It was the year 1971, when a philosopher from Stanford University in America, Philip Zimbardo, conducted an experiment that shook the entire world of philosophy and psychology. The experiment became one of the most controversial studies ever done. Its purpose was to find out whether human beings are inherently good or evil, or if their behavior depends on the situations and environments they are placed in.
To test this question, Zimbardo created a fake prison in the basement of his university. The setup was complete, with iron-barred cells for prisoners and separate rooms for guards. Twenty-four university students were chosen to take part in the experiment. Half of them were assigned the role of prisoners, and the other half became guards. The experiment began in a dramatic way — real police officers arrested the “prisoners” from their homes, handcuffed them, and brought them to the mock prison. Once there, they were stripped, cleaned, and made to wear loose uniforms. Their names were taken away; they were no longer individuals, just numbers.
The guards, on the other hand, were given uniforms, sunglasses, whistles, and sticks. They were instructed that their duty was to maintain discipline and order inside the prison. Physical violence was not allowed, but apart from that, they could do whatever they thought necessary to control the inmates.
At first, everyone treated it as a joke. The prisoners laughed, the guards hesitated, and the atmosphere felt playful. But within just one day, everything changed. The guards began to feel powerful. They started blowing whistles, shouting orders, and punishing the prisoners by making them do push-ups. The next day, when the prisoners rebelled by blocking the doors with their mattresses, the guards lost control. They used fire extinguishers to spray gas inside the cells, stripped the prisoners naked, and forced them into submission.
From that point, the situation kept getting worse. Some guards made the prisoners clean toilets with their bare hands, took away their blankets, and forced them to stay awake all night. The shocking part was that these were the same students who, only a day earlier, had been friends. The prisoners began breaking down emotionally. Some cried uncontrollably, some became physically ill, and one had to be released the very next day because he could not tolerate the pressure. The others begged to be freed, but the written agreement they had signed before the experiment trapped them psychologically. They felt completely helpless, as if there was no way out.
Even Zimbardo himself started thinking like a real prison warden. The experiment was supposed to last two weeks, but things had gone so far out of control that Zimbardo’s partner, Christina Maslach, finally confronted him and said, “This is not an experiment anymore. This is cruelty. These are not prisoners, they are human beings.” Those words jolted Zimbardo back to reality, and he immediately called off the experiment.
Though it lasted only six days, the Stanford Prison Experiment revealed a dark truth about human nature. It showed that power and environment can completely change a person. Power can turn an ordinary man into a cruel one, and the loss of power can make the same person weak and broken. This transformation of human behavior under the influence of power is known as the “Lucifer Effect.”
Later, the experiment faced several criticisms. Some said that Zimbardo was not a proper scientist; others argued that the participants were merely acting. Yet, the impact of this study was so profound that even today it is discussed in philosophy, sociology, and political science. The essence of the experiment remains the same: evil does not always come from devils or madmen; sometimes it comes from ordinary people.
This experiment reminds us that light and darkness both exist within every one of us. The real question is not what we are inside, but what kind of environment shapes us. Because in the end, it is not just who we are that matters — it is what power and circumstance can make us become.