# Why good people turn bad - the Stanford Prison Experiment **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 31, 2007, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-good-people-turn-bad-the-stanford-prison-experiment/398214 "2007-03-31T15:17:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-good-people-turn-bad-the-stanford-prison-experiment/398214/61 "2007-04-03T19:27:41Z")
[QUOTE=Quiddity Glomfuster] > [@Heffalump and Roo](#): > > All too complex to be answered by The Stanford Prison experiment in isolation. Nobody said that the experiment in isolation answered them. I said they are the questions that remain. [/QUOTE] Oh OK, I get it. Another non sequitur. So your questions don’t have to do with your topic. Well, then I can add more questions that remain. Does God exist? What’s the purpose of life? Can we end starvation? Should we? Is there life on other planets? How do we attain happiness? Can it be maintained indefinitely? I got lots of others that have nothing to do with the topic too. Yeah, I don’t know why they’re in the thread either. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2007, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-good-people-turn-bad-the-stanford-prison-experiment/398214/62 "2007-04-04T02:31:33Z")
> [@](#): > > Really, it’s not at all. But now I understand the filter you’re using. I’m still wondering about the filter you’re using. You apparently missed Zimbardo’s statement _“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 _“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.”_ and _“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.”_ and _“All prisons are cloaked in a veil of secrecy. No one knows what happens in a prison…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.”_ You want to run that part about how Zimbardo doesn’t make his views on prison clear by me again? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2007, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-good-people-turn-bad-the-stanford-prison-experiment/398214/63 "2007-10-21T05:20:58Z")
At the risk of re-opening an old debate, this recent [review](http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article2677344.ece?ILC-EVYcomments&ATTR=nussbaum) of one of Zimbardo’s books makes many of the same points I’ve held (albeit in a more articulate manner). Martha Nussbaum writes: > [@](#): > > Zimbardo concludes that situational features, far more than underlying dispositional features of people’s characters, explain why people behave cruelly and abusively to others. He then connects these insights to a detailed account of the abuses by United States soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison, where, he argues, the humiliations and torments suffered by the prisoners were produced not by evil character traits but by an evil system that, like the prison system established in the SPE, virtually ensures that people will behave badly. Situations are held in place by systems, he argues, and it is ultimately the system that we must challenge, not the frequently average actors. > [@](#): > > Zimbardo sometimes speaks as if situations are all that is important, and the insides of people explain nothing at all. As I wrote, Zimbardo sees the problem as the situation controlling the people in it rather than the responsibility of the people themselves. Zimbardo somehow feels that the “system” exists independently of the individual people in it. I don’t see how that’s possible. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-good-people-turn-bad-the-stanford-prison-experiment/398214.md?page=3)