Stanford prison experiment and current abuses

I watched a show last night on Court TV, of all channels, that was very interesting. It discussed a person's ability to behave certain ways under pressure from authority. It cited some psychological experiments from the 60s and 70s, as well as modern cases that have made the news, where people have done atrocious things when it would be out of character for them to do so, and also where it would have been very easy to help or be a "hero" yet they did nothing.

I was thinking of Abu Ghraib all along, but toward the end of the show they started talking about this experiment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Prison_Experiment

A professor set up a human experiment. He selected men with no previous violent or sadistic tendencies, who were psychologically stable and normal people, then put them in a mock prison situation. Some men were guards, and some were prisoners - they were selected randomly. They were told to basically do whatever they wanted. Within days, the guards were humiliating the prisoners, and the prisoners were having nervous breakdowns. When the guards were asked why they forced prisoners to do humiliating things, they said they didn't really know - but the best answer they could come up with was that they did it because they could. And because other "guards" were doing it.

If you read the description in the link, and look at the photos, you can't help but be amazed at how similar the outcome there was like what has happened (and is happening) in military prisons, where soldiers who are not trained to be prison guards are put in charge and basically told to do whatever they want to ("need" to). There is no authority figure to remind people of what is acceptable, and a "group think" phenomenon quickly takes over. Prisoners start to be seen as inhuman, or somehow deserving of horrible treatment, and there seems to be a vicious circle that amplifies this beyond reason, so that guards lose their sense of guilt and conscience. So, too, prisoners lose their sense of having any rights, and become victims without an ability to resist. The stress is to great to overcome.

The show ended by saying that this study, along with others, were well known in psychology and in the military, and that they don't know why this phenomenon is not being acknowleged. In other words, why doesn't the military know better than to set up a situation that will ultimatedly lead to this behavior?

and I really think everyone should be familiar with it, and it's implications. People are capable of doing vicious evil things, or tolerating other people doing vicious evil things just because of the roles they are put in.

I don't know how to link properly. forgive me, but this show was also mentioned on this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x5225866

To answer your question:

The military DOES KNOW BETTER and probably engineered Abu Ghraib for exactly the outcome we all enjoyed.

Remember the General testifying that 99.999% of all troops are good and this travesty is the result of merely "a few bad apples"?

He's probably one of the evil bastards that engineered it.

A very very good show for our times.

-85% Jimmy

It has to do with authority and our willingness to obey it.

"In other words, why doesn't the military know better than to set up a situation that will ultimatedly lead to this behavior?"

What makes you think they didn't know better?

I only think they didn't know better, because I can't see a good reason for the behavior. I don't think torture is that effective. So they set this up, they know it will lead to torture, and Rumsfeld thinks "Oh goodie, this way we can torture the terrorists without saying that's what we set out to do." But it seems like they have all these people in Abu Ghraib and don't even know if they have terrorist connections or not. It certainly seems like most of them don't. So they risk exposure and scandal...for what?

I'm also interested in BF Skinner. This stuff disturbs me, but at the same time I like a person who can look at human behavior as an objective science. To see what is really going on, and accept that people and animals do certain things. I think we have a better chance of dealing with it when we're honest about it.

I've heard a lot of junk pushed around about this study. The bottom line is, it's not a matter of roles, it's a matter of an authority figure telling you that you will not be punished for doing bad/ evil/ over-the-line deeds - and being in a position to be believable. The Stanford experiment is not an experiment in the absence of authority. It is an experiment where the people running it are part of the experiment, not simply leaving the door open to abuse, but holding it wide open.

The military, in the past, HAS acknowledged this situation, and considers strong and effective leadership by officers and NCO's to be the solution to that problem. Obvious problem: What if higher ups are giving the green light to abuses, as far as the grunts are concerned, and no one's correcting that view (because it's either true, or because higher ups aren't leading/ supervising)? You get Abu Ghraib. Obvious problem #2: What happens when a leader (a sergeant) decides to lead his men into acts of cold-blooded retaliation? You get the Haditha incident.

Obvious problem #3 is that cover-ups send a clear negative message to the lower ranks. This is why the erosion of the entire concept of command responsibility is so pernicious and dangerous.

The problem is that the military DOES know better, but it is in the personal interests of Rumsfeld on down through the senior ranks to set up a situation where they are NOT accountable for crimes (including "war crimes") committed by their subordinates. Better for them to have an opaque system where bad stuff "just happens" and "that's war, get used to it". And "9/11 changed everything". And "We can't let The Hague put our soldiers on trial." And so on.

They know about it. They just don't acknowledge it because it looks bad and, well, do they REALLY want to question the Nuremburg trials? No, of course they don't. They want people who commit bad acts to be found guilty regardless of what their commanders did. So they can't accept a "we're victims of psychological wiring" defense.

Why would they want this? I can't see any practical purpose of torturing prisoners, particularly ones that don't really have terrorist connections. Are they trying to demean the whole group to get one or two to break down and talk?

Am I just naive enough to think that they wouldn't just do it for "fun"?

I have to think that there's a reason to risk the crimes being exposed, and all the negative publicity and scandal that ensues. What are they after, or what do they *think* they're after?

Not accepting the "victims of psychology" defense doesn't really help. If this is a true phenomenon, and it isn't acknowledged, then it's just going to continue to happen. Not only that, but you're setting soldiers up to fail horrifically, then punishing them for it. It is hard for some people to come to terms with, but the gist of this show was that a person may hear an abuse story, and think "Oh, I would never ever do that", but, given the right circumstance, they absolutely will. Who hasn't bullied or teased a classmate or even co-worker, because everyone else was doing it too? A mild example, but the same process.

I read some of the links on the wikipedia page about flaws in the study. I see the problems, but when grouped with other psychological "studies" it really does give a broad picture that we will make strange decisions if conditions are a certain way. We tend to think that a person with a strong sense of obedience to authority would also have a strong sense of doing the right thing, being moral. Soldiers are of course trained to be the ultimate in obedience to authority. So it seems unfair to develop this trait, and then expect them to overcome it in stressful situations. Or to be able to pick and choose what to obey and what not to.

The soldier is trained to kill without emotion, and follow orders to the letter without question. Then deemed a monster and put in prison for doing so.

www.courttv.com/onair/shows/human_behavior_experiments/index.html

Invited Address
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

Time and Location
Saturday May 27, 2006, 11:00 AM - 11:50 AM
Astor Ballroom

Philip G. Zimbardo
Stanford University

Abstract
A social psychological analysis of the causes of "evil" behavior adds both situational and systems level analyses to the traditional (limited)dispositional perspective. Our understanding of Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses focuses on parallel processes from classic research and detailed analyses of multiple forces transforming good soldiers in that bad barrel.

in some people eventually.

... and men like bush encourage it because they are "principled" and that keeps distance enough for others to be inhuman. Someone else already mentioned the Milgran experiment. Kind of strange to think U.S. citizens would do their duty like the concentration camp guards did. Well, until we realize eugenics and the birth of the Holocaust was conceived right here in the U.S. of A and Hitler borrowed it from us.

Sir Francis Galton and colleagues, but you're right the US ran with it.

listen to absolute strangers scream in agony and know they are causing it, yet fail to stop..

The pressure from the administrators of the experiment seemed greater than their own ability to stop the pain in the other subject....

they didn't want to be giving the stronger shocks, and they all were upset. Could have just stood up and walked out. But they did what they were told.

People here in Australia used to be terribly strongly against torture. However, seeing so much proof of soldiers on our side doing it has served to break down barriers in peoples' minds against it. Now the majority of Australians have voted in favour of "suspected terrorists" being tortured, never considering the fact that any innocent person, including themselves can be a suspect.

People in Nazi Germany were gradually conditioned to accept soldiers getting onto public transport and letting their dogs maul to death anyone who looked Jewish and did not have the right papers. Society was carefully manipulated to cause that change, so the people who would not actively join in with cruelty would at least turn a blind eye to it.

I was appalled after Katrina to see how many of Americans I knew personally were quite untroubled by the terrible suffering and death caused. But they had already learned to blame the victim and look the other way.

However much people hate *, more and more are having life made difficult for them, and then being told minority groups are to blame. Even democrats are falling for the hate-propaganda, and wanting to remove the "offenders" from society. Thus, the worse the government treats people, the more ardently those same people will carry out the government's wishes in acting against other people.

The only caring encouraged in this "charitable" society is the fearful caring about one's own little nest-egg.