The Stanford prison experiment

The Stanford Prison experiment was a simulation of prison life that was conducted in 1971 at Stanford university. The participants who were white middle class men, all agreed to participate for 7-14 day experiment for $15 per day, which would be around $90 a day in 2017.

The experiment was conducted in a 35 foot basement in Stanford psychology. There was a total of 24 participants 12 were prisoners with 9  prisoners and 3 alternatives, while the rest were were guards 9 in total and 3 alternatives.

After one day the prisoners started revolting, because of the loss of identity which is called de-individuation. The prisoners lost their identity through being told to wear smocks which had only numbers to identify themselves, and they were only referred to by their numbers rather than real names. The guards started to become violent for the most part, and forced the prisoners to commit foul acts and do cruel activities such as extreme exercises, due to their false sense of power that they had conformed to after wearing the khaki uniforms of prison guards. It had to be stopped after 6 days rather than the intended 12, due to the cruelty occurring in the mock prison.

This relates to our music video as we really wanted to get the idea of de-individuation across so we set our music video in a set that mimics a mental asylum. Just like the prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment that were stuck in a small area. Similarly, our lead singer will be stuck and chained to a chair as he is suffering from mental problems and wants to escape, furthermore we show him free from those mental problems and being stuck in that asylum similar to those that participated in that experiment.