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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For the Greater Good? The Devastating Ripple Effects of the Covid-19 Crisis
Schippers, M. C. (2020) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.577740 · Cited by 105
“These experiments have been repeated many times and influence research even today (Haslam and Reicher, 2017), even though the Stanford Prison experiment had some fatal flaws in design and carrying out of the experiment (le Texier, 2019).”
ResultRethinking the nature of cruelty: The role of identity leadership in the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., & Bavel, J. J. V. (2019) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/amp0000443 · Cited by 69
Advances in transparency and reproducibility in the social sciences
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Idiographic Psychology: From Forms of Inference to Levels of Analysis, and Back AgainPreprint
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Rethinking the nature of cruelty: The role of identity leadership in the Stanford Prison ExperimentPreprint
Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., & Bavel, J. J. V. (2018) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/b7crx · Cited by 18
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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