REPLY Debate Around Leadership in the Stanford Prison Experiment: Reply to Zimbardo and Haney (2020) and Chan et al. (2020)

Access to the Stanford University archive has revealed new material that makes it possible to debate the precise nature and causes of events in the Stanford Prison Experiment. What the authors see as important is that these materials show the experimenters engaged in processes of identity leadership, which encouraged guard cruelty by presenting it as necessary for the achievement of noble collective goals. However, the authors encourage students, teachers, and researchers to engage with this new material themselves to explore alternative perspectives on what actually occurred in the study.