I agree it is an interesting result but it isn’t really the way the study has been portrayed. The takeaway, before hearing about this, was that anyone with power will start to abuse it, on their own, if just left to their own devices. But this is not, it now seems, what really happened in the Zimbardo prison guard experiments. So just like with the Milgram shock experiments, important information was missing causing the results to imply a more negative picture of human nature.
I agree it is an interesting result but it isn’t really the way the study has been portrayed. The takeaway, before hearing about this, was that anyone with power will start to abuse it, on their own, if just left to their own devices. But this is not, it now seems, what really happened in the Zimbardo prison guard experiments. So just like with the Milgram shock experiments, important information was missing causing the results to imply a more negative picture of human nature.