Stanford prison experiment: The movie.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Briefly Noted - Brief article

The infamous 1971 experiment in prison dynamics conducted by Philip Zimbardo has symbolized the authoritarianism in the human psyche ever since. A new film--that portrays Zimbardo (Billy Crudup) placing 24 student volunteers into a mock prison and dividing them into correctional officers and inmates--doesn't challenge the resulting conventional wisdom about the situational nature of morality and the banality of evil. (The guards quickly become abusive and the make-shift cells unsanitary.) But a skeptical modern viewer of The...