On rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC prison study

Zimbardo, Philip G.

¹ Stanford University, USA

^*Correspondence should be addressed to Philiip Zimbardo, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA (e-mail:[email protected]).

Received 31 August 2005; revised version received 12 October 2005

British Journal of Social Psychology 45(1):p 47-53, March 2006. | DOI: 10.1348/014466605X81720

This commentary offers a critical evaluation of the scientific legitimacy of research generated by television programming interests. It challenges the validity of claims advanced by these researchers regarding the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) and highlights the biases, fallacies and distortions in this study conducted for BBC-TV that attempted a partial replication of my earlier experiment.