Today’s doctoral seminar is on the study done by Zimbardo and colleagues in 1973.
Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison.
The researchers placed 20 normal male college students in a simulated prison in the basement of the Dept of Psychology at Stanford. Nine of them were to role play as prisoners and the other 11 as guards. And within 2 days, the prisoners suffered acute emotional disturbance, and the guards became aggressive and dehumanizing. The conclusion is that the prison environment is so pathological that even normal people would start behaving crazy once they are inprisoned.

Originally the researchers planned to run the experiment for 2 weeks but they had to end the experiment after 6 days because the behavior change in both prisoners and guards were so extreme. It was no longer ethical to retain the prisoners in this state of oppression.

The students were paid $15 a day to participate in this study. I wonder how much the $15 is worth now in 2005?