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Recent revelations of what Philip Zimbardo and his fellow researchers told participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment have come to light and cast a shadow of doubt on how the Experiment was conducted in the summer of 1971. One participant assigned to the role of a guard was told to be “tough” toward participants assigned to the role of prisoners. In an orientation meeting with the guards, Zimbardo specified how to treat prisoners: “We can create fear in them.” The abuse of prisoners did not emerge spontaneously as a result of the guards identity with and conformity to abusive roles in an oppressive system—contrary to the claim made by the Experiment’s investigators. The guards were instructed to do so.

This did not come as a surprise to Bill Roller. In 2014, he and Philip Zimbardo collaborated in a social psychology experiment with a group of volunteer participants whose process we recorded on a video called, Group Dynamics and the New Heroism: The Ethical Alternative to the Stanford Prison Experiment. In the video, Zimbardo says: “ In my authoritarian role as warden, I implicitly encouraged the process of scapegoating by not stopping abuses by guards who humiliated selected prisoners openly and often.”

From the perspective of group dynamics and group process research, the implicit and nonverbal communication to participants by the leader of the Experiment is a powerful means of influencing behavior—in some ways no less potent than explicit and verbal communication. Zimbardo always emphasized how the situational context shapes behavior. But the situational context always contains the implicit and nonverbal communication. As the Stanford Prison Experiment comes under wider scrutiny—those who do the retrospective research might do well to study the video in order to assess how the social psychology community could have missed for so long Zimbardo’s key role as warden influencing the guards. The video will help researchers revise how the Stanford Prison Experiment is interpreted and taught.

Bill Roller is principal investigator and co-author of the Berkeley Civic Courage and Heroism Experiment: The Group Dynamics of Individuals Acting in Concert to Advance Ethical Goals in the Public Interest, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY, Vol.67, No.3, July, 2017.