Netflix's Unscripted Series ‘The New Stanford Prison Experiment’ Puts 30 Volunteers in a Real Prison to Ask If Power Corrupts
The six-episode series revives psychology’s most notorious study more than 50 years after the 1971 original was shut down early.
Summary
Netflix has ordered an unscripted series titled The New Stanford Prison Experiment, restaging the infamous 1971 study for a modern audience
The first season runs six 45-minute episodes and places 30 volunteers into a real prison, randomly split into guards and prisoners
The series revisits the ethical questions raised by the original experiment, which was halted early after participants assigned as guards mistreated those cast as prisoners
Netflix is reviving one of psychology’s most contested studies with The New Stanford Prison Experiment, an unscripted series set to debut October 21. The show hands the premise of the 1971 original to 30 volunteers, who enter a functioning prison and are randomly assigned as either guards or prisoners to test how far ordinary people will follow the roles handed to them.
Season one comprises six 45-minute episodes that track the participants as they settle into a system of hierarchy, power, and control. According to the official synopsis, the series probes whether people inevitably conform to their assigned roles or whether empathy, morality, and individuality can hold out against the pressure to comply, framing the whole exercise around a single question: does power corrupt?
That question is inseparable from the study’s history. The original Stanford Prison Experiment was run on the Stanford campus in 1971 by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo, and though it was designed to last two weeks, it was shut down in under a week after those playing guards began abusing those cast as prisoners. The fallout, alongside other research of the era, helped push the adoption of stricter safeguards for human research subjects, and the episode has since been retold across books, documentaries, and scripted work, including the 2015 feature The Stanford Prison Experiment starring Billy Crudup as Zimbardo.
For the producers, that fraught legacy is the point rather than an obstacle. The series comes from Alfred Street Industries, with an executive producing team of Jane Lipsitz, Dan Cutforth, Nan Strait, Dan Volpe, Jeff Grogan, and Mike Odair. “The Stanford Prison Experiment has always fascinated me,” Lipsitz said, noting that despite the study’s serious ethical flaws, its core question of how power shapes ethical choices feels only more relevant now. She described the chance to restage the social experiment as one of the most intense and nerve-wracking projects the team had taken on.
The New Stanford Prison Experiment premieres October 21.
