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Archive 1Archive 2

Proposed replacement text for opening paragraphs

As part of the work we've been doing to improve on the quality of the article, I've worked with other editors to come up with this phrasing. Is it acceptable as a replacement for what is currently in the opening paragraphs?DrZasm (talk) 06:42, 19 August 2021 (UTC)


The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was designed to examine the effects of situational variables on participants' reactions and behaviors in a two-week simulation of a prison environment. Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo led the research team who ran the experiment in the summer of 1971.

The U.S. Office of Naval Research funded the experiment as an investigation into the genesis of difficulties between prison guards and inmates in the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps facilities. Certain portions of it were filmed, and excerpts of footage are publicly available.

After receiving approval from the university to conduct the experiment, study participants were recruited using an ad in the help wanted section of the Palo Alto Times and The Stanford Daily newspapers, which read:

Male college students needed for psychological study of prison life. $15 per day for 1-2 weeks, beginning Aug. For further information and applications, come to room 248 Jordan Hall, Stanford University.

From 75 applicants who applied to participate in the experiment, 24 young white men, deemed the most psychologically stable, were chosen as participants. During their initial screening interviews, all of the selected participants said they would prefer to be prisoners, not guards.

Participants were then randomly assigned to being “prisoners” or “prison guards" (9 in each group, plus 3 substitutes). This random assignment is considered the SPE experiment’s independent variable.

The day before the Stanford prison experiment officially began, the participants playing “guards” were given uniforms and equipment, specifically chosen to mimic the de-individuating uniforms professional prison guards and military often wear.

The experiment ended before the two weeks came to a close as the brutal behavior of the “guards” had escalated beyond what Zimbardo had anticipated, and the prisoners’ behavior had become more submissive than anticipated - a few had mental breakdowns. After debriefing with his “guards” and “prisoners”, Zimbardo analyzed the data and published his findings.

Zimbardo believes that the Stanford Prison Experiment contributes to psychology’s understanding of human behavior and its complex dynamics - how ordinary people can act in evil ways under certain conditions, otherwise known as the Lucifer Effect.

Article needs image descriptions

Could someone please add alt text to the images in this article? It would benefit screen reader users and people who have images turned off. This guide explains how. KaraLG84 (talk) 09:37, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Kara! You know how much I want good image descriptions to be part of every wiki article - as soon as we get the lede fized, I think I can give it more attention. Happy to have help from anyone else here on image descriptions too! It helps to know a lot about the experiment in order to make the captions as menaingful as possible. Kara, having you proffread whatever we do post will be invaluable, especially before the revised article and pics go into translations. DrMel (talk) 21:13, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 13:43, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Zimbardo did grant permission for use of all prison experiment photos that appear on prisonexp.org, and has sent email to permissions-commons / OTRS. He is now in email exchange with them on how to properly document his permissions. It's so complicated to share pics! Wish us luck? DrMel (talk) 21:10, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
@DrMel: That's fine and (if possible) thank them for doing so; however, there are only so many VRT volunteers and there tend to be more requests received than volunteers which mean the process may take some time. It's unlikely that any article with image licensing issues is going to be considered acceptable to appear anywhere on Wikipedia's main page; so, it might be best to hide the images until the licensing issues are resolved. You might want to also make it clear to the copyright holder that once they give their c:COM:CONSENT, there are no take backs; this means that, despite what is posted on their website, anyone anywhere in the world will be able to download the files at anytime from Commons and resuse them in any way they want as long as the comply with the terms of the license that is ultimately accepted by Commons. Pretty much all of the CC licenses that Commons accepts only require that proper attribution be given; so, as long as those who want to reuse the images state where they got it from, they will be able to reuse them any way they please. The copyright holder might try and argue other types of restrictions are in place, but those aren't really of a concern to Commons and are things that the copyright holder are going to have to resolve on their own with each reuser of the files. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:42, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

proposal for new version of lede below

Per comments above, I do not want to make any changes to the article itself, but was able to take the time needed to work on a revised and better lede that I have proposed below. Thank you thank you to everyone for all the incredible work! This is one of the most important psychological experiments in history - which is one of the reasons I have respected Zimbardo so much - he knows that what he did was evil, and has worked ever since to show why these kinds of evils are pervasive across almost every version of imprisonment. Humans are affected by situations, and good people can do terrible things.

But - that's just a quick blurb about my motivation. Not wanting to whitewash anything - striving for the highest quality article we can get before 0:00 UTC tonight.

I'll post updates here. Everyone else is welcome to keep editing any other part of the article - or collaborate with me to help improve lede. Even though I've pioured thousands of hours into wikipedia as an organizer, the writing is still very challenging for me, so it won't be perfect, but hopefully I can propose something better asap!

DrMel (talk) 21:06, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

If I'm considered too biased to propose changes, I understand and request help from anyone else here to review what needs to be changed, the best sources, and how I can help. DrMel (talk) 21:07, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
In looking at the phrasing around the criticisms, there have been a number of inaccuracies which are addressed sufficiently in the details about Criticisms lower in this page and on the new page that links to. The effects of the situational variables have been demonstrated repeatedly inside prisons and detenton centers throughout history, and while it is considered unethical to try to repeat SPE's methods, there is extensive evidence of the abuses found in places with guards and prisoners.
The information about the experiment funding is important but not crucial to the lede - for brevity I suggest moving it lower.
The specifics about how the participants were recruited, assessed for psychological stability and then assigned randomly to the roles of guard and prisoner is the core of the experiment - the independent variable - normal good kids can be in situations where they can behave sadistically, beyond what they could imagine themselves doing, based on the situational variables like anonymity and power dynamics. I think it's very important to include the setup of any experiment in the explanation of what the study was about.
Reactions? Good enough? Can someone tweak as needed and update what's there? DrZasm (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Image licensing problems

I came across this article via WP:THQ#Stanford Prison Experiment - revisions need checking (urgently?) and more about the images issues can be found at c:Commons:Deletion requests/Stanford prison experiment images. Basically, the person who uploaded pretty much all of the images used in the article other than the one of the plaque at the top of the article chose a {{Cc-by-sa-4.0}} for some unknown reason even though it clearly states at the top of the source website that the images are for "non-commercial use only", which is unacceptable restriction for image licensing per c:COM:L and WP:COPY#Guidelines for images and other media files. So, my suggestion would be to remove these images from the article until their licensing can be verified. A bot will post another notice about this probably sometime later today or tomorrow, but the files cannot be kept unless it can clearly be demonstrated that they are released under a license that Commons or Wikipedia accepts. -- Marchjuly (talk) 12:45, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

This appears to be on the way to being resolved per #Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:39, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Ethical concerns contradict methodology

The experiment section, under Friday, August 20th, says: " Zimbardo then met for several hours of informed debriefing first with all of the prisoners, then the guards, and finally everyone came together to share their experiences. Next, all participants were asked to complete a personal retrospective to be mailed to him subsequently. Finally, all participants were invited to return a week later to share their opinions and emotions."

Later in the ethical issues, it says: "Though Zimbardo did conduct debriefing sessions, they were several years after the Stanford prison experiment."

The source for the ethical issue, SimplyPsychology, states, "After the prison experiment was terminated, Zimbardo interviewed the participants". Further, that "Extensive group and individual debriefing sessions were held, and all participants returned post-experimental questionnaires several weeks, then several months later, then at yearly intervals. Zimbardo concluded there were no lasting negative effects."

The source for the experiment, The Day to Day Breakdown, states, "Zimbardo met with all the guards, then with all the prisoners, before everyone came together to discuss the experience. Even the participants released early from the experiment came back to go over their feelings and thoughts" and "After a couple of months, Zimbardo received prisoner #416's recollection of his time spent in The Hole".

In both references, the debriefing statement under ethical issues is unfounded.

This should be edited. Thank you. --ErzsieHDR (talk) 22:43, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Noted - I agree. He debriefed both on Day 6 and in the years that followed. We should find the citations on both and make those updates. Also, just confirmed that the final edits today have re-qualified the article to be in the OTD section. How many hours have we each put in over last 64? Woof! Taking a dinner break. DrZasm (talk) 23:41, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Next Steps for Improving Article Quality?

Currently working on:

  • Images - proper licensing with OTRS and adding descriptions in Commons
  • Criticisms - discussing whether to keep the second page or bring the full set back into this page
  • Related experiments and events
  • Improvements to References in Pop Culture
  • more citations and links

Anyone reading this, we'd welcome your responses here. What do you think could help make the article better? What would you like to help with? DrMel (talk) 16:02, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

anyone watching this page who could help with any of the next steps? STeeeeeeep learning curve and so many obstacles to contributing. very very grateful for your pateince and help - this article really is very important to get to high quality. (2700 views per day before Friday 20Aug2021 and with so much missing and confusing.)
i was able to record a Zoom interview with Zimbardo about all the images at prisonexp.org, which he's giving wikipedia. slide show style, I was able to get his descritons, so we can upload the video and use the tramscript to select alt-text and image descriptions for each picture. Anyone familiar with image descriptions work in commons? or know someone who could help? so far ive just got the recording from Zoom. need to get it transcribed and uploaded somewhere suitable. DrMel (talk) 05:22, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
It sounds like you're saying that Zimbardo is donating copyrighted material - you both likely should have a read of WP:Donating copyrighted materials if you haven't already. It's also best if there's a more formal consenting process. There is also a list of resources, including help pages, at WP:Copyright_assistance. One of those links or the assistance pages over at Commons should be able to help get those ready. It's also good to keep in mind that some of the content isn't going to be suitable/useful to use on this article - for example, any identifying information that isn't already widely publicised. As a side note, importance of an article is not based on views - if you'd like more information on that, there's a generalised importance rubric and at a draft psych-specific rubric. I do think it is top importance though. --Xurizuri (talk) 03:10, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Not a big fan of recent edits

In the last month or so, the article has been changed, in my opinion for the worst. If we take as a basis of comparison this diff:

  1. The biggest issue is the whitewashing of the methodology problems. They are not even mentioned in the current lead (whereas they are a large part of the old lead, supported by adequate references).

Hello, I am fairly new to editing on Wikipedia but this page was so glaringly wrong I had to have a go. (Sorry if I am posting this talk in the wrong place). The Stanford Prison Experiment has been thoroughly debunked. It was a fake, a set up. Yet the Wikipedia entry still reads mostly like it was a genuine experiment, with only some minor mentions of criticisms. I have edited it to put the research debunking it into the first section. Unfortunately I don't have time to go through and change the whole page. I hope someone else can do that. --NativeDingo (talk) 15:14, 11 October 2021 (UTC) - NativeDingo Oct 2021

  1. Speaking of whitewashing, most of the criticsm has been moved to Criticism of the Stanford Prison Experiment. The existence of such an article seems fairly dubious in view of WP:POVFORK, but more significantly, it also white-washes the criticism: the first 75% of its length is devoted to he said/she said drama/politics, and all the "serious" criticism is crammed into the last "Critics" section.
  2. There is a lot of storytelling - that kind of stuff might belong to psychology journal but not a tertiary source (such as Wikipedia). This was already present is the previous version but to much more limited extent. If it were up to me, the whole day-by-day account would be scrapped and summarized in no more than three or four paragraphs, but even if we keep it, we should prune it significantly. A blatant example is the paragraph Prisoner 819 began showing symptoms of distress (...) the guards cajoled the remaining inmates to loudly decry #819 as a bad prisoner.
  3. The new version has nonstandard formatting (big italics in the lead, italics instead of section headers, etc.)

Besides possible changes to the article, those edits were made by DrZasm, ErzsieHDR and AbhishekG27, who all joined Wikipedia recently and edited almost exclusively that topic. I would very much like them to disclose what possible conflicts of interest they have with respect to the experiment itself and/or Zimbardo, and whether they know each other off-wiki. TigraanClick here for my talk page ("private" contact) 08:37, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

@Tigraan: DrZasm just posted at the teahouse saying that they are working as a "team", so that needs to be explained. Also, I think the lede is really poorly written! It does not introduce the topic clearly. --- Possibly ☎ 09:09, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Tigraan & Possibily for quick reply to our Teahouse inquiry. I agree, I am not happy with the new lead - and I helped write it. We met each other over the past few months and are in psychology with varied backgrounds and perspectives on the importance of the experiment. All connected with DrMel who was at Wikimania and then asked us to help with the article cleanup (she asked above in the Talk page). We are novices at wiki editing but have been encouraged to Be Bold and ask for help. We were told that the article would be included in tomorrow's "On This Day" list, and wanted to improve on what we saw as inaccurate and misleading content asap. One of our wiki mentors looked at the article's critique section and said it was so long that it deserved its own page, so as we went through cleaning it up, that evolved. We were also told the experiment section was weakly written - this one being told in the day by day format seemed logical. But our familiarity with the editing tools and formatting norms are very low, so do please make whatever improvements you think will make it better. Hoping to be doing more editing now that we're gone through this intensive learning curve. We've just poured a ton of our time into doing our best work, definitely wanting to improve the article and maintain NPOV. Very happy to get the pics in. Hoping the improvements can be improved upon. The lead could definitely use some more work and should reference the criticisms. Are you familiar with the experiment? Want to make any changes directly? Or post suggestions here and we will do our best. DrZasm (talk) 09:23, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
@DrZasm: Thank you for the quick reply. There is nothing wrong with meeting at Wikimania and deciding that some article needs editing. DrMel "recused" from editing the article directly due to zer connection with Zimbardo; I would encourage any of you to do the same if you have collaborated with Zimbardo (or have planned to do so in the future), per WP:COI.
I tried rewriting the lead. It is still a bit long but I feel the ratio of information to length has been improved quite a bit.
I still think the history section is waaay too long but I will leave it to others to trim it down. That is basically a copy-paste from Zimbardo’s findings, but we should not have long passages sourced entirely to primary sources.
A split of the criticism into its own article may be warranted based on length, but the current article is really poor IMO. Of course it is easier to complain than to fix the problems, but frankly, deleting the side article without bringing anything back to the main article would arguably be a net positive.
Regarding the pictures taken during the experiment, they have been nominated for deletion at Commons and they will likely be deleted soon for licensing reasons. The pictures are as far as I know not available under a license suitable for Commons (which only accepts free pictures). (The English) Wikipedia does allow some non-free pictures, but only uploaded locally via Special:Upload, and only if they meet a long list of criteria in addition to the legal requirement of fair use. You might be able to squeeze one or two in, via Special:Upload, select the "non-free - promotional material" licensing in the dropdown menu, and add enough description to convince people that the image meets all criteria at WP:NFCC.
My initial message might have been a bit harsh and I know it is disheartening to work a couple hours on an article just to have a random paser-by say that it is poorly-written. Unfortunately, that is how it works - to get a good article you usually need to rewrite it ten times by different people. TigraanClick here for my talk page ("private" contact) 13:24, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the wise advice, Tigraan and Possibly, and all the hard work to all who've seen the value of a rewrite before this is more visible on front page of en. in 2.75 hours. Its so important to make sure it's as high quality as possible, in NPOV! DrMel (talk) 21:16, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
@Tigraan: I strongly second your concern over the WP:POVFORK of the Criticism of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Moreover, I would argue that most of the significance of SPE is the criticism it received - its problems significantly informed the way psychological research is done today. There's a lot of poorly designed studies out there, this one is notable enough to discuss in any social psych unit to ever exist (and to be on WP) because of the public and academic response. So, separating out the criticism kind of... makes a lot of this article far less notable. It would also likely be more effective to integrate the smaller concerns into the description of the experiment, and give a section for an overview of each major criticism. I'd also be glad to hear from DrZasm, Possibly, DrMel and ErzsieHDR, as youse seem invested in these articles. (P.S. please ping me if you respond to me, I often forget to check back in on discussions.) --Xurizuri (talk) 03:54, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Xurizuri and Tigraan for your time reviewing and helping make this article as high quality as possible. (please forgive massive number of typos - editing from iPad is NOt wiki friendly!)
There's still A Lot of work that needs to be done, and your perspectives definitely help. im starting a new section below to list my thoughts on next steps anyone could chose to help with.
On the nature of the SPE criticisms, we (especially our team members in psychology) believe there are big differences between what was emphasized on the wiki page last week and what PSychology classes have been going over for 50 years. THe biggest criticism weve seen is that the study was unethical and harmed the participants. But it had been approved of by the Stanford U ethocs review prior to the actual experiment. like Milgraams experiments, once the level of psychological harm to participants became apparent, the study was deemed unethical to reproduce in a simulation.
The critiques describing the whole experiment as a fraud, saying that telling the guards to act like prison guards invalidated the results miss the biggest result. normal palo alto college students, ended up behaving in ways far beyond what they coyod have imagoned themselves doing before the experiment. The situational variables (Including especially the de-indivudation of uniforms, degradation and dehumanization of prisoners, etc) affected how far the guards went beyond what "Normalpeople" would do, into truly sadistic practices. like MIlgrams experiment, which showed repeatedly that "Normwl people" can do terrible things in certain situations.
That you raise these points is so importsnt, too, to getting at the value of this piece of history - the study of why people do evil things really is crucial to the future of humanity, and getting the facts right on a article like this is critical.
Whether the criticisms section is too long to be on this page or should be moved back is another question - one of our more experienced wikipedian team memevers suggested it made sense as a separate article - not to fork POV but to improve the readability. a lengthier page on criticisms makes sense to us. not trying to whitewash anything. going for GOod Article quality & perhaps FA some day. DrMel (talk) 17:01, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
(my apologies for all the typos -all thumbs on a ipad - ill clean it up later. thanks for the discussion.
@DrMel:, that explanation makes sense. I think the criticism that is worth including is always going to be contentious, so it's worth discussing more. Regarding page length, there's a guideline about splitting - WP:SPINOUT. SPE is actually a fairly short article - I have a prose size checker, and it's 21kB and the criticism article is 12 kB (total of 33 kB; it'd be less if we combined them and removed any duplication). The guidelines say that until an article hits 50kB, it isn't really going to be too long. I personally tend not to like reducing article length by separating out criticism, because of that risk of it appearing to be a POV split, or of accidentally becoming one over time (also because of my previous point about notability). People do sometimes split articles on that criteria though, so fair enough that someone suggested it. How would you feel about reintegrating the articles, given that length isn't a concern? --Xurizuri (talk) 08:42, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

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where should we add: 1971 prison riots ?

This was less than a month later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attica_Prison_riot

Zimbardo told me about it this morning. We’re recording interviews for posting to Commons. Amazing stories of what it was like 50 years ago.

On Day 6 of SPE, after shutting it down and going home to be with his heroine and future wife, they woke to the news of the San Quentin prison riot of 21 August 1971

Attica Riot was only a couple weeks later. It shows how far the ugliness can go.

Thank God Zim stopped SPE when he did on Day 6.

And what are the lessons learned?

Situational forces can kill. DrMel (talk) 21:25, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

i'd like to add links to and from Prison Riots article especially the specifc articles oer riot from 1971. could anyone help? DrMel (talk) 21:37, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
I'm concerned about including any detailed material here about the San Quentin or Attica riots. The 1971 timing with SPE is coincidental. There's no indication that Zimbardo's prior work was linked to those institutions, such that his SPE design might have been guided by any insights there. Similarly, the SPE activity itself obviously didn't cause those real-world riots, and it's not like the topic was fashionable at the time. Agreed, Zimbardo subsequently established himself as a subject matter expert on such episodes, as well as at Abu Ghraib, etc. But that's all well after the fact. Comments? jxm (talk) 08:25, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
I didn't see this until now, but I've actually removed the mention of it in the lead already - it's barely important enough to be in the article, let alone in the lead. Having seen this, I've now double-checked the citation on the other mention of it, and it doesn't connect the riots to the SPE. I will also remove that mention of it.
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