the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, where college student volunteers were randomly assigned to play guards and prisoners in a simulated prison, was cut short after just six days because the guards behavior toward the prisoners got so abusive. for decades it was taught in nearly every psychology class as proof of how quickly ordinary people can turn cruel given power and a role. more recently though, released recordings and interviews from the 2010s revealed the researchers had actively coached the guards to act harsher, which seriously undermined the natural behavior the study claimed to show. today it's widely considered more of a flawed, staged demonstration than valid science, even though it's still discussed for what it revealed about role-playing and authority.
finding out it was way more coached than presented for decades was such a gut punch for anyone who studied psych in school
still get taught sometimes as an example, just now alongside a whole section on why the methodology was bad, which is honestly a more useful lesson