Multimedia Collection

Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment

VHS
50 minutes
HV6089 .Q541 1991

This 50-minute documentary of a classic experiment in social psychology began on Sunday morning August 14, 1971, with the surprise arrests of students by the city police. It was terminated prematurely on August 20, because the situation had become so volatile that the researchers felt they no longer had control over the guards and the safety of their research subjects. This unique film reveals the chronology of the transition of good into evil, of normal into abnormal. New film, flashback editing, follow-ups 20-years later, and an original music score combine to make this an invaluable teaching resource for educators.

The day after the Stanford Prison Experiment, several guards and prisoners were killed at nearby San Quentin Prison in an alleged escape attempt by George Jackson, followed a few weeks later by the tragic mass murder of rioting prisoners and hostage guards at New York's Attica Prison. Does this mock prison study tell us anything about the causes of such violence in real prisons? Should this unethical research have been allowed to continue for a week, or even permitted to begin? What does it reveal about the nature of power and helplessness, and about the relevance of the prisoner-guard metaphor in everyday life?

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Criminology

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