Stanford Prison Experiment
- Still from German movie "Das Experiment"
You probably don't want to look at the web site that documents the Stanford Prison Experiment. I know I didn't. As a work of fiction, Das Experiment was harrowing enough. True, it made for a more thrilling entertainment spectacle, but the original experiment was supposed to prove something. Some of the tactics used by the scientists to accelerate the feelings of alienation and impotence among their subjects are incredibly horrific.
One of the scariest things is that the scientist who was principally responsible for ending the experiment had walked into the experiment late and therefore was more likely to be startled than those who had been planning it for months and observing it for five days. Even so, she had difficulty resisting the group pressure to be enthusiastic about what was going on in the name of science.
2 April, 2002
