The Stanford Prisoner Experiment - 40 Years On 175
cheros writes "It's now 40 years ago that the Stanford prisoner experiment went ugly so quickly it had to be aborted. Stanford has an interesting piece called The Menace Within that looks back on this momentous psychological experiment. From the article: 'What happened in the basement of the psych building 40 years ago shocked the world. How do the guards, prisoners and researchers in the Stanford Prison Experiment feel about it now?'"
I read title as "Slashdot Prisoner Experiment" (Score:2, Funny)
And it all started to make sense.
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I read it as "Security Prisoner Experiment" and the TSA airport experience suddenly made sense. *sigh*
I thought it was expanded.... (Score:4, Funny)
I thought it was expanded to most modern IT departments ;-)
Re:I thought it was expanded.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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What you say reminds me of my work as a volunteer. I often try to volunteer for various events to help out in the community. I try to avoid the grunt work, but I am willing to take it, to make sure that the job gets done. I'm not talking about highly controversial or political events, either. I'm talking about helping out at the St Patrick's Day parade, Canada Day parade, or Santa Claus parade. I also volunteered at EPIC [an environmental expo]. There are other kinds of events too.
Time and time again, even
The Lucifer Effect (Score:5, Interesting)
By the way, Zimbardo's book about it, The Lucifer Effect is absolutely fascinating. The way they all got so pulled into the experiment is just crazy. Luckily, Zimbardo's grad student girlfriend came around. You see Zimbardo got so pulled into his own role as the experimenter/warden that he lost site of the fact that the experiment had become extremely inhumane and he needed to stop it. They needed new eyes to come in and end it.
What is even more interesting than Zimbardo not ending the thing was the prisoners not ending it. After all, they weren't actually prisoners. They should have just walked away.
He also has a fascinating discussion on Abu Ghraib. He discusses the personalities involved in the events and how it led to it. (The sociopath who started it. His girlfriend Lindy England, who got pulled in. The leader of the facility who couldn't pull the situation under control and who's appeals to superiors fell on death ears.)
It is amazing that we do actually live in a world where people willing become slaves. This experiment gave us great insights into social psychology.
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All of this would be very fascinating if the whole experiment hadn't been irreparably flawed from the beginning. Zimbardo essentially selected the people most likely to produce the result that would "confirm" his hypothesis.
The greatest insights that came from this procedure were insights into how easily people will assimilate a faux-science "finding" into popular psychology, especially when the result is "shocking" in a way that allows them to denounce the immorality of society.
Re:The Lucifer Effect (Score:5, Interesting)
Zimbardo essentially selected the people most likely to produce the result that would "confirm" his hypothesis.
Which is the most chilling implication of the experiment! The idea that you can always find people willing to do harmful things while the rest stand aside is enough to undermine the whole concept of individual morality.
Together with the equally infamous Milgram experiment, which has been shown to be reproducible under all sorts of conditions, Zimbardo's work shows how humans, as basically non-'evil' beings, rationalize and perpetuate organized acts of evil. (How many times have you heard someone say, "If I don't do $BAD_THING, somebody else will. Maybe the best thing to do is for me to take the job, and try to change the system from within"?)
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Which is the most chilling implication of the experiment! The idea that you can always find people willing to do harmful things while the rest stand aside is enough to undermine the whole concept of individual morality.
Together with the equally infamous Milgram experiment, which has been shown to be reproducible under all sorts of conditions, Zimbardo's work shows how humans, as basically non-'evil' beings, rationalize and perpetuate organized acts of evil. (How many times have you heard someone say, "If I don't do $BAD_THING, somebody else will. Maybe the best thing to do is for me to take the job, and try to change the system from within"?)
Unites States Marines go through thirteen weeks of that stuff. It doesn't even make sense for prison operation because their goal is to rehabilitate civilians and it's not really sustainable anyway. It's too expensive, you'd have to rotate guards often because they will get weak eventually, and would require tons of training. The "prisoners" will adjust eventually. You can't permanently break someone's will and still be anywhere near the realm of merely 'questionable' ethics.
I think you guys are reading
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The point of Stanford Prisoner
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I'm reminded of Kitty Genovese. The popular wisdom about this case, exacerbated by a bad New York Times article, turned out to be pretty much false even though it has been used to denounce society for decades.
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I don't think you need a study to allow you to "denounce the immorality of society". I'm pretty sure most people feel comfortable denouncing immorality whenever they see it.
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Most people feel comfortable denouncing immorality whether it's society they see, or their own shadow. That's why you need a study, unless the problem is really obvious - and even then it's possible that it's only obvious to you.
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It is amazing that we do actually live in a world where people willing become slaves. This experiment gave us great insights into social psychology.
This point is interesting in that a few very early philosophers have discussed this phenomena where some seek to be leaders while others seek to be led. I believe Archimedes argued that there is a natural paradigm for slave/master and Nietze that some men are just born better. It's unpleasant to consider, but we do live with these dichotomies to one degree or another.
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That someone seek to be leader do not make them fit to be so.
Still, our nearest relatives among animals do live in groups structured around leaders and led. Not sure if that automatically makes the led slaves tho, as the led will pounce on the leader if they see a weakness.
As for Nietzsche, his writing was modified by his sister to fit certain German trends at the time, so i would be careful about referencing him depending on the source being the edited version or not.
Still, the ultimate question is if huma
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I've always felt there were really three types - not just Nietzche's purported (I've never read it) "Master" and "Slave" but also a third type - "Creative". The creatives just want to create things - software, art, buildings, spaceships - and want to be neither master nor slave. Of the three types, creatives are probably the rarest.
But I'd also like to see these ideas explored from the perspective of hunters vs. farmers (ref.Thom Hartmann's books on ADD). Perhaps the master and slave are just two parts o
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There was a claim made once that if one put aspies on one island and other humans on a different island, the aspie one could develop the science and arts while the other would develop politics and religion.
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There is a difference between a "master" and a "leader", just as there is a difference between a "slave" and a "follower". The difference is, roughly speaking, that masters force their slaves into serving them, while leaders serve their followers. A master is simply a parasite, while a leader is just doing a job that needs doing, just like a plumber or a ca
When crazy is average (Score:5, Insightful)
The way they all got so pulled into the experiment is just crazy. Luckily, Zimbardo's grad student girlfriend came around.
This is one of the most fascinating insights: it's not crazy but typical. These were students who tested average on psychological exams (to the extent you can measure average), and still did these atrocious acts on people just like themselves. On fellow students whose only crime was the flip of a coin. Want further evidence? See the Milgram experiment [wikimedia.org], where 2/3rds of people were willing to kill another person because an authority figure told them to. Not bad apples, not racists, not evil doers [wikimedia.org], not terrorists, just people--you and me and our neighbors.
The experiments are no longer allowed in psychiatric studies, but are allowed in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Egypt (under Mubarak, not sure about now), Romania, Israel (where torture testimony is admissible), Afghanistan, and others. Where is Zimbardo's girlfriend now? You, me, our neighbors?
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Want further evidence? See the Milgram experiment [wikimedia.org], where 2/3rds of people were willing to kill another person because an authority figure told them to. Not bad apples, not racists, not evil doers [wikimedia.org], not terrorists, just people--you and me and our neighbors.
You've never met my neighbors.
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Want further evidence? See the Milgram experiment [wikimedia.org], where 2/3rds of people were willing to kill another person because an authority figure told them to. Not bad apples, not racists, not evil doers [wikimedia.org], not terrorists, just people--you and me and our neighbors.
You've never met my neighbors.
So are they the sociopaths willing to randomly kill people, or are you willing to randomly kill them?
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while muslims are generally pro-torture
*citation needed
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Torture has been outlawed in Israel since 1999, and any evidence gathered through torture would be inadmissable, since it would be considered gathered illegally.
According to reliable reports, Israeli torture continues [bbc.co.uk].
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Interesting and informative. Sincere thanks for making me sad and less ignorant. (Related [truth-out.org].)
Re:The Lucifer Effect (Score:4, Interesting)
But don't underestimate the psychological barrier that merely being told "you can't quit" amounts to when you're already in a situation of powerlessness.
Here's another good example [azcentral.com] of the same phenomenon -- in this case, the people who were told "you can't quit" bravely stayed in the game until they earned their own Darwin award.
People who criticize Zimbardo's experiment on the grounds that it was 'unscientific' or 'unethical' are missing the whole point. It may have been both unscientific and unethical, but it damned sure wasn't irreproducible.
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People who criticize Zimbardo's experiment on the grounds that it was 'unscientific' or 'unethical' are missing the whole point. It may have been both unscientific and unethical, but it damned sure wasn't irreproducible.
Oh, of course it's reproducible. All you have to do is find the most sociopathic people you have at hand, brief them in such a way as to encourage abusive behavior, and lock them in a facility together with no access to the external world. Real easy. The criticism of his experiment isn't that it's not reproducible - the criticism is that he intentionally set up the experiment in order to achieve this result. The more important criticism is of people who point to his experiment as evidence that any parti
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So what's your take on Milgram?
The whole problem is, it's ridiculously easy to find those "most sociopathic" people you're talking about, and almost impossible to find people who will put themselves at risk to interfere with them. It's almost as if there's something in almost everybody that's open to the sort of behaviors observed by Zimbardo and Milgram, given the right leadership.
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So what's your take on Milgram?
I thought I just gave it to you :p
The whole problem is, it's ridiculously easy to find those "most sociopathic" people you're talking about, and almost impossible to find people who will put themselves at risk to interfere with them.
It depends on the amount of risk, now doesn't it? A cop reporting on his coworkers risks stigmatization and a dead-end for his career, but there are still cops going to jail. A soldier reporting on one of his buddies risks pretty much the same, but we still have soldiers going up on murder charges for violating ROEs. The thing is, you need a system in which that kind of behavior is encouraged. You'll never see an Afghani cop or soldier turn in one of his superiors, beca
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No, actually, liberal democracy depends on dead kittens. Lots and lots of dead kittens. Plato recognized it as an inherent flaw.
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Do you have evidence that the people who took part in Zimbardo's experiment were particularly sociopathic? And no, it's not about not having access to the external world; it's about not having external supervision. And frankly, that's hardly surprising; hasn't every last society on Earth proven pretty mu
Guantanamo Bay (Score:5, Insightful)
Now imagine if the guards were told the prisoners were evil terrorists.
Re:Guantanamo Bay (Score:5, Funny)
Now imagine that this experiment was being conducted within the setting of a discussion group.
And imagine that some of us were given mod points and others not.
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Gitmo wouldn't even be the worst of it because we know about Gitmo. Lawyers visit the prisoners and check out the living conditions. I would be terrified about the CIA-run dark sites in the ME and Europe. Imagine Gitmo but with less accountability. See, that's scary.
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Especially as Bradley Manning is the hero of this war.
Re:Guantanamo Bay (Score:5, Insightful)
Now imagine if the guards were told the prisoners were evil terrorists.
And then what if they were?
Now imagine you and some of your family were captured together with all the terrorists. Yeah, they are really terrorists! You and yours? Whatever, I don't give a fuck. Fuck you all.
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"More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/28/AR2007042801145.html [washingtonpost.com]
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There's no such thing as a terrorist.
Is that in the same sense that there's no such thing as a retail sales clerk and no such thing as a computer programmer?
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No, in the sense that no one sees themselves as a terrorist, it's an external label, whereas some people see themselves as sales clerks or computer-programmers.
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Fortuitous happen-stance?
Certainly.
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Is unrelated?
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False.
Watershed development (Score:4, Interesting)
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This needs a mod "+1, bitter truth".
For those of us who are scratching our heads (Score:5, Informative)
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From what I briefly read, the conditions sound just like Marine Corps boot camp, and not a prison so much...
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On the other hand, everyone does know about Wikipedia. Oh, and Google.
Although, who knows? Maybe someone really was desperately, and futilely, trying to figure out how to look this up.
Re: For those of us who are scratching our heads (Score:2)
Your comment saddens me. — Not because you didn't learn about this at school, but because it sounds as if you expected to.
Like you, I don't think I ever heard about this experiment, nor anything remotely connected with it, at school (or university).
However, school should merely be the start of learning! (There's a strong argument that the most important function of a school isn't to teach you facts, nor even ideas, but to teach you how to learn, and how to research.) For example, you can catch
Patrick McGoohan (Score:2)
I am not a number, I am a free man
TSA (Score:5, Interesting)
This experiment is being conducted right now by the TSA.
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Actually, there are interesting parallels... when flying internationally, you try to catch a nap, only to have the attendants come by at the most inopportune times to offer you a snack/pillow/etc. By the time you land, you're generally suffering sleep deprivation. You then complete your business, and attempt to get back on your flight, still not having recovered from sleep deprivation and jet lag -- and are confronted with the TSA.
It's not as severe as the SPE, but the general traits reflected in the pris
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Not to mention being woken up hourly by the fuckwit a few seats over who keeps hitting the stewardess-summoning button, or by the stew who keeps getting into his baggage which is stored right above your head.
Red-eye from O'Hare to Glasgow, /then/ I had to deal with HM Customs, whose agent was just as rude as TSA's equivalent.
French Torture Show (Score:5, Informative)
Oh.. but it has been repeated recently...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8571929.stm [bbc.co.uk]
This is from 2010.
Re:French Torture Show (Score:4, Informative)
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See also: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=20152714 [slashdot.org]
Perfect murder (Score:2)
you know, that's a great set up for a perfect murder.
While the hosts of the show think that the people, who are being electrocuted are actors, just pretending to be in pain, if somebody in the group wanted one of those actors dead, they'd devise a plan to pass real current through the wires and connect that to one of the participants control boards...
Movie (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Movie (Score:5, Informative)
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Zimbardo can go on and on about the experiments scientific important, but he is wrong.
It was so poorly designer, got so out of control, and had no controls that any data is useless to anyone with the sole exception of people looking at what not to do in an experiment.
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You are contradicting yourself: If people are looking at the SPE for things not to do, something relevant must have come out of it.
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Strangely, the German movie based on "The Wave" suffers from the same problem.
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There is some truth to the joke. The Germans were confronted with the fact that an almost entire generation had been complicit in the Holocaust in some way. Now they want to keep themselves aware of this, to never let it happen again.
Abu Ghraib (Score:5, Interesting)
When the abuse in Abu Ghraib became public I was surprised by the reactions. Not the shock and/or denial by the public. But the way the soldiers were singled out as a "few bad apples" by people higher up in command.
How apparently normal, non-sadistic, average 20 year olds turned into sadistic guards was classic Zimbardo. I immediately thought of Zimbardo's prison experiment: There doesn't need to be a direct order, all it takes is an environment with unspecific rules and guards wanting to fulfill their role.
Not to defend the soldiers involved in the abuse, but Zimbardo is pretty well known. Either people in charge didn't have the proper skills to set-up a clear structure that would prevent this or they deliberately counted on it to happen, being later able to deny any responsibility and scape-goat the "guards".
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The fact that untrained National Guardsmen were put into a prison guard position speaks to the total incompotence of the leadership.
I remember hearing this story break, and my response was "Well duh, what did they think would happen? Did they never hear of the Stanford project?"
These were part timers. They do one weekend a month, and a couple of weeks camping out in the summer. They don't have psych screening or extensive training in prison environments. They aren't professional soldiers. They are college k
It was unethical to stop it (Score:2)
This is what happens in real life and they just stopped the study. Obviously there was indeed physiological trauma but life is full of trauma. We need to understand how people are affected and possibly how to mitigate the damage. What those students went though was nothing compared to real life. God forbid they actually had to fight a war, go to real prison, or be a bullied minority in a society.
We have children in foster care and the juvenile delinquent system that have to live through a minimum of ten
Submission to authority created the Nazi monsters. (Score:2)
Germans at the time were very submissive to authority - like the Japanese, they believed that, above all, there was duty, i.e. submission to the people above them in the social hierarchy.
And although many had doubts about what they were doing, in the end, they did what allowed for the monster that was Nazi Germany to be created.
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I don't think you should just single out the Germans and the Japanese there. Attitudes ALWAYS flow downwards, that's how leaders lacking any kind of moral fiber can create so much damage.
Bush, Blair, Enron, Lehman Brothers, Murdoch: in both politics and business, leaders shape the kind of attitudes you get and thus wether you're heading for a society or for a mess.
Re:Faked? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously you have no understanding of the nature of power and desire for it. It has been been well documented since ancient times. And the biggest "experiment" ever in 1920s-30s Germany has been written up in the most convincing manner by many psychologists.
It's too bad they say the experiment should never be performed again. Every student should be required to go through it, and maybe we can mitigate the revival of the savagery we are going through now. Simply reading up on it is not enough.
Re:Faked? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Faked? (Score:5, Informative)
You should check out the book The Wave, which is a fictionalized telling of a real experiment conducted by a high school teacher to help his students understand how something like the Holocaust could happen without anybody stepping in to stop it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wave_(novel) [wikipedia.org]
Re:Faked? (Score:4, Informative)
There's also a movie about that book, and it's pretty good.
Re:Faked? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's too bad they say the experiment should never be performed again. Every student should be required to go through it, and maybe we can mitigate the revival of the savagery we are going through now. Simply reading up on it is not enough.
I've often wondered what would happen if the experiment were repeated with people who were aware of the original outcome. And I mean really aware of it, not just that they heard about it in passing. Would knowledge of how low people can sink keep them on the straight and narrow? If so, it could become a useful training exercise for prison guards.
Re:Faked? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Faked? (Score:4, Interesting)
I know how the experiment worked. It is established that people given power with no (or poor) guidance on how to use that power will abuse it. But if people are made acutely aware of that fact, will they think "Hey, I don't want to be like that" and make a conscious effort to control their own actions?
For example, if you give unlimited alcohol and no ground rules to a bunch of teens, they're probably going to get drunk out of their minds. But once they've learned about alcohol abuse, and gone to a few parties and seen how drunken idiots act, they'll drink more responsibly, simply because they don't want to be that guy. This experiment is repeated all across the country every year, and it seems to work out.
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For example, if you give unlimited alcohol and no ground rules to a bunch of teens, they're probably going to get drunk out of their minds. But once they've learned about alcohol abuse, and gone to a few parties and seen how drunken idiots act, they'll drink more responsibly, simply because they don't want to be that guy. This experiment is repeated all across the country every year, and it seems to work out.
I don't know what planet you live on, but here on Earth, people continue to get drunk and act like idiots well past their teens. "Drinking responsibly" is tautological. The whole point of drinking is getting drunk enough to enjoy yourself without actually passing out.
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I thought one of the quotes from one of the "guards" in the linked article, was very interesting. . .
What came over me was not an accident. It was planned. I set out with a definite plan in mind, to try to force the action, force something to happen, so that the researchers would have something to work with. After all, what could they possibly learn from guys sitting around like it was a country club? So I consciously created this persona.
So, this guy was given a task, by an authority figure (a science professor), and he did the task. To that extent, this wasn't a 'fake' prison, it was a real prison, if only for a few days.
Every participant came into this with their own motivations. One of the prisoners said they were trying to use this as "practice" for resisting The Draft. Because that was his motivation, he decided to lead the other prison
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I thought one of the quotes from one of the "guards" in the linked article, was very interesting. . .
What came over me was not an accident. It was planned. I set out with a definite plan in mind, to try to force the action, force something to happen, so that the researchers would have something to work with. After all, what could they possibly learn from guys sitting around like it was a country club? So I consciously created this persona.
Or not. To me, it looks like a good old "I didn't want to really hurt anyone, it was all good fun" excuse for bullying.
Ethics as key part of curriculum and civilization (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not sure if everyone should go though the experiment per se, but certainly societies would benefit if everyone was taught about it, and human behaviour and moral in general.
Germany in the 1930s and 1940s after the Nazional Sozialists had grabbed control of the government (and the media) is a very good case study of what happens when sections of population are labelled "enemies", "unfit" and eventually even sub-human. There the perpetrators had been brainwashed with a sense of injustice and anger over po
Re:Faked? (Score:4, Informative)
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Basically I had done nothing but suffer a dissociative episode at my family doctor's office, for which I had warned them, but which they had dutifully ignored. I knocked over some glass items, they called the cops, and despite not resisting I was forced against the ground, the cuffs forced on so tight that they had trouble removing them, and I will suf
Re:Faked? (Score:5, Informative)
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In Australia we lock up innocent[1] foreigners who come here illegally, so there is probably a lot to be learned from the behavior of guards and prisoners in that situation. Given the nature of their arrival the foreigners aren't necessarily already completely undamaged from a psychological point of view but i'm sure we can learn things from this situation... even if the thing we learn is that locking up innocent people isn't the best thing for their mental health.
[1] While it's possible that some of them c
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I think you'll find that "locking up" peopl
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States have been restricting immigration essentially since the concept has existed. As to when it is and isn't "necessary" is an issue prone to much debate.
Personally I don't see anything "unnecessary" about restricting immigration of those who arrive with no warning, no documentation, no history and no means of support. In fact, that's pretty much a textbook example of exactly the kind of immigrant you *do*
all too real (Score:5, Insightful)
The simple conclusion demonstrated by this experiment is that, while sometimes people will live up to others' expectations for them, we we have an even stronger tendency to live down to what's expected of us. I think Richard Yacco (a "prisoner") made the most insightful comment in the article:
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When I was in the military [i.e. Canadian Forces], my course officer made an insightful comment. He said that prisons, Indian reservations, schools, and the military were alike in that nobody wanted to be in any of those systems. If I recall correctly, he was saying that those systems brought out the worst in people, and they forced people to do things that they would normally not do.
Why were you and he in the military then? Did you have forced conscription?
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The modern rules you're referring to were specifically drafted in response to the Stanford Prison Experiment. A review board determined that they weren't violating any rules at the time, and suggested making new rules so it couldn't be repeated.
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I've long come to suspect the "experiment" was a politically motivated fake to demonstrate fascist tendencies in humans. It doesn't ring true, nor has it ever been backed up by other experiments. Prison guard abuse is real, but the conclusions of the study are much too broad.
Check out the book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland [amazon.com] by Christopher Browning [wikipedia.org]. Apologies for Godwinning this thread, but it is necessary.
Re:Faked? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's faked and then there's faked.
If you mean "they made the whole thing up like the moon landing," then no. There's no reason to believe that kind of conspiracy.
But based on contemporary accounts, even from Zimbardo himself, it's pretty clear that he stepped well past his role as an objective researcher and became an active instigator -- appointing himself warden and egging on the guards. But even with that acknowledged, the fact that he was able to succeed so easily is part of what makes it an important demonstration.
I'm convinced that it was real (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think that the events of the experiment are in any way unexpected, with the exception of Zimbardo's girlfriend intervening.
I think quite highly of Zimbardo, so I don't believe it's his fault. It's because of all of our social conditioning.
We're never schooled in ethics. We're only occasionally *sometimes* told the difference between right and wrong, but overall we're just expected to know where these concepts are without a map. Breaking a promise is wrong, but when the principal wants to know something you promised to keep secret, see if he thinks ethics is a good excuse.
Schools teach compliance in a big way. Government and industry and pretty much everyone in charge will tell you that it's no use - there's nothing you can do. Be on the wrong side of a policeman, prosecutor, judge, politician, your boss, or the town council to see what I mean.
And even if anyone knows where the boundaries of ethics lie, there's no real chance to practice the decisions in the field. In any emotional situation your cognitive functions shut down and you rely completely on stored habits. That's a survival tactic - the stored programs can be executed very fast without spending any time to think - but it means that if you haven't set up any mental patterns to recognize injustice and speak out against it it won't happen during a situation where it's needed. Only after the fact.
People who practice role-playing in various forms (LARP, emergency training, EMT, police, navy seals) get around it by learning not to react emotionally and by making patterns which are useful because they've been thought out in advance.
So we have a big population which is schooled in compliance, where no formal ethical standards are taught and where ethical rules are often violated for any expedient reason. Drop some of these in a fearful situation and you're surprised that they don't react?
I'm surprised at the reaction of his girlfriend, and much more surprised that she *insisted* in the face of his resistance.
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I've long come to suspect the "experiment" was a politically motivated fake to demonstrate fascist tendencies in humans. It doesn't ring true, nor has it ever been backed up by other experiments. Prison guard abuse is real, but the conclusions of the study are much too broad.
Derren Brown did a show in the UK where he basically replicated the experiment, to see how conformist and suggestible potential contestants were. The number of people who kept on administering shocks after the victim was screaming in pain was depressingly high.
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You might want to read the article then - that was an initial theory but turned out not to be true..
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Never worked for me, I've got green eyes :-).