The psychological experiment is back in the news thanks to the Netflix unscripted show ‘The New Stanford Prison Experiment’

NEED TO KNOW

• The 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment ended after six days when students assigned as guards and prisoners became deeply immersed in their roles
• Several former participants reunited for a 2024 National Geographic documentary two years prior to Netflix’s The New Stanford Prison Experiment
• Participants later pursued careers including education, media production and mortgage lending

The controversial 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment is back in the news thanks to the Netflix series The New Stanford Prison Experiment.

Jerry Shue, Chuck Burton, Dave Eshleman, Doug Korpi, John Loftus, Clay Ramsay, Karl Van Orsdol, Glenn Gee, John Mark and Richard Yacco were among the 24 male students who participated in the original trial, which was conducted by psychology professor Philip G. Zimbardo at Stanford University.

For $15 a day, the men agreed to spend two weeks in a makeshift prison in the basement of the school’s psychology department. They were randomly assigned the roles of “guard” or “prisoner,” testing to “understand the development of norms and the effects of roles, labels, and social expectations in a simulated prison environment,” per Zimbardo’s website.

While participants were expected to stay for one to two weeks, the experiment quickly devolved as the volunteers posing as guards became abusive and dehumanizing to their prisoner volunteers. Zimbardo shut the experiment down after six days.

“The prisoners in this study were a downtrodden lot by the end of it,” lead researcher and study analyst Craig Haney told Stanford Magazine for their July/August 2011 issue. “Even the guys who didn’t break down were hurting. This was a really difficult experience.”

So where are the original participants of the Stanford Prison Experiment today? Here’s everything to know about their lives now.

Who are the Stanford Prison Experiment participants?

While not all of the participants’ names have been made public, many have come forward to speak about their experience.

Burton, Van Orsdol, Loftus, Mark and Eshleman — the latter of whom served as the unofficial leader of the guards and went by the nickname “John Wayne” — were among the assigned “guards” who lent their voices to the 2024 National Geographic docuseries The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth. Meanwhile, Shue, Ramsay, Gee and Korpi spoke on behalf of the “prisoners.”

Other participants, including “prisoner” Yacco, have also shared their experiences in interviews over the years.

The majority of the participants envisioned themselves as prisoners before the experiment took place — not guards. “We were all rebellious, young … anti-war long-haired kids,” Burton told The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth. “Not one person could put themselves into the mindset of being a guard.”

In a talk show appearance shown in the documentary, Zimbardo agreed, saying, “When we began, there was no difference between the people who were gonna play guards and the people who were gonna play prisoners.”

What are the Stanford Prison Experiment participants known for?

After randomly assigning “guard” or “prisoner” roles by coin flip, Zimbardo encouraged the guards to think of themselves as real prison guards.

Each group reportedly believed that the study would focus on the other group, per CBS News. However, in The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth, Eshleman claimed that he and other participants believed that Zimbardo was hoping to prove that prisons were an “evil environment.”

“After all of these instructions, I felt that we were all on the same page with what we wanted to see come out of this,” Eshleman said in the docuseries. “Given the times and given the fact that we were students and very anti-establishment, we would have done anything to prove that this prison system was an evil institution.”

Real Palo Alto, Calif., police officers arrested each volunteer “prisoner” at their homes for armed robbery, booked them and put them in holding cells before transporting them to the makeshift prison.

As the days went on, the guards began being harsher to the prisoners. While the guards couldn’t harm the prisoners, Zimbardo told them they should make them feel “powerless,” per Stanford Magazine. In The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth, researcher Thibault le Texier alleged that Zimbardo gave the guards a list of punishments that they could impose upon prisoners — contrary to Zimbardo’s claim that their reactions were “spontaneous.”

During the experiment, Mark alleged that one of Zimbardo’s graduate students — who was acting as warden — urged him to be “tougher” on inmates, per Time. Zimbardo and the guards deliberately sleep-deprived prisoners and didn’t allow them to shower, Yacco and Mark told Stanford Magazine. Prisoners were taunted, stripped naked and forced to use plastic buckets as toilets, per the publication.

“In this very short period of time, we were endeavoring to break them down,” Burton said in The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth.

When the prisoners got rebellious, the guards punished them by taking away their beds and clothes, breaking up their sleep and locking them in a makeshift hole, per CBS News.

“Locking them in the hole was the most disturbing,” Van Orsdol said in Unlocking the Truth. “It was a small closet which was very dark and dank … and it would be quite a frightening experience.”

Multiple prisoners left the experiment early after going to the “parole board,” which was made up of psychology department secretaries and graduate students, per CBS News.

Multiple parents began calling Zimbardo, requesting to contact a lawyer to get their children out of “prison.” The experiment ultimately ended after six days when his girlfriend, Stanford Ph.D Christina Maslach, visited the basement and was appalled by the conditions.

“The prisoners come out, and the guards put bags over their heads, chain their feet together and make them put their hands on each other’s shoulders, like a chain gang,” Zimbardo told Stanford Magazine. “They’re yelling and cursing at them. Christina starts tearing up. She said, ‘I can’t look at this.’ ”

What effect did the Stanford Prison Experiment have?

The Stanford Prison Experiment has been debunked in the years since it was first conducted, with critics noting that researchers never got fully informed consent from participants and it didn’t adhere to modern ethical standards because of the dehumanization and abuse the participants suffered.

However, it has become largely culturally significant. In addition to being cited in copious textbooks and research papers, the experiment was referenced in several films, including 2010’s The Experiment starring Adrien Brody and 2015’s The Stanford Prison Experiment starring Billy Crudup. It also served as the basis for several follow-up experiments, such as the BBC prison study.

Zimbardo — who died in 2024 — later became an authority on prison, testifying in front of Congress about his findings and being part of the defense team for the Abu Ghraib prison torture case in the early 2000s. However, the experiment ultimately did not result in widespread prison reforms.

“Research and knowledge rarely changes systems,” Zimbardo told CBS News in December 2011.

Several of the participants dealt with anxiety and depression during the experiment, resulting in their removal by the parole board, per History.com. However, Zimbardo told Democracy Now! in March 2007 that participants experienced no lasting negative effects.

Additionally, Eshleman told National Geographic that he continues to get hate mail for his role in the study.

Where are the Stanford Prison Experiment participants now?

Eshleman, who was known to the prisoners as “John Wayne,” owns and operates a mortgage company, per his LinkedIn.  He also writes and directs plays, he told the docuseries.

Meanwhile, Burton, who worked as a tax preparer for more than 30 years, was living in Mexico for much of the year under the name of Carlos, he told the docuseries in 2024. “I spend my life outdoors as much as possible,” he said.

Korpi, who left the experiment early after staging a rebellion, became a prison psychologist at the San Francisco County Jail, according to a June 2008 interview Zimbardo gave to NPR.

Yacco also left the experiment one day early due to depression, according to Stanford Magazine. The community college student went on to have a career in radio and TV production before becoming a teacher at an Oakland, Calif., public high school.

According to his Linkedin, Van Orsdol went on to become a global energy and sustainability advisor focusing on climate change and adaptation, community energy development, project assessment and energy management.

Shue, who moved to Moab, Utah, in 2005, per the Moab Times, is a retired educator and serves on the board of directors for the city’s Youth Garden Project.

Mark lived in the San Francisco area and worked as a medical coder for Kaiser Permanente for decades, per Stanford Magazine in 2011.

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