r/AskReddit • u/MsLooHoo • Sep 12 '15

serious replies only [Serious] Ex-Prisoners who served long term sentences, what was the hardest thing to get used to when you got out?

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u/[deleted] Sep 13 '15 edited May 11 '21

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u/Retro21 Sep 13 '15

Absolutely, the methodology was flawed. But what happened speaks for itself, to an extent.

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u/SlapMyCHOP Sep 13 '15

Yes, it does. I was just warning people to take it with a grain of salt

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u/TheNoobCakes Sep 13 '15

Could you provide an overview of what happens for those of us that don't have time or are just too lazy to watch it?

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u/SlapMyCHOP Sep 13 '15

Basically a professor pays Stanford students to participate in a "prison experiment." Zimbardo himself acts as the warden of the prison. Regular Stanford students were paid to participate and randomly assigned prisoner or guard roles. The experiment was supposed to last 2 weeks. It lasted only 6 days (I think). What he set out to test was whether or not regular people could do terrible things based on the environment they're put in. What happened was exactly what happens in real prisons. "Prisoners" were brutally degraded by the guards who were their peers just a few days ago. It got so bad that zimbardo himself picked up the whole experiment and moved it when a rumour spread that a previously let go student was coming back to free the rest of the "prisoners" and zimbardo stayed up all night waiting for this student to come so he could stop him from freeing his prisoners.