Legacy

The Stanford Prison Experiment was widely covered by the press immediately after its completion. Zimbardo gave dozens of interviews and testified before Congress; a 19-minute documentary was shot for NBC Chronolog two months after the Stanford Prison Experiment; and all this was before Zimbardo had finished analyzing his data. The impressive media career of the Stanford Prison Experiment after 1972 culminated with the BBC prison experiment (2002), Abu Ghraib (2004) and the publication of Zimbardo’s best-selling book The Lucifer Effect (2007). The experiment was extensively covered in psychology, sociology, and criminology textbooks. It is thus an appropriate vehicle to explore the long gray continuum stretching between hard-tested science and pseudo-science.