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posted by mrpg on Tuesday August 21 2018, @01:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-a-lie dept.

Recently 994 items including 49 videos and 54 sound recordings were deposited in Zimbardo's online archive at Stanford University. This newly revealed evidence challenges everything that has been taught about the Stanford Prison Experiment.

https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/time-change-story

From the article:

We all know the story of the Stanford Prison Experiment. It has been a staple of introductory psychology textbooks and lectures for nearly fifty years (see Griggs, 2014).

[...] But now, a half century later, dramatic new evidence has emerged that challenges Zimbardo's account. Our textbooks and our lectures will have to be rewritten. The story of what happened in the SPE and why such brutality occurred will have to be retold.

[...] The startling new evidence tells a tale of the experimenters treating the Guards effectively as research assistants. It reveals how disturbed the Prisoners were when Zimbardo told them they could not leave the study. It raises profound intellectual, moral and even legal questions about what went on in that Stanford basement in the summer of 1971.

[...] You can listen to this interview – start after 8.38 minutes. The tape shows the leadership of the experimenters was at the core of the SPE. More specifically, it provides evidence of identity leadership. That is, Zimbardo and his colleagues sought to ensure conformity amongst the Guards by making brutality appear necessary for the achievement of worthy ingroup goals, namely science that would make the case for prison reform. "What we want to do", Zimbardo's Warden told the Guard, "is be able to go to the world with what we've done and say "Now look, this is what happens when you have Guards who behave this way ... But in order to say that we have to have Guards who behave that way."

[...] How has Zimbardo responded this time? By reasserting that 'none of these criticisms present any substantial evidence that alters the SPE's conclusion'. And at the same time that he berates his critics (without engaging with their arguments), he reworks his story to now say that, yes, Guards were told to be tough, but not how to be tough. For Zimbardo, then, this is all just fake news. Except that it plainly isn't.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 21 2018, @01:53AM (7 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 21 2018, @01:53AM (#724024) Journal

    The most stressful times in the life of any society, are times of war. Yes, horrible things happen in war. The "good side" and the "bad side" are often both guilty of doing those horrible things. And yet, great humanitarian gestures are made during these times of stress. People sacrifice their very lives for their comrades. People more rarely sacrifice themselves for humanity, not just for their comrades. These great things happen often enough, that war has evolved to have rules. Instead of one great orgasm of destruction, killing, rape and theft, today we have rules of war.

    I've always believed that any experiment demonstrating that all people will sink to the lowest level are flawed.

    But, of course, we do have television . . .

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  • (Score: 5, Touché) by stretch611 on Tuesday August 21 2018, @02:26AM (1 child)

    by stretch611 (6199) on Tuesday August 21 2018, @02:26AM (#724029)

    I've always believed that any experiment demonstrating that all people will sink to the lowest level are flawed.

    But, of course, we do have television . . .

    We also have congress...

    --
    Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @02:30AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @02:30AM (#724030)

      And Trump as a president.

  • (Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @03:01AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @03:01AM (#724039)

    Excellent propaganda post! 5/5, would read again! I love how it subtly romanticises the deaths of millions of people, if not billions in the upcoming war, and makes it seem as though the redirection of over $700 billion dollars away from the working class into the coffers of the military-industrial complex and the ruling class (such as the CIA Democrats) is something honorable and right.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Mykl on Tuesday August 21 2018, @03:32AM

      by Mykl (1112) on Tuesday August 21 2018, @03:32AM (#724041)

      Read again chucklehead. GP notes that war is terrible, however there are individual acts of honor, sacrifice and nobility. At no point does he say that war is a good thing.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:05PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:05PM (#724337)

      A significant chunk of the $700B goes to the pockets of lower and middle-class people who would otherwise have to find jobs in teledildonics.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 21 2018, @01:57PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday August 21 2018, @01:57PM (#724154)

    I've always believed that any experiment demonstrating that all people will sink to the lowest level are flawed.

    These experiments don't exactly show that. What they do show is that most people are capable of sinking to the lowest level depending on the circumstances. Or, more colloquially, that the line between good people and bad people cuts through each person, and that individuals have to be on their guard and not just surrender their own sense of moral judgment to somebody else.

    One reason atrocity is much more common in times of war is that military training is in large part about surrendering ones' own moral judgment to other people, all so that you will obey your commanding officers. Which is necessary for military purposes: soldiers that don't obey their commanding officers can and do get people on their own side killed. But it does mean that people who would normally never even dream of killing anybody are all of a sudden in a situation where they are being told "Kill those people over there!", and they have to obey or bad things will happen to them (either from the enemy, or from their own side).

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Tuesday August 21 2018, @04:51PM

    by acid andy (1683) on Tuesday August 21 2018, @04:51PM (#724257) Homepage Journal

    You're glorifying the sacrifice. On the one hand you acknowledge that the killing is bad, but you portray someone sacrificing their life as being a "great thing". Don't you realize that usually those instances of someone sacrificing their life mean that they were killed by someone else? It's just as horrible, just as tragic. It's the same event viewed from the perspective of the victim instead of the perpetrator. There's nothing good about war.

    --
    If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?