Interview with Philip Zimbardo of the Stanford Prison Experiment

Because new kids graduate from the decadence of their family-provided lifestyle and come out into the world fresh, looking for ideas that help them gain an understanding for why the world is so broken: so such things as the conclusions made by this experiment are ever-more valuable.

It is disingenuous to assume that because something is 'old' in your eyes, 'everyone knows it already'. This is clearly not the case - if everyone knew just how bad human beings can be when granted power, perhaps there wouldn't be such heinous conditions in the halls of power as we have today.

Fact: either we re-fresh discussing the uncomfortable truths about human existence on frequent occasions, or we end up unwittingly repeating them. Also, frequently.

I've often thought out should be more properly referred to as the "Stanford Prison Anecdote."

There is a new movie about the experiment, a fictionalized version, which did well at Sundance and is now on general release I believe. As part of the promotion effort, they rolled out Zimbardo, who also collaborated with the writer I think (some of the "kids" were also involved).

It seems like Zimbardo always wanted to be a "thought leader" rather than a scientist. He has a history of promoting novel theories/diagnoses/techniques with catchy names that don't especially pan out (the Lucifer Effect, Social Intensity Syndrome, time perspective therapy).