Prison

Was the Stanford Prison Experiment different because of when it was run? It depends when it was run, of course -- I recall it was the 1960s and so almost certainly Boomers with a Silent in charge.

Actually it was 1971, although the person in charge, Philip Zimbardo, was in fact a Silent (b. 1933)  I’ll avoid the rest of the details for a second to make unencumbered predictions, but it would still make sense (based on year and age) that the students were Boomers (Prophet archetype).

What I recall (very quickly)  was that they divided students into prisoners and guards. Immediately upon being placed in their sections, they took on their roles: The prisoners became subordinate, the guards sadistic. That seems possibly related to what they THOUGHT the roles should be, so not only might it have been about what archetype they belonged to, but also to the current state of prisons in 1971 - not to mention then-ordinary perceptions about that state. Plus the socio-economic views of the participants, who happened to be Stanford students,and very well could have expected that the lower-class prisoners should act a certain way and the guards needed to keep them under control.

Leaving  the role-playing and that aside for a moment, what might we predict of a straight Boomer view, that might be different today? 

• Reactives might take on gangsta roles, with the guards more concerned about keeping themselves safe than keeping the inmates down.
• Civics might resist the roles, wanting to see themselves as a team working together. 
• Silents could see it as keeping order - Tom Hanks in The Green Mile, say, or the warden in Shawshank Redemption. (Which have the disadvantage of being not only fictional but also both written by Boomer Stephen King and directed by Reactive Frank Darabont, so possibly a bit of bias there.)
• And (bringing it back around) Prophets (like the young Boomers in the original experiment) might see themselves as the only saviors of the entire prison, and if they don’t do their job perfectly, everyone would be in trouble.

What's (if anything) can we find to support or counter this? Or even the basic assertion that the results indicate a tendency among Prophets more than people in other generational groups?

To start, Zimbardo acknowledged that he was unable to keep scientific controls. According to Wikipedia, at least, there are concerns that the experiment was not reproducible - that is, there's no guarantee that the guard and prisoner tendencies are applicable to any group besides those in the original experiment.

Although it may be worth noting that the prisoners didn't immediately accept their subservient roles. They resisted, symbolically and literally, almost from the start. It wasn't until the "guards'" reactions (which included making going to the bathroom a privilege, not a right) that they began accepting their place.

One possible real-life example is the incidents at Abu Ghraib. Most of those named were Reactives. Lynndie England is the only Millennial, born in 1982  - the first Millennial year. The above prediction assumed reproducing the experiment more directly - that the Reactives chosen as prisoners would act like then-current views of prison. In any case, what was predicted doesn't appear to have been the outcome. However, it could be seen as controlling (more or less) for socio-economic status (enlisted military and Stanford students might have little in common but age) and actual expectation of safety . 

It's probably worth comparing this with the outcome of The Third Wave (not the Toffler version). A high school teacher introduced a student activity that was actually modeled on fascist techniques, in order to show how easily people accepted and even encouraged what had happened in Nazi Germany.  That was also in Palo Alto, although 4 years earlier in 1967. Being high school students, the participants were definitely Boomers.