Stanford Prison Experiment
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
40 free Stanford Prison Experiment trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
In August 1971 a Stanford psychology professor turned a university corridor into a jail and recruited student volunteers to play guards and prisoners. What happened next became one of the most argued-over studies in psychology, a staple of textbooks, documentaries and feature films. This quiz covers the full story: how the volunteers were recruited and given their roles, what the guards and prisoners wore and did, the breakdowns and the rebellion, why the study was stopped early, and what Philip Zimbardo claimed it proved. It also covers the ethics debate, the critics who say the guards were coached, and the screen versions. It suits psychology students revising after watching the film or a classroom video, teachers who want a ready-made check on the key facts, and anyone curious about how ordinary people behave when handed power. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which psychologist's protest ended the Stanford prison experiment, a year before she married Philip Zimbardo?
Christina Maslach
Christina Maslach was the only one of 50 or more outside visitors to question the study's morality. She had just finished her doctorate and came to help interview the participants.
Q 02The Stanford prison experiment was planned to last two weeks, but after how long was it shut down?
Six days
Six days in, Zimbardo called a halt. Videotapes had shown the guards stepping up their abuse in the middle of the night, when they thought no researchers were watching.
Q 03How much per day were the male college students who volunteered for the Stanford prison experiment promised?
$15
$15 a day drew more than 70 applicants. One future guard said he chose the study over summer work at a pizza parlor.
Q 04In which part of the university's psychology building was the mock jail for the Stanford prison experiment built?
The basement
The basement of Jordan Hall had a corridor boarded up at each end to serve as the prison yard. Laboratory doors were swapped for specially made ones with steel bars.
Q 05Which California city's real police force staged surprise arrests to launch the Stanford prison experiment?
Palo Alto
Palo Alto officers turned up unannounced, handcuffed the volunteers, read them their rights and drove them to the station for booking and fingerprinting.
Q 06Which item of the guards' kit in the Stanford prison experiment was inspired by the film Cool Hand Luke?
Mirrored sunglasses
Mirrored sunglasses hid the guards' eyes and emotions, adding to their anonymity. In the film, a silent rifle-carrying overseer always wears a pair.
Q 07How were volunteers in the Stanford prison experiment sorted into guards and prisoners before the study began?
A coin flip
A coin flip split the group, so both sides started out alike. Most prisoners still came to believe the guards had been picked for being bigger, though average height was the same.
Q 08Abuse at which US military prison, exposed in 2004, did Philip Zimbardo liken to his Stanford prison experiment?
Abu Ghraib
Abu Ghraib's guards were, Zimbardo argued, more than a few bad apples. He testified as an expert witness for Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, who still received an eight-year sentence.
Q 09Which former high-school classmate of Philip Zimbardo ran Yale's famous electric-shock obedience experiments?
Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram sat in the same New York high school as Zimbardo. His obedience studies came a decade before the mock jail, and the two are often compared for their ethics.
Q 10Which Hollywood cowboy star's name did prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment give their most brutal guard?
John Wayne
John Wayne was their name for the most macho guard. Researchers later learned that a notorious guard in a Nazi camp near Buchenwald had been called Tom Mix, a cowboy star of an earlier era.
Q 11What did Philip Zimbardo say the Stanford prison experiment showed shapes behaviour more than personality?
Situation
The situation, Zimbardo argued, outweighed character. His team reported that the most and least abusive guards did not differ on personality measures such as authoritarianism.
Q 12What did guards spray at barricaded prisoners to crush the day-two rebellion in the Stanford prison experiment?
A fire extinguisher
A fire extinguisher shot chilling carbon dioxide to force prisoners back from the doors. It was on hand only because a university research panel had worried about fire.
Q 13Which garment, worn with no underclothes, was the prisoner uniform in the Stanford prison experiment?
A smock
Q 21Prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment wore nylon stocking caps as a substitute for which real jail practice?
Head shaving
Head shaving strips away individuality, since many people express themselves through their hair. Zimbardo also called it a way to get people complying with arbitrary rules.
Q 22How did Philip Zimbardo's team find the young men who took part in the Stanford prison experiment?
A newspaper ad
A newspaper ad in the help-wanted pages asked for male college students for a study of prison life. Those with a history of crime, drug abuse or psychological problems were screened out.
Q 23The first prisoner freed from the Stanford prison experiment later said he faked his breakdown to do what?
A smock with an ID on front and back was meant to humiliate quickly. Zimbardo noted that prisoners began to walk, sit and hold themselves differently once they put it on.
Q 14Which exercise did guards in the Stanford prison experiment commonly order as punishment for breaking the rules?
Push-ups
Push-ups struck the researchers as a mild, juvenile penalty at first. One guard made them harsher by stepping on prisoners' backs, or by having other prisoners sit on them.
Q 15What did staff in the Stanford prison experiment call the dark closet used for solitary confinement?
The Hole
The Hole was about two feet wide and two feet deep, just tall enough to stand in. The guards' own rules capped a stay at one hour, a limit they later broke.
Q 16Which branch of the US military paid for the Stanford prison experiment through its research office?
The Navy
The Navy funded the work as a study of antisocial behaviour, hoping to understand conflict between military guards and the prisoners they held.
Q 17Which job title in the mock jail did Philip Zimbardo give himself during the Stanford prison experiment?
Superintendent
Superintendent Zimbardo later admitted the role swallowed him. He caught himself pacing the yard with his hands behind his back, like a general inspecting troops.
Q 18Which Philip Zimbardo book retells the Stanford prison experiment and asks how good people turn evil?
The Lucifer Effect
The Lucifer Effect takes its title from the favoured angel who fell from grace. It reached the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list in 2007.
Q 19After lights-out in the Stanford prison experiment, what were prisoners often forced to use as a toilet?
A bucket
A bucket was left in each cell after the 10 p.m. lock-up. Guards sometimes refused to let prisoners empty it, so the jail soon stank.
Q 20Where on the body did each prisoner in the Stanford prison experiment wear a heavy bolted chain?
On one ankle
On one ankle, day and night. When a sleeping prisoner turned over, the chain struck his other foot and woke him, a reminder that he could not escape even in his dreams.
Study for an exam
Study for an exam, said Douglas Korpi, who had planned to revise for his graduate school entrance test in his cell. Zimbardo called that later account untrue.
Q 24Which protest did late arrival Prisoner 416 stage to try to force his release from the Stanford prison experiment?
A hunger strike
A hunger strike earned him three hours in solitary, triple the guards' own limit. Offered the choice, most fellow prisoners kept their blankets rather than free him.
Q 25Which mental state, long studied by Philip Zimbardo, were Stanford prison experiment uniforms designed to produce?
Deindividuation
Deindividuation is the loss of self-awareness that can come with anonymity in a group. Zimbardo had spent years showing how feeling anonymous could lead ordinary people into antisocial acts.
Q 26Which term for volunteers acting as researchers want did critics apply to the Stanford prison experiment in 1975?
Demand characteristics
Demand characteristics were the charge made by Ali Banuazizi and Siamak Movahedi, who argued the students were simply acting out the roles they had been cast in.
Q 27Which US ethics panel must now approve human studies like the Stanford prison experiment before they can begin?
Institutional review board
Institutional review board approval weighs a study's benefit to science against the risk of harm. Stanford's own human subjects committee cleared the 1971 study, yet Zimbardo later said no such simulation could be run in America again.
Q 28Which broadcaster helped Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher stage a partial re-run of the Stanford prison experiment?
The BBC
The BBC aired the study as The Experiment. Its prisoners united as a group and overthrew their guards, findings very different from Zimbardo's.
Q 29Which actor played Philip Zimbardo in the 2015 film The Stanford Prison Experiment?
Billy Crudup
Billy Crudup led a cast that included Ezra Miller and Tye Sheridan as prisoners. Zimbardo's own site notes that, unlike in the film, the real guards were barred from physical violence.
Q 30At which festival did the 2015 film The Stanford Prison Experiment premiere and win a screenwriting award?
Sundance
Sundance gave Tim Talbott its Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for the script. The film also took the festival's Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize.