#bspsy3-c1

111. Stanford Prison Experiment 1971

Not all guards became monsters. Not all prisoners were helpless. And not all science is as objective as it seems.

What makes it unsettling is not just what happened, but how easily it happened.

“How to Disappear Completely by Radiohead” is a song about dissociation, that moment when reality becomes too overwhelming and the only way to survive is to mentally step away from yourself. Thom Yorke wrote it as a coping mechanism, almost like repeating a mantra to escape anxiety and loss of control. The line “I’m not here, this isn’t happening” captures that feeling of detachment, where identity starts to blur and you stop fully inhabiting yourself.

That’s why it fits the Stanford Prison Experiment so well. In the documentary, participants didn’t just play roles, they slowly lost their sense of self. Prisoners stopped seeing themselves as individuals, and guards detached from empathy by hiding behind authority. Just like the song, the experiment shows how people disappear into situations when the environment becomes too powerful, and how easily identity can slip away when control is taken from you.

My childhood was quiet, spent indoors with my thoughts and imagination. In that calm, i learned how to exist and grow into myself.

“You don’t have to be sorry for doing it on your own” - Matilda by Harry Styles

“While the sense of self grows and evolves over time, with different biological and sociocultural influences, what particular childhood experience made such a lasting impact to who you are today?”

𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓 𝑚𝑒𝑒𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠 🌱⋆ ˚ ⟡