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principle of social psychological theory. But one criticism of cognitive dissonance research has been difficult to rebut. The researchers almost always gulled the volunteers into doing things they would not ordinarily do (such as lying for money), subjected them without their consent to strenuous or embarrassing experiences, or revealed to them aspects of themselves that damaged their self-esteem. The investigators “debriefed” subjects after the experiment, explaining the real purpose, the reason deception had been necessary, and the benefit to science of their participation. This was intended to restore to them their sense of well-being, but critics have insisted that it is unethical to subject other people to such experiences without their knowledge and consent.29

The Psychology of Imprisonment

These ethical problems were not peculiar to dissonance studies; they existed in more severe form in other kinds of sociopsychological research. A famous case in point is an experiment conducted in 1971 by Professor Philip G. Zimbardo, a social psychologist at Stanford University, and three colleagues.30 To study the social psychology of imprisonment, they enlisted undergraduate men as volunteers in a simulation of prison life, in which each would play the part of a guard or a prisoner. All volunteers were interviewed and given personality tests; twenty-one middle-class whites were selected after being rated emotionally stable, mature, and law-abiding. By the flip of a coin, ten were designated as prisoners, eleven as guards, for the duration of a two-week experiment.

The “prisoners” were “arrested” by police one quiet Sunday morning, handcuffed, booked at the police station, taken to the “prison” (a set of cells built in the basement of the Stanford psychology building), and there stripped, searched, deloused, and issued uniforms. The guards were supplied with billy clubs, handcuffs, whistles, and keys to the cells; they were told that their job was to maintain “law and order” in the prison and that they could devise their own methods of prisoner control. The warden (a colleague of Zimbardo’s) and guards drew up a list of sixteen rules the prisoners had to obey: they were to be silent at meals, rest periods, and after lights out; they were to eat at mealtimes but no other time; they were to address one another by their ID number and any guard as Mr. Correctional Officer, and so on. Violation of any rule could result in punishment.

The relations between guards and prisoners quickly assumed a classic pattern: the guards began to think of the prisoners as inferior and dangerous, the prisoners to view the guards as bullies and sadists. As one guard reported:

I was surprised at myself…I made them call each other names and clean out the toilets with their bare hands. I practically considered the prisoners cattle, and I kept thinking I have to watch out for them in case they try something.

In a few days the prisoners organized a rebellion. They tore off their ID numbers and barricaded themselves inside their cells by shoving beds against the doors. The guards sprayed them with a fire extinguisher to drive them back from the doors, burst into their cells, stripped them, took away their beds, and in general thoroughly intimidated them.

The guards, from that point on, kept making up additional rules, waking the prisoners frequently at night for head counts, forcing them to perform tedious and useless tasks, and punishing them for “infractions.” The prisoners, humiliated, became obsessed by the unfairness of their treatment. Some grew disturbed, one so much so that by the fifth day the experimenters began to consider releasing him before the end of the experiment.

The rapid development of sadism in the guards was exemplified by the comments of one of them who, before the experiment, said that he was a pacifist, was nonaggressive, and could not imagine himself mal-treating another person. By the fifth day he noted in his diary:

I have singled him [one prisoner] out for special abuse both because he begs for it and because I simply