IRAQ: Revisiting the Famous Stanford Prison Experiment

When I see those pics of ordinary GIs engaged in sadistic torture of Iraqi prisoners I was reminded of the famous Stanford Prison Experment.... here's a link: http://www.prisonexp.org/

It was stopped because the "guards" were becoming sadistic.

than the militry folks in charge did, of theirs. Perhaps those damned sociologists have made some significant contributions?

... that is the answer.

... and not by the experimenters themselves. A very disturbing part of it was that the psych experimenters themselves lost perspective. This is why I continuously stress the fact that people who feel they're "above that behavior" or "better people" are themselves possibly even more susceptible to the siren song of authoritarian power.

Can we count the number of "I'm immune" or "I'm better" rationalizations?
-- "I'm a Christian, so I could never do that."
-- "I'm a Liberal, so I could never do that."
-- "I've raised children, so I could never do that."
-- "I've studied this, so I could never do that."
-- "They're trailer trash. I'm not."
-- "They're military drones. I'm not."
-- "They're testosterone-poisoned men. I'm a caring woman."

... how many, many more can we think of?


It scares me to know I could do such things.

I remember learning about this in psych class in college and being amazed at how quickly it happened. And these were people with no reasons to dislike each other, to start with. 10 days. Imagine what happens over the course of a year with people who already don't like each other ... :( I'm not an apologist for the torture (as has been accused of some on other posts), but given human nature as explained in the SPE, I can understand how it would happen :( :( :( Still, makes me sick. And ashamed that we put people into a situation where this is ongoing and not prevented...

It's part of the reason why I have a problem condemning the guards.

Ever since the pictures were released I've been trying to remember the title of that experiment. The slide show was very, very interesting.

The parallels are even closer than I had thought. For instance, Zimbardo says early that nobody gave the 'guards' any training; they were just thrown into the situation and had to make it up as they went along. Much later on, he mentions that one of the reasons they had to terminate early was that they discovered that the 'guards' were abusing the prisoners more severely during the graveyard shift when they thought nobody was looking; the way he puts it is that their "bordeom" led them to invent more "pornographic" punishments.

That's what those pictures are, really--pornography. I'm waiting to see someone bring that up. The torture, well, that's what's gonna happen when you create conditions like the ones we've created in Iraq. The fact that someone took pictures of this, and then passed them around until they finally reached someone who figured out that this was obscene and needed to be stopped--that's pretty special.

Hurl,

The Plaid Adder

ment - when people keep increasing the 'supposed' amt of electricity when they see what other people are doing

They're going to have to deal with this someway,and the studies listed on this thread may give them some line of defense. If they go that route,they're going to have to first of all acknowledge that the military system creates the type of conditions that allow for things like this to happen,PLUS they're also going to have to come to terms with the fact that circumstances do play a role in peoples behavior,and they can't just label them 'good' and 'bad'.

Course I realize I'm dreaming here. Based on the few minutes of Rush I had the misfortune of hearing today,they're going to blame this incident on madonna. :shrug: