Why good people turn bad - the Stanford Prison Experiment

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Fascinating interview with Dr. Zimbardo here
He's just written a new book about his experiment and has a website here to discuss the work he's been doing on heroism. About his book, he says

Although it is often hard to read about evil up close and personal, we must understand its causes in order to contain and transform it through wise decisions and innovative communal actions. Indeed, in my view, there is no more urgent task that faces us today.

[hawksgirl]

And the debate is...?

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Discuss No, really. What do people reading about this think? Do they agree with Zimbardo or think something else; that perhaps some people are intrinsically evil or that Satan makes people do bad things or something else? Or does everyone agree with Zimbardo, in which case I guess it would just be MPSIMS.

More stuff. Are you shocked by this? Frightened? Do you think you would never succumb to the pressures were you a 'prisoner' or a 'guard'? To me, this is a very good example of 'there, but for the grace of God, go I'.

[benny73]

Evil gets a foothold in people when they're put to a spiritual test and fail. I'd say that almost always the test takes place when the child is around 4. If the child (i.e. soul that's in the young body) passes the test, then they'll have either a happy stress-free life or they'll die and be done with this crap-hole called earth (as there may be no point in hanging around).

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Originally Posted by benny73

Evil gets a foothold in people when they're put to a spiritual test and fail. I'd say that almost always the test takes place when the child is around 4. If the child (i.e. soul that's in the young body) passes the test, then they'll have either a happy stress-free life or they'll die and be done with this crap-hole called earth (as there may be no point in hanging around).

That's an interesting theory. What kind of 'test' are you talking about? Who does the testing? What constitutes 'pass' or 'fail'?

[Sage Rat]

I don't particularly disagree with Zimbardo, but I don't think that it's always a foregone conclusion that things will go bad when you give people power over someone else. To some extent, all his experiment showed was that if you get some college-age males together and say "Roleplay a Jail!" that they'll go overboard. I.e. he proved that college-age males are often stupid.

But I do agree that pack-behavior is one of the larger causes of people doing evil things. If one person can create a nefarious SOP within a group, then that will include even people who are generally nice, decent people. But that requires that there be the one person to start it, and that no one else in the pack halts it at the early stages. I.e. it largely matters on the relative charisma of the players.

For instance, at my current company, the head of the company is a jerk who would yell at the employees randomly when he was in a bad mood, calling them useless idiots and such. I opposed this while I was there and, being a rather intimidating guy, the head of the company has mellowed (and for the most part avoids me where possible) and I've become a bit of a celebrity with my co-workers.

So it just all depends on how things play out, and how many leaders there are in the group.

[Shagnasty]

Some people are truly evil and will seek to do evil acts seemingly autonomously. Most people can be coerced into evil if they can attribute that act to an alpha and if they face personal consequences, no matter how slight, for ignoring the order. The End.

[John DiFool]

Originally Posted by Shagnasty

Most people can be coerced into evil if they can attribute that act to an alpha and if they face personal consequences, no matter how slight, for ignoring the order.

Okay real-world example. You have been assigned as a guard at Treblinka (let's
assume some sort of body-swap scenario so that "you" are the person you are
right now-2007 A.D.-presumably with a personal code of ethics of sorts). What do
you do? Your options seem distressingly limited:

1. Refuse to throw the kill switch in the "showers"? Okay you will then die in front
of a firing squad.

2. Desert your post. In the middle of Germany, during wartime? Good luck getting
to the Swiss border without being caught.

3. Try to fulfill the letter of your orders but not necessarily the spirit? Maybe you
could get away with that maybe not. Sneak the prisoners extra snacks and medicine
and whatnot from time to time.

In any event I always wondered why hardly any of the soldiers assigned to such places
ever did desert. Maybe the alternatives were in fact all worse than institutional murder...

[Shagnasty]

Originally Posted by John DiFool

Okay real-world example. You have been assigned as a guard at Treblinka (let's
assume some sort of body-swap scenario so that "you" are the person you are
right now-2007 A.D.-presumably with a personal code of ethics of sorts). What do
you do? Your options seem distressingly limited:

1. Refuse to throw the kill switch in the "showers"? Okay you will then die in front
of a firing squad.

2. Desert your post. In the middle of Germany, during wartime? Good luck getting
to the Swiss border without being caught.

3. Try to fulfill the letter of your orders but not necessarily the spirit? Maybe you
could get away with that maybe not. Sneak the prisoners extra snacks and medicine
and whatnot from time to time.

In any event I always wondered why hardly any of the soldiers assigned to such places
ever did desert. Maybe the alternatives were in fact all worse than institutional murder...

I started a thread on this once. Most people admitted that they would follow orders in Nazi Germany to commit genocide. That seems pretty honest and realistic. The regular Germans were nice enough people even if the food was bad and they drank too much beer. I know for a fact that I would have committed genocide against adults to save myself and family. I don't know what I would have done for kids but that would have caused terrible distress. I wonder if they had "special troops" kill the kids because I don't know a lot of people that could go through with that.

[smiling bandit]

Except that, of course, the guards in concentration camps weren't chosen randomly. They were under no threat, and no one was ever killed for not slaughtering Jews, AFAIK. Pople quite voluntarily did these things, becaue they were excused from combat duty and got extra pay and rations.

[benny73]

Originally Posted by Quiddity Glomfuster

That's an interesting theory. What kind of 'test' are you talking about? Who does the testing? What constitutes 'pass' or 'fail'?

I can't go into. Sorry. (And I can't even go into the reasons why I can't.)

[Little Nemo]

Here's another recent article by Philip Zimbardo about his experiment.

You'll note he continues to describe it as a "bad situation" that effected "good people". But the situation was only what Zimbardo and the students created. They were the ones who got out of control but they prefer to blame the setting rather than admit their own failings.

The most telling point was Zimbardo's girlfriend's reaction when she was exposed to the experiment after it had been running for five days. She saw what was going on and said to Zimbardo, "It is terrible what YOU are doing to those boys!"

Does Zimbardo really believe that five days of running a mock prison radically changed his personality and created something new in him? He should acknowledge that his behavior that week was based on existing aspects of his personality and draw his conclusions from that. He should stop saying that running a mock prison turns anyone bad and start admitting that having unchecked authority turned Philip Zimbardo bad.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

You'll note he continues to describe it as a "bad situation" that effected "good people".

I take it you mean 'affected'.

But the situation was only what Zimbardo and the students created. They were the ones who got out of control but they prefer to blame the setting rather than admit their own failings.

Then what is your explanation for the blue eye / brown eye experiment?

Or Milgram?

Does Zimbardo really believe that five days of running a mock prison radically changed his personality and created something new in him? He should acknowledge that his behavior that week was based on existing aspects of his personality and draw his conclusions from that. He should stop saying that running a mock prison turns anyone bad and start admitting that having unchecked authority turned Philip Zimbardo bad.

So then the psych examination of all the 'guards' that showed them to be normal were false? What, exactly, is your point?

[Little Nemo]

Then what is your explanation for the blue eye / brown eye experiment?

Or Milgram?

Ummm...that they provide more evidence that I'm right?

Seriously, are you even trying to understand what I'm saying?

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

Ummm...that they provide more evidence that I'm right?

Seriously, are you even trying to understand what I'm saying?

I'm trying but all I'm getting is that the only bad guy in the world ever is Zimbardo. Want to try to be a little clearer?

[Caridwen]

Originally Posted by Quiddity Glomfuster

Discuss No, really. What do people reading about this think? Do they agree with Zimbardo or think something else; that perhaps some people are intrinsically evil or that Satan makes people do bad things or something else? Or does everyone agree with Zimbardo, in which case I guess it would just be MPSIMS.

More stuff. Are you shocked by this? Frightened? Do you think you would never succumb to the pressures were you a 'prisoner' or a 'guard'? To me, this is a very good example of 'there, but for the grace of God, go I'.

My personal opinion? I think these experiments are utter nonsense and not worth the paper they're printed on. He tested 24 students. If you put these experiments under any sort of scrutiny, they fall apart. He was involved in the experiment. How objective is that? I think they're a great way to sell books but they're meaningless.

[Heffalump and Roo]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

Does Zimbardo really believe that five days of running a mock prison radically changed his personality and created something new in him? He should acknowledge that his behavior that week was based on existing aspects of his personality and draw his conclusions from that. He should stop saying that running a mock prison turns anyone bad and start admitting that having unchecked authority turned Philip Zimbardo bad.

Are you saying that ALL people have the propensity toward doing the wrong thing given the right/wrong circumstances?

Or are you saying the Zimbardo himself was predisposed toward doing the wrong thing and only *some* people are this way?

[Little Nemo]

I'm trying but all I'm getting is that the only bad guy in the world ever is Zimbardo. Want to try to be a little clearer?

Okay, I'll try again. Zimbardo described his experiment as a test between good and evil (literally). He said it was "the direct confrontation of good versus evil, of good people pitted against the forces inherent in bad situations". He made several references to how his students were all "good people" (people like him although he doesn't explicitly admit this). And then he puts them into a mock prison environment and creates the type of situations he imagines exist in real prisons and everybody, including himself, starts acting terribly. So he calls off the experiment after five days and then spends three decades hawking books about it.

And here's his conclusion: everything was the fault of the environment. Zimbardo maintains that he's a good person and the students are good people and it was the "situation" that made them all act badly for those five days. So his conclusion was that working in a prison environment makes people act badly. And that's nonsense. People live and work decades inside prisons without exhibiting any of the behavior that Zimbardo was seeing after only a few hours.

The reality is that Zimbardo created an artificial environment where the participants felt isolated from the normal constraints of society and were encouraged to act out the roles of victims and victimizers. And it was discovered that "good people" fell into these roles very easily. But it was the people who did this not the environment. Zimbardo could have achieved the same results in a college dorm but that wouldn't have been an indictment of the college system.

The dangers of these false conclusion are when people start believing that their environment controls and excuses their actions. Zimbardo and his students acted the way they thought "prison guards" should act. So did the guards at Abu Ghraib - almost none of whom had any prior training or experience in working in real prisons. Every month I deal with new employees and have to tell many of them not to do things like they've seen in movies and TV.

People who blame the situation for their actions are abrogating their own moral responsibilities as individuals. People need to remember they are thinking individuals and are responsible for their actions. The situation isn't pulling the trigger or using a cattle prod - you are.

Zimbardo would have done a lot more good for society if instead of spreading the message "there are certain situations that will make you act bad so you should avoid those situations" he had told the true message, "all of us are capable of acting badly so we should develop a sense of morality that is independent of our environment."

[Little Nemo]

Are you saying that ALL people have the propensity toward doing the wrong thing given the right/wrong circumstances?

Or are you saying the Zimbardo himself was predisposed toward doing the wrong thing and only *some* people are this way?

Hopefully, my previous post answered these questions, but if not, I'll state that I don't feel that Philip Zimbardo was predisposed towards behaving badly or otherwise morally flawed. I just feel he was unaware that the possibility of acting badly existing in him all along (as it does in most people) but when he discovered this part of himself, he denied it. He projected the bad aspects of his own personality onto the environment he was in. The danger of this is that he may believe that as long as he stays out of that environment those bad aspects don't exist. He'd have been better off acknowledging that he's always carrying them around and should learn how to prevent them from resurfacing.

And like I said, Philip Zimbardo is no different than the rest of us. Virtually all of us contain some ugly possibilities in some parts of our mind. The best way to keep them safe is to recognize their existence and keep them under control rather than pretending they don't exist.

[Johanna]

I watched Zimbardo telling his story on Democracy Now last night, and one thing really stood out for me: A woman called it for what it was as soon as she saw it. Zimbardo admitted he was power tripping until his girlfriend brought him back to reality. I guess this happened at a time before the concept of "emotional intelligence" was widely acknowledged.

But there's a woman on my block
Sitting there in a cold chill
She say "Who gonna take away his license to kill?"
--Bob Dylan

[Heffalump and Roo]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

And like I said, Philip Zimbardo is no different than the rest of us. Virtually all of us contain some ugly possibilities in some parts of our mind. The best way to keep them safe is to recognize their existence and keep them under control rather than pretending they don't exist.

Wow, I completely agree. And you were clear before. I was just a little surprised by this commentary given my participation in the thread you started, To those who don't think criminals are different than you and I

Perhaps I missed the point of that thread. What did I miss?

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

Okay, I'll try again. Zimbardo described his experiment as a test between good and evil (literally). He said it was "the direct confrontation of good versus evil, of good people pitted against the forces inherent in bad situations".

Is that a direct cite? If so, from where? BTW, did you read the interview that I posted the link to? Because this is his explanation, (which is similar to the Milgard experiment result)

Most of the evil of the world comes about not out of evil motives, but somebody saying get with the program, be a team player, this is what we saw at Enron, this is what we saw in the Nixon administration with their scandal. And I think you are seeing it now, with the current administration.

So, it's that set of social psychological variables. Oh, the key one is of course diffusion of responsibility. When a person feels, I am not personally responsible, I am not accountable, it's the role I’m playing or these are the orders I’ve gotten, then you allow yourself to do things you would never do under ordinary circumstances.

He made several references to how his students were all "good people" (people like him although he doesn't explicitly admit this).

Um. No. He meant that according to the full psych evaluations they did of the kids before the experiment, there were no warning signs; no signs of latent problems.

And here's his conclusion: everything was the fault of the environment. Zimbardo maintains that he's a good person and the students are good people and it was the "situation" that made them all act badly for those five days. So his conclusion was that working in a prison environment makes people act badly. And that's nonsense. People live and work decades inside prisons without exhibiting any of the behavior that Zimbardo was seeing after only a few hours.

I think you're extrapolating far too far. He has never said that 'all people in prisons will eventually become power-mad fiends' but rather that if the wrong situations are allowed to develop, people will mistreat other people.

Do you dispute the dynamics of cults? Do you disbelieve everything that's known about Stockholm Syndrome, Battered Wife Syndrome, and other cases where people are treated very badly and change radically?

But it was the people who did this not the environment.

That's what he means by 'environment'. He doesn't mean 'prison'; he means 'situation in which people are enabled to exercise power over others without restraint'.

Zimbardo and his students acted the way they thought "prison guards" should act. So did the guards at Abu Ghraib - almost none of whom had any prior training or experience in working in real prisons. Every month I deal with new employees and have to tell many of them not to do things like they've seen in movies and TV.

So? What you're saying is that he's right in saying that people take on roles in such situations.

People who blame the situation for their actions are abrogating their own moral responsibilities as individuals. People need to remember they are thinking individuals and are responsible for their actions. The situation isn't pulling the trigger or using a cattle prod - you are.

When 'the situation' includes strong peer pressure, then that can be the equivalent of a cattle prod. Read the part where the guards would punish other prisoners if one prisoner acted out.

Zimbardo would have done a lot more good for society if instead of spreading the message "there are certain situations that will make you act bad so you should avoid those situations" he had told the true message, "all of us are capable of acting badly so we should develop a sense of morality that is independent of our environment."

I'd like to see your answers to the questions posed by John DiFool

[Heffalump and Roo]

Originally Posted by Quiddity Glomfuster

I'd like to see your answers to the questions posed by John DiFool

John DiFool's hypothetical doesn't apply in this case. No one was threatening death in the Stanford experiment and there was no reason to think that dire consequences would ensue if one did not follow. In the Stanford experiment, there was only peer pressure.

In John DiFool's hypothetical, the only reason that murder becomes the option is because the other alternatives are worse. That's a simple cost/benefit analysis.

Comparing the two is not applicable. Peer pressure influence vs. losing your life are not comparable.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Originally Posted by Heffalump and Roo

Comparing the two is not applicable. Peer pressure influence vs. losing your life are not comparable.

Well, you're welcome to fly in the face of established studies, not to mention real-world examples, if you really like to. However your wishing it was not so won't make it not so.

At this point, the question should be 'how does this happen and how can it be prevented' or it will just keep happening.

[Little Nemo]

Wow, I completely agree. And you were clear before. I was just a little surprised by this commentary given my participation in the thread you started, To those who don't think criminals are different than you and I

Perhaps I missed the point of that thread. What did I miss?

I didn't really have a point in that thread. I was just relaying the experience of encountering somebody whose mental landscape was completely alien to my own. A lot of people read way too much into that.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

I didn't really have a point in that thread. I was just relaying the experience of encountering somebody whose mental landscape was completely alien to my own. A lot of people read way too much into that.

That was you? All is becoming clear.

[Jackmannii]

Originally Posted by Doc Zimbardo

Although it is often hard to read about evil up close and personal...

...it does sell a lot of books.

Originally Posted by Quiddity Glomfuster

At this point, the question should be 'how does this happen and how can it be prevented' or it will just keep happening.

"It" will keep on happening, because people suck. It's inherent in the species.

Of course a major genetic reprogramming effort could lie in the future, and/or we'll find a way to get soma into the water supply.

If a dead Pope can cure Parkinson's disease, anything is possible.

[Little Nemo]

Is that a direct cite? If so, from where? BTW, did you read the interview that I posted the link to? Because this is his explanation, (which is similar to the Milgard experiment result)

Yes, I read your link. Did you read mine? Because that's the source of my quote.

Um. No. He meant that according to the full psych evaluations they did of the kids before the experiment, there were no warning signs; no signs of latent problems.

Here are some of the ways he described them: "a collection of the 'best and brightest' of young college men in collective opposition to the might of a dominant system"; "all 24 participants were physically and mentally healthy, with no history of crime or violence, so as to be sure that initially they were all 'good apples'."; "good personalities"; "We gave them a battery of psychological tests, interviews, because we wanted to start our prison filled only with good apples, if you will. That is, normal healthy young men, college students. Little more intelligent than the average public. But ordinary, healthy young men."; "Remember, this is 1971. All of these kids are anti-war activists, civil rights activists, everybody’s got hair down to here, you could call them hippies. So these are kids who are against authority, whether they are prisoners or guards."

I think you're extrapolating far too far. He has never said that 'all people in prisons will eventually become power-mad fiends' but rather that if the wrong situations are allowed to develop, people will mistreat other people.

Do you dispute the dynamics of cults? Do you disbelieve everything that's known about Stockholm Syndrome, Battered Wife Syndrome, and other cases where people are treated very badly and change radically?

That's what he means by 'environment'. He doesn't mean 'prison'; he means 'situation in which people are enabled to exercise power over others without restraint'.

Except that Zimbardo has specifically and repeatedly over a period of three decades said "prison". He believes that the prison environment caused all of the behavior he saw and that once the people were removed from that environment it all disappeared.

These are all quotes from Philip Zimbardo:

"The situational forces in that "bad barrel" had overwhelmed the goodness of most of those infected by their viral power. It is hard to imagine how a seeming game of "cops and robbers" played by college kids, with a few academics (our research team) watching, could have descended into what became a hellhole for many in that basement. How could a mock prison, an experimental simulation, become "a prison run by psychologists, not by the state," in the words of one suffering prisoner? How is it possible for "good personalities" to be so dominated by a "bad situation"? You had to be there to believe that human character could be so swiftly transformed in a matter of days not only the traits of the students, but of me, a well-seasoned adult. Most of the visitors to our prison also fell under the spell."

"And what I able to say was, all of you did some bad things, and all of you saw each other doing some bad things. But it's not diagnostic of any pathology in you because we picked people who are the most normal and healthy on all psychological measures. It's really diagnostic of the power of the situation. So that even though kids had these emotional breakdowns if you will, there was no lasting effects."

"Of course, once you take them out of that situation, and once you take them out of their costumes, just like soldiers, you take them out of their uniform and put them back in their street clothes, they bounce back to the healthy, base rate that they had earlier. So there were not, surprisingly, any lasting negative effects, which of course makes me feel good."

"When we have total freedom, we choose situations that we know we can control. But when we're in situations where other people are in charge, in the military, in prisons, in some schools, in some families, we are – we can be transformed."

"And what we wanted to do was create essential psychology of imprisonment, and that’s all about power. Every prison is about power. Guards have to assume more and more power and domination, and prisoners have to have their power stripped away. And so that is the ultimate evil of prison. It's all about power, dominance, and mastery. And that was the same thing we found in Abu Ghraib prison.

But also -- so the way that power evolves is, the prisoners have to be ultimately dehumanized. You have to think of them as not your kind, not your kin, as -- ultimately you end up thinking of them as animals. And the guards have to be impersonal, distant. Whatever humanity they have when they are home, when they are with their families, that has to be suspended, put on a hook. Because, what they have to do is treat other people in ways that they don't treat anyone else, those are the people being prisoners."

"It's not the bad apples, it's the bad barrels that corrupt good people."

"The question there was what happens when you put good people in an evil place? We put good, ordinary college students in a very realistic, prison-like setting in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford. We dehumanized the prisoners, gave them numbers, and took away their identity. We also deindividuated the guards, calling them Mr. Correctional Officer, putting them in khaki uniforms, and giving them silver reflecting sunglasses like in the movie Cool Hand Luke. Essentially, we translated the anonymity of Lord of the Flies into a setting where we could observe exactly what happened from moment to moment."

"In contrast, if you grow up poor, you tend to emphasize external situational factors when trying to understand unusual behavior. When you look around and you see that your father's not working, and you have friends who are selling drugs or their sisters in prostitution, you don't want to say it's because there's something inside them that makes them do it, because then there's a sense in which it's in your line. Psychologists and social scientists who focus on situations often come from relatively poor, immigrant backgrounds. That's where I came from."

"Coming from New York, I know that if you go by a delicatessen, and you put a sweet cucumber in the vinegar barrel, the cucumber might say, "No, I want to retain my sweetness." But it's hopeless. The barrel will turn the sweet cucumber into a pickle. You can't be a sweet cucumber in a vinegar barrel. My sense is that we have the evil barrel of war, into which we've put this evil barrel of this prison—it turns out actually all of the military prisons have had similar kinds of abuses—and what you get is the corruption of otherwise good people."

"The bottom line is that nobody really cares what happens in prison. Nobody wants to know. Prisons are the default value of every society. We just want to dump convicts there, and let them come back and be good people. We only care about rapists and child molesters, so we want to keep track of them when they get out. For everybody else we don't want to know. We assume they go to prison, we'd like to believe they get rehabilitated, and when they come back they work in society. But from everything I know, most prisons are places that abuse prisoners, making them worse. They make them hate, make them want to get back at the injustice they've experienced.

All prisons are cloaked in a veil of secrecy. No one knows what happens in a prison. And when I say no one outside the prison knows, I mean mayors don't know, governors don't know, presidents don't know, and Congressional subcommittees don't know. Prisons are huge places, and if you just walk in you wouldn't know what to see. They could direct you to one part of the prison where everything is clean and rosy and nice, and the prisoners are eating steak for your visit. Prisons have to lift the veil of secrecy. The media and lawyers have to have access to prisons."

The conclusion is unavoidable. Professor Zimbardo believes that the prison environment will inevitably and immediately corrupt anyone who enters it. The only cure is to leave the prison environment whereupon you will immediately become normal again.

Which I know to be nonsense. Philip Zimbardo spend tix days in a make-believe prison in 1971. I have spent over twenty-four years in a variety of real prisons. I know that the conditions he experienced in those six days bear no reality to the conditions in real prisons. I'm not saying that abuses cannot occur in a prison but they they are no more typical of a prison than they are of a college or a factory or a department store.

I'd like to see your answers to the questions posed by John DiFool

I don't know the answer to that question. I've never been in a situation where I had to make a choice between killing somebody else or dying myself. I hope I never am. But I don't see where this has any relevancy to what we're discussing here.

[Little Nemo]

That was you? All is becoming clear.

Yes, Quiddity, I'm sure it's clear to you. You know that people like you and Philip Zimbardo would never do anything immoral. Unless the room you were in made you do it. Bad room. Evil room. Step out of the room and be good again. Look, Nemo's still inside the room - he must be evil.

But I know that I can work in prison and still be a moral person, regardless of what you and Philip Zimbardo think.

[Heffalump and Roo]

Originally Posted by Quiddity Glomfuster

Well, you're welcome to fly in the face of established studies, not to mention real-world examples, if you really like to. However your wishing it was not so won't make it not so.

And your saying that there are studies and real-world examples that contradict my statements doesn't make it so either.

I'm not saying the peer pressure doesn't affect behavior. I'm saying that it doesn't likely, without more, end up in murder.

Originally Posted by Quiddity Glomfuster

At this point, the question should be 'how does this happen and how can it be prevented' or it will just keep happening.

All too complex to be answered by The Stanford Prison experiment in isolation.

Just as one experiment on nutrition is not sufficient to explain how to stop starvation around the world.

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

I didn't really have a point in that thread. I was just relaying the experience of encountering somebody whose mental landscape was completely alien to my own. A lot of people read way too much into that.

Perhaps you meant that they didn't read enough into it. Because on the face of it, this:

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

To those who don't think criminals are different than you and I

is an apparent contradiction with this:

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

And like I said, Philip Zimbardo is no different than the rest of us. Virtually all of us contain some ugly possibilities in some parts of our mind. The best way to keep them safe is to recognize their existence and keep them under control rather than pretending they don't exist.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

Which I know to be nonsense. Philip Zimbardo spend tix days in a make-believe prison in 1971. I have spent over twenty-four years in a variety of real prisons. I know that the conditions he experienced in those six days bear no reality to the conditions in real prisons. I'm not saying that abuses cannot occur in a prison but they they are no more typical of a prison than they are of a college or a factory or a department store.

Well, I've seen documentaries on prisons and prison reform that say different, and according to this article, at the time that Zimbardo's experiment was conducted, the situation was pretty grim.
http://www.answers.com/topic/prisons-and-prison-reform

You didn't start working in prisons until some time after.

There have been a lot of reform efforts since but there are still quite a few groups working on prison reform so I'm guessing they're not exactly at an ideal state yet.

[doreen]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

The conclusion is unavoidable. Professor Zimbardo believes that the prison environment will inevitably and immediately corrupt anyone who enters it. The only cure is to leave the prison environment whereupon you will immediately become normal again.

Zimbardo believes that an environment similar to his "prison" will corrupt many who enter it. Whether most prisons have such an environment is a separate issue. Remember , in his "prison" the " guards" had no outside controls placed on their behavior- no oversight, no fear of being suspended or fired or going to prison themselves. All of which exist in your environment. All Zimbardo really did was show that even normal, mentally healthy people will abuse absolute power if it's given to them. Rather seems like common sense to me, but apparently the idea was shocking to a lot of people. While I don't think that the environment exempts an individual of responsibility for his or her own actions, I do think those who allowed that environment to exist also bear some responsibility.

[yahwc]

Is Dr. Zimbardo an attention-seeking showboater? Was he subtly encouraging the subjects to ham it up? It's hard to know, since as far as I can tell, the experiment didn't have a control group and wasn't done in a double-blind fashion. It's hard to see this as serious science.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Originally Posted by yahwc

Is Dr. Zimbardo an attention-seeking showboater? Was he subtly encouraging the subjects to ham it up? It's hard to know, since as far as I can tell, the experiment didn't have a control group and wasn't done in a double-blind fashion. It's hard to see this as serious science.

It's not that hard to know, since all the participants are still alive (I believe) and are prefectly capable of saying that Zimbardo did so. They do not.

[yahwc]

Originally Posted by Quiddity Glomfuster

It's not that hard to know, since all the participants are still alive (I believe) and are prefectly capable of saying that Zimbardo did so. They do not.

Legitimate psychology experiments do not rely on subjects accurately describing their own motivations. Legitimate psychology experiments rely on double-blind setups and control groups to test these things.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Originally Posted by yahwc

Legitimate psychology experiments do not rely on subjects accurately describing their own motivations. Legitimate psychology experiments rely on double-blind setups and control groups to test these things.

What about Milgram and the blue-eye/brown-eye experiment (which has been done many times)?

What do you think the answer is if you think Zimbardo's conclusion is bogus?

[Shagnasty]

Originally Posted by yahwc

Legitimate psychology experiments do not rely on subjects accurately describing their own motivations. Legitimate psychology experiments rely on double-blind setups and control groups to test these things.

No, some well-designed experiments are designed like you say. Others cannot be designed in the double-blind manner at all. This is one of them. Please explain how an experiment like this would work in a double-blind way and what the control group would be. Would the control group be people sitting in a room alone for a few days? Inquiring minds want to know.

BTW, your knowledge of experimental design is ignorant at best but comes from a small amount of learning.. A little knowledge is the most dangerous condition.

If you want to defend yourself, redesign the experiment in your own words meeting the qualifications you state.

[yahwc]

Originally Posted by Shagnasty

No, some well-designed experiments are designed like you say. Others cannot be designed in the double-blind manner at all. This is one of them. Please explain how an experiment like this would work in a double-blind way and what the control group would be. Would the control group be people sitting in a room alone for a few days? Inquiring minds want to know.

Simple: No direct contact between Zombardo and the subjects. 2 or 3 groups of 24 people. A grad student is given written instructions to read to each group of 24. The grad student is told generally what is being investigated but not what Zimbardo hopes or expects the experiment to show.

For example, one group of 24 might be instructed that the "guards" will be constantly obvserved and then evaluated at the end of the 2 weeks. Another group of 24 might be instructed that the guards are on their honor to behave humanely while enforcing discipline, and that based on experience, Stanford students have generally enforced discipline while not abusing any "prisoners." Another group might be simply instructed that the guards are to enforce disipline.

That would be a legitimate experiment.

[yahwc]

Originally Posted by Quiddity Glomfuster

What about Milgram and the blue-eye/brown-eye experiment (which has been done many times)?

Do these experiments rely on the subjects accurately describing their own motivations?

[GomiBoy]

Originally Posted by smiling bandit

Except that, of course, the guards in concentration camps weren't chosen randomly. They were under no threat, and no one was ever killed for not slaughtering Jews, AFAIK. Pople quite voluntarily did these things, becaue they were excused from combat duty and got extra pay and rations.

AFAIK you're right about the choosing of the guards, but I remember a story told to us in Air Force Basic about a German soldier, Werchmacht, who, when being told to execute civilians on the Eastern Front, put down his rifle and joined those about to die rather than pull the trigger. He was a decorated combat veteran IIRC. Obviously, I don't know the full story and don't have any cites or would have provided them, but this was taught to us during our Geneva Convention and Rules of Armed Combat training, telling us we had every right to refuse to follow an illegal order. I've also read anecdotal evidence of reliable Nazis commiting suicide after the war when the full realization of what they did came to light. But again, anecdotal.

As for the OP - I'd like to think I would do option 1 and join those killed rather than sacrifice my morals and beliefs, but I honestly don't know. The Stanford Experiment, and some other thigns, made me think long and hard about this, and the answer is that while I would like to think I'd behave a certain way I just don't know if that's true and honest or just a dream.

[Little Nemo]

Quiddity, I'd like to apologize for the hostile tone of my last post. I shouldn't assume I know what your intent was. But I would like an explanation of what you think is "clear".

Heffalump, I really really really don't want to go back over the same ground as that other thread ended up in. I will say, once again, that I have never believed that all people in prison are soulless sociopaths. But a few of them genuinely are and the one I happened to see on that day gave every sign of being one of them. If I thought that he was a typical prisoner I wouldn't have had any reason to post about the experience. As for the thread title, I've always regarded the OP as the substance of the thread and the title as a short line to mark it - by necessity a lot of meaning can't fit in the ten or so words that the title holds. A title like "To those who don't think, if one accepts as valid a conclusion based in some degree on emotional feelings although balanced on the whole by an objective assessment of the facts as an acceptable form of thinking, that some but not all people who happen to be incarcerated but are not typical of all incarcerated people and in some cases are not incarcerated at all are different, and by different I don't mean to declare I am feeling a moral superiority over these people, than you, assuming you are not in fact one of these people, and I" is a little unwieldy. If I worked in a WalMart and titled a thread "Customers suck" and then wrote a thread about some particular annoying customers, nobody would accuse me of believing that every customer in every store was bad because of the thread title.

[Heffalump and Roo]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

If I worked in a WalMart and titled a thread "Customers suck" and then wrote a thread about some particular annoying customers, nobody would accuse me of believing that every customer in every store was bad because of the thread title.

You're right. Thanks for explaining that.

[Little Nemo]

Zimbardo believes that an environment similar to his "prison" will corrupt many who enter it. Whether most prisons have such an environment is a separate issue. Remember , in his "prison" the "guards" had no outside controls placed on their behavior- no oversight, no fear of being suspended or fired or going to prison themselves. All of which exist in your environment. All Zimbardo really did was show that even normal, mentally healthy people will abuse absolute power if it's given to them. Rather seems like common sense to me, but apparently the idea was shocking to a lot of people. While I don't think that the environment exempts an individual of responsibility for his or her own actions, I do think those who allowed that environment to exist also bear some responsibility.

I'd like to believe that this is true. But I think it's pretty clear that Professor Zimbardo does not believe this. From his statements, some of which I quoted above, I think it's clear he does believe that his "prison" was actually similar to a real prison and the behavior he observed was typical of what occurs in a real prison. And he has officially stated, right up to the present day, that the experiment he conducted in 1971 is still relevant to what is happening in prisons today.

Notice, for example, how Zimbardo never refers to his students as "students" when they were participating in the experiment. He always calls them "guards" and "prisoners" when he talks about the things they did that week. And he always calls them "students" when he talks about them before and after that week. It's like he feels they literally became different people for those six days and what happened was in no way related to their identity outside of the experiment.

Would you accept the idea that the SS Guards who were killing people in Auschwitz were only like that because they were in Auschwitz? And that once Auschwitz was closed down, they went back to being normal people? Obviously, you wouldn't based on what you wrote, but by Zimbardo's logic, that would be the case - he would believe that the camp itself was the culprit and the people who worked there were forced to kill by the environment they were in.

Is Dr. Zimbardo an attention-seeking showboater? Was he subtly encouraging the subjects to ham it up? It's hard to know, since as far as I can tell, the experiment didn't have a control group and wasn't done in a double-blind fashion.

Here's the briefing Professor Zimbardo gave his students as they were assuming the roles of guards: "You can create in the prisoners feelings of boredom, a sense of fear to some degree, you can create a notion of arbitrariness that their life is totally controlled by us, by the system, you, me, and they'll have no privacy... We're going to take away their individuality in various ways. In general what all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness. That is, in this situation we'll have all the power and they'll have none" Then he handed everyone a baton. I think it's pretty clear Zimbardo was influencing the direction of the experiment right from its beginning.

[gonzomax]

One of the "prisoners" went on a huger strike. the guards started punishing his cell mates . He claimed the pressure to be a "good" prisoner was real and effective . Much of what happens in prison happened in the experiment. I wonder what the students involved would say about it today.

[Little Nemo]

Much of what happens in prison happened in the experiment.

And you base this opinion on what? Professor Zimbardo, by his own admission, based his knowledge of prisons on watching Cool Hand Luke. I base my knowledge of prisons on working in them for a couple of decades.

[doreen]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

Notice, for example, how Zimbardo never refers to his students as "students" when they were participating in the experiment. He always calls them "guards" and "prisoners" when he talks about the things they did that week. And he always calls them "students" when he talks about them before and after that week. It's like he feels they literally became different people for those six days and what happened was in no way related to their identity outside of the experiment.

Would you accept the idea that the SS Guards who were killing people in Auschwitz were only like that because they were in Auschwitz? And that once Auschwitz was closed down, they went back to being normal people? Obviously, you wouldn't based on what you wrote, but by Zimbardo's logic, that would be the case - he would believe that the camp itself was the culprit and the people who worked there were forced to kill by the environment they were in.

There's a great big difference between the environment forcing someone to do something and the environment influencing their behavior. I'll give a real-life example. Where I work there are a million policies, rules and procedures. Everything from a requirement that time be accurately reported on timesheets to the factors to be considered in making decisions. There was a time when literally no attention was paid to the accuracy of timesheets. People would report that they worked a full 7 1/2 hour day when in reality they worked 2 or 3 hours. Not just one or two people- definitely the majority of people. Suddenly, when new management came in and started firing and suspending people, supervisors starting checking on the timesheets they signed, and more people started working the hours they were paid for. You can't deny that the environment has an effect. Zimbardo might believe the environment was the culprit, but he has no particular expertise is assigning responsibility- that's not the job of a psychologist. It's his job to determine what influences behavior.

Here's the briefing Professor Zimbardo gave his students as they were assuming the roles of guards: "You can create in the prisoners feelings of boredom, a sense of fear to some degree, you can create a notion of arbitrariness that their life is totally controlled by us, by the system, you, me, and they'll have no privacy... We're going to take away their individuality in various ways. In general what all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness. That is, in this situation we'll have all the power and they'll have none" Then he handed everyone a baton. I think it's pretty clear Zimbardo was influencing the direction of the experiment right from its beginning.

Sure, he was influencing the direction of the experiment. But which question do you think Zimbardo was trying to answer? He wasn't trying to determine how people would act if they are given rules and expect to be held accountable for following them. "The purpose was to understand the development of norms and the effects of roles, labels, and social expectations in a simulated prison environment." He deliberately created a situation in which there were no norms - and some apparently normal people became abusive while others did not participate, but also did nothing to stop it.

And of course the research is relevant to prisons today- those running the prisons still need to be certain that an environment which tolerates abuse is not permitted to exist. I'm certain the problem does exist in some places today- perhaps not prisons, but I'm sure it exists in some [not most] local jails and lock-ups.

[yahwc]

The experiment kinda reminds me of a reality show. When you watch a reality show, you frequently see people acting out in ways that are very rare in real life. Same thing with the Jerry Springer show.

Part of it is that these shows select people who are somewhat flamboyant. Part of it also is the editing.

But I think part of it is that the people on the show understand that that they are there to play a role. The producers know that outrageous behavior = ratings and they subtly (or not so subtly) urge the people to act out.

If somebody was making a "prison experiment" reality show, it would probably end up a lot like the Stanford prison experiment did.

[Zoe]

I have seen both a documentary movie and a movie in the form of a fictional account based on this experiment. I will see if I can come up with anything at IMDB.

Little Nemo, I trust fully that you know more about prisons than I do. I didn't get the impression that he was saying that all prisons are like this. I think his point had more to do with what human beings are capable of doing when reenforced with similar conduct by others.

Does anyone remember the day that a crowd of guys in Central Park started snatching at young women's clothing and it got out of hand? Women begged the police to help them and the police did nothing. People watching from the sidelines did nothing. I don't know what finally broke it up.

It's more about mob mentality than about how rotten prisons are.

I highly recommend both of the films. Fascinating! And the psychologist did get way out of line.

[Zoe]

I wish spelling came naturally to me.

Anyway, the fictional account is German: Das Experiment

There is another fictitious version in production now, due out in 2008.

The documentary was The Stanford Prison Experiment (doh! Just like the OP) It was shown on the Sundance Channel.

[Sophistry and Illusion]

If Zimbardo's experiment were an isolated thing, it wouldn't prove much. But as other people have pointed out in this thread, other experiments have come to similar conclusions. In Stanley Milgram's experiment, people were induced to deliver what they believed to be a potentially fatal electrical charge to a stranger because some guy with a lab coat and switchboard was standing over them asking them to do it. The blue eye/brown eye experiment also shows it.

As I said in the "Are prisoners different from us?" thread, the idea that many perpetrators of great evil are perfectly normal people has one of its most lucid statements in Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil. Wiki sums up the thesis quite well:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

The Banality of Evil is a phrase coined in 1963 by Hannah Arendt in her work Eichmann in Jerusalem. It describes the thesis that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths but rather by very ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal and ordinary.

One interesting treatment is Jonathan Bennett's article "The Conscience of Huckelberry Finn," wherein he is discussing the connection between morality and sympathy. He gives an interesting quote from a speech Himmler gave to a group of S.S. generals. In it, he is talking about the struggle between killing thousands of Jews and still being a decent man, going home to your wife and kids and being a good husband and father, etc. He says:

Originally Posted by Heinrich Himmler

I also want to talk to you quite frankly on a very grave matter. . . I mean. . . the extermination of the Jewish race. . . . Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500, or 1,000. To have stuck it out and at the same time - apart from exceptions caused by human weakness - to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written.

The idea that many (perhaps most) normal people have the capacity for great evil, if put in the right (wrong?) environment is very plausible given all of these cases. Of course there are people who are put in such environments and resist, and engage in genuine heroism. But I frankly think the idea that some people are good and others bad, and that ceteris paribus this goodness/badness will manifest in most environments in which the person is placed, is simply a myth.