Male Narrator:  In 1971, in the basement of the Psychology Department at Stanford University, a mock prison was created.  It rivaled all social-psychology experiments in controversy.  

Dr. Philip Zimbardo:  Shortly after I finished the Stanford prison study, Milgram embraced me and said, "I'm so happy you did this," he said, "because now you can take off some of the heat" that he's had to bear alone for having done the most unethical study.  

Male Narrator:  Although this experiment is over 30 years old, its enduring power has been underscored by the events at Abu Ghraib.  

Ken Davis:  When we got to Abu Ghraib it was eerie.  People were being told to rough up Iraqis that wouldn't cooperate.  I mean, they were torturing, they were abusing detainees.  Our' looking at the situation, thinking, they've condoned this, but why?  And if it wouldn't have been for those photos, no one would have ever believed what was going on over there.  

Dave Eshelman:  When I first saw the pictures, an immediate sense of familiarity struck me, because I knew that I had been there before.  I had been in this type of situation, I knew what was going on, in my mind.  

Dr. Craig Haney:  The photographs were strikingly familiar to the photographs we had taken, many of the photographs I had taken, in the prison study.  

Dave:  We didn't do any of the stuff you see in Abu Ghraib, where they, you know, get into a big pile, or something like that.  But I certainly subjected them to all kinds of humiliations.  I don't know where I would have stopped myself.  Given enough time, we could have got there.  

Dr. Zimbardo:  When the images of the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib were revealed, the military went on the defensive, saying it's a few bad apples.  When we see somebody doing bad things, we assume they're bad people to begin with.  

But what we know in our study--there is a set of social-psychological variables that can make ordinary people do things they could never imagine they would be doing.  

Male Narrator:  At Abu Ghraib, ordinary people perpetrated extraordinary abuses.  To understand why, it helps to reach back to Zimbardo's experiment, how people respond to a cruel environment, without clear rules.  

[Whistle blowing.]  

[Indistinct speaking.]  

Dr. Christina Maslach:  I think he and everybody else who came down into that situation, got caught up in that situation.  And, the sense that this was an experiment, that became to fade away.  It became just life.  

[2:44]

Female Prisoner:  Fuck this experiment!  And fuck Dr. Zimbardo!  

Dr. Zimbardo:  We, frankly, didn't anticipate what was going to happen.  We tried to really test the power of the environment to change and transform otherwise normal people.  In much the way Milgram changed or transformed otherwise normal people in an obedient situation, we wanted to do it in a prison-like situation.  

Male Narrator:  Over 70 men volunteered for Zimbardo's experiment.  

And they completed a battery of psychological tests, and we picked two dozen, 24 of the most normal and most healthy; half are going to be guards and half are going to be prisoners.  It's like flipping a coin: heads, this one's a guard; tails, this one's a prisoner.  In the beginning, there was no difference in the kinds of people in your two groups.  

Dave:  When we were given our jobs as guards, we were issued our uniforms, which was a plain, sort of khaki or lighter-colored uniform.  

Dr. Zimbardo:  And then we gave them the semblance of power--handcuffs, a whistle, a big billy club.  And then, the other thing we gave them were silver reflecting sunglasses.  

Dave:  When you have mirror sunglasses on, nobody can see your eyeballs.  I think that any time you put on what is essentially a mask, and you mask your identity, then it allows you to behave in ways that you would not behave if you did not have the mask on.  

Dr. Zimbardo:  To make it more realistic, I had arranged with the Palo Alto Police Department to make mock arrests.  

[Sirens blaring.]  

Richard Yacco:  When I was arrested, it was a surprise to me.  I didn't think I would be brought to an actual police station; I didn't think I was going to go through a booking process.  

[4:30]

Dr. Zimbardo:  The guards then put a blindfold on them . . . stripped them naked . . . and then they put them in dresses, smocks, with no underpants.  Each had a number that replaced their name.  They had to know their number, and they could only be referred to by that number.  And they had a chain on one foot, which was put there to remind them, at all times, of their loss of freedom.  All of these things produce the sense of being dehumanized.  

[Indistinct speaking.]  

On the first day, I said, "This is not going to work."  I mean, the guards felt awkward giving orders.  They said, "Okay, line up and repeat your numbers," and the prisoners would start giggling.  

Guard:  Hey, I don't want anybody laughing!  

Second Guard:  Three, two, one.  

Dr. Zimbardo:  And then a very interesting thing happened.  Dave Eshelman, who the prisoners named John Wayne--like, he's a Wild West cowboy--he begins to be more extreme.  

Dave:  I decided that I would become the worst, most intimidating, cruel prison guard that I could possibly be.  

[In video:]  I see, in the future, you, uh, do work when you're told.  

Male Prisoner:  Thank you, Mr. Correctional Officer.  

Dave:  Say it again.  

Male Prisoner:  Thank you, Mr. Correctional Officer.  

Dave:  Say, "Bless you, Mr. Correctional Officer."  

Male Prisoner:  Bless you, Mr. Correctional Officer.  

Dave:  I was sort of fascinated myself that people were believing the act.  And I was trying to see how far I could take it before somebody would say, "Okay, that's enough.  Stop."  

Richard:  We did have to do things like push-ups, we would have to sing things.  At the beginning, we protested some of the actions, we did things to irritate some of the guards.  

[5:56]

Male Prisoner:  If I've got to be in here, I'm not going to put up with any of your shit.  

Craig:  So the guards' authority was challenged right off the bat.  And the guards had to decide how they were going to handle that, and they had to decide it without our input.  I mean, again, this was not Milgram's study, in which we were standing over them, telling them what to do.  And they began to see the prisoners' behavior as an affront to their authority.  And they began to push back.  

Dave:  We would ramp up the general harassment, just sort of crank it up a bit.  Nobody was telling me I shouldn't be doing this.  The professor is the authority here, you know, he's the prisoner warden.  He's not stopping me.  

Female Prisoner:  This is unbelievable.  They took our clothes.  

Guard:  Hands off the door.  

Dave:  There was, the first evening, a kind of rebellion that took place.  

Dr. Zimbardo:  The prisoners rebelled.  They barricaded themselves in their cells, said, "We refuse to come out."  They took off their numbers.  They didn't want to be de-individuated.  They started cursing the guards to their face.  And the key, the key turning point was, the guards began to think of them as dangerous prisoners.  

And so the guards formulated to plan to use fire extinguishers . . . took the doors down, took the prisoners out, stripped them naked, and essentially broke the rebellion in a purely physical way.  

[7:10]

Guard:  Take your bed and your clothes . . . [Indistinct.] 

Craig:  From that point on, the study was as remarkable a series of events as I have ever seen.  

It was a real laboratory for Zimbardo and I to watch human nature transformed in a very rapid way in the face of a very powerful situation.  

Dr. Zimbardo:  People really suffered.  The guards did terrible things to the prisoners.  They punished them by putting them in solitary confinement, which was a small closet.  You couldn't sit, and it was dark, and dank, actually.  

Dr. Maslach:  Every hour, every day, there's a teeny bit more of an increment.  And they're stepping up taunting the prisoners, they're stepping up not letting them sleep, they're stepping . . . I don't think, from one minute to the next, the people who were in it see the change, see the difference.  

Guard:  You've got a nice friend.  He's going to see to it that you don't get blankets tonight.  

Dr. Zimbardo:  And then the next key thing happened, besides rebellion.  Prisoner 8612, he was the first to have an emotional breakdown.  

Male Prisoner:  I feel really fucked up inside.  I don't know, I gotta go, to a doctor, anything.  I mean, Jesus Christ, I'm burning up inside!  Don't ya know?  I fucked up.  I don't know how to explain.  I'm all fucked up inside!  I want out!!  I want out now!!  

Dave:  At the time, if you had questioned me about the effect I was having, I would say, well, you know, they must be a wimp, they must be weak or they're faking, because I wouldn't have believed that what I was doing could actually cause somebody to have a nervous breakdown.  It was just us sort of getting our jollies with it, you know.  Let's be like puppeteers here, let's make these people do things.  

Guard:  What if I told you to get down on that floor and fuck the floor?  What would you do then?  

Man:  The guards now began to escalate their use of power.  Some of them had prisoners clean out toilet bowls with their bare hands; they now taunt, humiliate, degrade the prisoners in front of each other; and they exert arbitrary control over the prisoners.  

[9:18]

Dr. Zimbardo:  They keep thinking of more and more unusual things to do.  And very soon after the fourth day, things begin to turn sexual.  

Guard:  You be the bride of Frankenstein and you be Frankenstein.  I want you to walk over here like Frankenstein, and say that you love 2093.  

Dave:  If you want to fully sort of humiliate somebody, then you want to get them in those things where their biggest fears are.  And a lot of us have a lot of sexual hangups.  So, it was part of that effort to humiliate them even further.  

Guard:  Get up close.  Get up close.  

Male Prisoner:  I love you, 2093.  I love you, 2093.  

Guard:  You're mine, 2093!  You get down and do ten push-ups.  

Craig:  The guards knew that, had the coin come up heads rather than tails, they would have had the dress on rather than the uniform on.  They knew that.  So they certainly knew that the prisoners being mistreated had done nothing wrong to deserve the mistreatment.  And yet, the roles themselves were so powerful, and the environment itself was so powerful, that they ended up punishing those prisoners as though they had done something wrong.  

[Prisoners chanting:]  Prisoner 819 did a bad thing.  

Richard:  We were told to chant something about how he was a bad prisoner.  And at the time I went along with it, I was thinking, what does this matter?  We didn't believe it, but we go along and chant it.  

[Prisoners chanting:]  Because of what prisoner 819 did, my cell is a mess.  

[10:44]

Dr. Zimbardo:  That night, he had a breakdown.  Every day after that, another prisoner broke down, in a similar way, broke down, an extreme stress reaction, that we released another one on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.  

Dave:  Nobody who was in that study could deny that the prisoner breakdowns were genuine.  They were scary to see, they were upsetting to us, they were unexpected, but you were very clearly the real thing.  At some level, we understood that something was happening that we were no longer in control of.  It was damaging people, we didn't quite have a grasp on quite what to do about it.  One of the mistakes we made was that we hadn't built in time to step back and to look at what was happening and call it what it was, which was mistreatment.  We were caught up in the events that were taking place.  

Guard:  Well, you can keep your blankets, and 416 will stay in another day.  

We got three against one.  Keep your blankets.  416, you're going to be in there for a while, so just get used to it.  

Male Narrator:  On the fifth day of the study, Zimbardo invited his girlfriend, recent Psychology graduate Christina Maslach, to visit the prison.  

Dr. Maslach:  I had heard bits and pieces, uh, from Phil, uh, about what was going on.  And then when I was down there that evening, it really was kinda, wow.  The thing that really got to me was when some of the guards took the prisoners down the hall to the men's room.  

Dr. Zimbardo:  She looks out and sees a line of prisoners with paper bags over their heads, each one of them holding on to one shoulder.  

Dr. Maslach:  And they're leading them down the hall.  And Phil comes over and says, "Look, look!  Look at that!"  And I looked up and something about it--you know, it was the dehumanizing, demeaning kind of treatment, I just--I couldn't watch it.  

Dr. Zimbardo:  And she said, "It's terrible what you're doing to those boys," and she got tears in her eyes.  I said, "What?"  And she runs out.  And I'm furious, I'm saying, "Look, this is"--I run outside, I say, "Look, this is dynamics of human behavior.  Look, it's fascinating, the power of the situation, all . . . So, I'm giving her all the psychological basis, and, "What kind of psychologist are you?  You don't appreciate this."  And she said . . . 

Dr. Maslach:  "I don't understand.  You're a stranger to me.  I don't understand this.  How could you not see what I see?  You're a caring, compassionate person.  I know you from all of the other things.  Something's going on here."  

Dr. Zimbardo:  And then the next thing she said, which had an equally big impact, is, "I'm not sure I want to have anything to do with you, if this is the real you."  And that was a slap in the face.  She was saying, "You've changed.  The power of the situation has transformed you from the person I thought I knew to this person I don't know."  At that moment I said, "You're right.  We've got to end it."  

[13:36]

Male Narrator:  After only six days, Dr. Zimbardo shut down his experiment.