The Stanford Prison Experiment (Zimbardo, 1971)

Philip Zimbardo's 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, which purported to show how institutional roles corrupt behavior, has been scrutinized more rigorously than the average social psychology study. Recent investigations, including transcripts from the original 1971 sessions, revealed that Zimbardo actively coached guards to act aggressively and that several 'prisoner' breakdowns were exaggerated or faked. The experiment lacked any systematic control group and violated ethical standards by failing to intervene when participants showed signs of distress after just 36 hours. Despite these flaws, it remains more widely taught than the MMR-Autism study in ethics curricula.