The Stanford Prison Experiment lasted less than a week in 1971, yet its sweeping claims about authority and human nature survived for decades. Netflix is now reviving that notorious legacy with “The New Stanford Prison Experiment,” a reality series that returns the disputed study to public view.

American psychologist Philip Zimbardo built a mock prison in the basement of a Stanford University building and selected 24 male college students from more than 70 newspaper respondents. He randomly assigned them as prisoners or guards to explore whether ordinary people would give and follow orders under a powerful situation.

The experiment was intended to last up to two weeks, but it rapidly spiraled under the official account. Within 36 hours, one prisoner appeared to have a mental breakdown, while a rebellion on the second day was suppressed by guards using fire extinguishers, forced nudity and confinement in a dark closet.

The study unfolded amid unrest over prison conditions and the treatment of incarcerated people. Weeks after it ended, authorities used deadly force to thwart an uprising at Attica Correctional Facility in New York, resulting in 43 deaths and bringing further media attention to Zimbardo’s work.

The prisoners had not been told that local police would realistically arrest them at home. Inside the mock prison, they were strip searched, dressed in loose smocks without underwear and required to wear nylon stockings over their heads to simulate shaved hair.

Guards received uniforms, mirrored sunglasses and wooden batons, along with instructions to maintain order without physically harming prisoners. Zimbardo served as prison superintendent, placing the person directing the study inside the institution he was supposed to observe.

Within four days, three prisoners had been released after showing distress. Christina Maslach, then a recent Stanford graduate in social psychology who later married Zimbardo, visited on the fifth day, was horrified by what she witnessed and helped prompt Zimbardo to stop the experiment the following day.

Recordings, video and interviews later showed that Zimbardo interacted with participants, coached guards and prevented some prisoners from leaving when they first requested it. Catherine Sanderson, Poler Family Professor of Psychology at Amherst College, called his heavy involvement a major problem because he entered the study with beliefs, expectations and possible goals.

Zimbardo had partly conceived the study as a follow up to Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments. In Milgram’s first study, 65% of participants continued administering what they believed were increasingly painful electric shocks to the maximum level, despite hearing apparent distress that was actually performed by an actor.

Modern ethical research rules would create serious obstacles for both studies because of deception, psychological harm, conflicts of interest and inadequate informed consent. Psychology later faced a broader reliability reckoning when a 2015 effort replicated statistically significant results in only 36% of 100 studies, compared with 97% in the originals.

A BBC commissioned revisit produced a strikingly different result. The 2002 television series “The Experiment” placed six guards and nine prisoners in a prison built on a movie studio lot, but the guards did not become tyrannical, and the prisoners eventually gained the upper hand and created a shared community.

Researchers Stephen Reicher and Alex Haslam did not coach the guards through an authoritative leader. Reicher said the guards failed to unite or impose power, while the prisoners developed a shared identity, although their inability to control the larger environment eventually increased their attraction to authoritarianism.

French historian Thibault Le Texier later reconstructed the Stanford study’s timeline using recordings and transcripts. “From the very beginning, the Stanford Prison Experiment was organized and planned as a show,” he told CNN. “It was more theater than science.”

Other accounts further damaged the famous narrative. Professor Stephen Scott-Bottoms interviewed participants, including Doug Korpi, whose supposed breakdown was an act intended to secure his release because he could not study for an upcoming graduate school admission test.

A National Geographic documentary released shortly after Zimbardo died in October 2024 featured participants describing the experiment as acting and associating it with fraud. Zimbardo defended its validity and openly described the basement prison as an improvisational drama with prisoners and guards as actors.

Netflix’s six episode version was filmed in a real prison and does not claim to be a scientific experiment. Its 30 participants, including three women, underwent psychological screenings and could leave by using a safe word, while guards received training and were told to take control.

The heavily structured show introduces major changes as it progresses, favoring reality television over experimental neutrality. Reicher said the original remains debated, with some rejecting it entirely and others arguing that it still offers lessons about leadership.