
- FWCI
- 39.32
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- American Psychologist (publishedVersion)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › General Psychology › Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Psychology Research and Bibliometrics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Psychology of Social Influence
- Keywords
- Stanford Prison Experiment, scientific validity, demand characteristics, Zimbardo, data collection bias, situational influences, history of psychology
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Data Collection, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Prisons, Psychology, Social, Research, Social Behavior, Reproducibility of Results, History, 20th Century, Young Adult
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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