The Real Lord of the Flies

So you think you’re a decent, kind, upright person. The kind of person who would never hurt anyone or descend to sadistic, cruel actions. You watch the news with horror and incomprehension at the violence and evil in the world. I could never do that, you think. How could anyone do that?

A landmark psychology experiment in 1971 tore away our sense of of our civilised selves. The Stanford prison experiment was meant to last two weeks but was terminated after six days when violence, sadism, cruelty and psychological problems spread among the previously “normal” college students who had volunteered to take part in the experiment.

William Golding made up a story along the same lines in his chilling novel “The Lord of the Flies” - where a group of schoolboys stranded on an island literally revert to trival savagery and human sacrifice. We might discount that as fiction. But the Stanford experiment exposes that our primeval human nature is just beneath the surface, just as Golding imagined for us. And it took only six days for it to emerge in these otherwise normal, decent college students.

Ever since I learnt about the experiment in psychology books, I’ve been horrifyingly fascinated by what it reveals. A documentary about it is now available on YouTube, uploaded in 5 parts.

Part One - introduction and background to the experiment; Day One

Part Two - a rebellion on Day Two

Part Three - “Prisoner 819 did a bad thing”

Part Four - Sadism and authority

Part Five - Debrief: “I started to get so abusive… but no-one said anything to stop me”

You can find out more at the Stanford Prison Experiment website - click here

The BBC repeated the experiment for a reality TV programme in 2002, which also had to be aborted early (although the BBC denied that the early termination was due to psychological issues):

This is the report in the Guardian.

This is the report on BBC News