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+--- Thread: Research The Stanford prison experiment was flawed – why is it still so influential today (/thread-17180.html)
The Stanford prison experiment was flawed – why is it still so influential today - C C - Jan 14, 2025
The soft sciences are a sloppy mess, and the literary intellectual output of the humanities isn't science at all. Yet both of these academic territories can influence the formation and direction of political and administrative policies.
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The infamous Stanford prison experiment was flawed – so why is it still so influential today?
https://theconversation.com/the-infamous-stanford-prison-experiment-was-flawed-so-why-is-it-still-so-influential-today-246881
EXCERPTS: A new translation of a 2018 book by French science historian Thibault Le Texier challenges the claims of one of psychology’s most famous experiments Standford prison experiment].
Investigating the Stanford Prison Experiment: History of a Lie, published recently in English, documents serious limitations of the study – including that student “guards” were actually coached to dehumanise their “prisoners” – and asks how such a flawed experiment became so influential.
[...] Since it was conducted over five decades ago, the lessons from the experiment have been applied to a burgeoning number of situations beyond prison. By 2007 Zimbardo used it to explain corporate fraud, military torture, cult behaviour and even genocide.
[...] Thibault Le Texier’s 2018 book unearths a more complicated and troubling story of the famous study. It casts doubt on Zimbardo’s reliability as a narrator of his own research...
[...] As Le Texier points out, Zimbardo’s media savvy, his skill as a populariser, his university’s support and a largely uncritical acceptance of his findings have been powerful factors in the enduring fame of the experiment.
It continues to exert a powerful grip on the public imagination, largely through the promotional flair of its creator.
Le Texier’s book raises important questions about the cultural and political factors that shape research. For example, Zimbardo’s study was conducted during a period of intense anti-authoritarianism and against the backdrop of the 1971 Attica prison riot, the deadliest prison uprising in the United States.
Le Texier’s book also has much to teach us about science communication and the potential of media-savvy scientists to construct and promote a powerful narrative. The Stanford prison experiment can be excised or acknowledged for its overblown claims in textbooks, but will it ever be excised from the public imagination? Unlikely.
As Le Texier writes, the experiment has gained such a grip on our collective consciousness because while its findings might be false, it appears to offer a profound moral lesson.
Zimbardo’s knack was tapping into our hunger for answers to the big questions of our time. It may be theoretically vacuous, a morality play disguised as science. But the fame of the Stanford prison experiment endures because it appears to shed light on how good people can become evil. And that always makes for a good story... (MORE - missing details)