Research on prisoner/guard interactions

[jenk]

On the fifth evening, Christina Maslach came in to have a look at her future husband's project. She was a new professor at Berkeley, and she was shocked by what she saw.

She and Zimbardo argued about it, but the next day he ended the experiment, eight days early.

Zimbardo realized he had gotten into his role as prison superintendent as much as the students had gotten into theirs. Things that seemed horribly wrong to Maslach, an outsider, had become normal to the participants.

- Jerry Large column