Editing Stanford prison experiment (section)

==== Prisoner 8612 ====
The first prisoner to leave the experiment was Douglas Korpi, prisoner 8612. After 36 hours, he had an apparent mental breakdown in which he yelled, "Jesus Christ, I'm burning up inside" and "I can't stand another night! I just can't take it anymore!" Upon seeing his suffering, research assistant Craig Haney released Korpi.<ref name=":4" />{{rp|8–11}}

In 1992, in a documentary movie about the study, ''Quiet Rage'', Korpi asserted that the prison experiment had deeply affected him, and that experience caused him to later become a prison psychologist.<ref name="auto" /> However, in a 2017 interview, Korpi stated that his breakdown had been fake, and that he did it only so that he could leave and return to studying for his Graduate Record Exam; he had originally thought that he could study while "imprisoned", but the "prison staff" would not allow him. Korpi expressed regret that he had not filed a false imprisonment charge at the time.

Zimbardo responded to this criticism in 2018. First, while this experiment has been criticized overall for its ethics, Zimbardo stated that he needed to treat the breakdown as real and release the prisoner. Further, Zimbardo believes Korpi's 2017 interview was a lie.<ref name="auto" />

[[File:SPE1971-prisoner-breaks-down.jpg|thumb|Prisoner breaks down.|alt=Photo of a white male person sitting in a seminar chair, bending over and hiding his face in his elbow. He is wearing a long white cotton smock and no pants.]]