Persistent dispositionalism in interactionist clothing: fundamental attribution error in explaining prison abuse.

The Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrated some important lessons about the power of social situations, settings, and structures to shape and transform behavior. At the time the study was done, the authors scrupulously addressed the issue of whether and how the dispositions or personality traits of the participants might have affected the results. Here the authors renew and reaffirm their original interpretation of the results and apply this perspective to some recent socially and politically significant events.