Variations on a Surreal Situation

The transformation of an experimental situation into a real prison with real guards and real prisoners is one of the most striking aspects of the official version of the Stanford Prison Experiment—but it is not what happened. Unable to reproduce the effects of long-term imprisonment, Zimbardo has created an unrealistic prison. Psychology distinguishes between two senses in which an experiment can be said to be realistic: experimental realism (the situation seems realistic to the subject) and mundane realism (the events occurring in the lab are likely to occur in the real world). The Stanford Prison Experiment failed on both fronts.