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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.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday August 21 2018, @04:42AM (11 children)
Milgrim, or Milgram experiment was not Fake. Dateline did that one over. They said, let's check it with a do-over. And it was 100%.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:46AM (10 children)
Yeah, even if the new interpretation of the Stanford Prison Experiment is true (and I don't have time right now to go listen to the audio, etc. as well as context)... It seems to mostly devolve into yet another confirmation of the Milgram experiment, which has been confirmed with variants again and again.
For those unfamiliar with it, Milgram demonstrated that average people could frequently be convinced to horrible things to other people with just mild appeals to the idea that an authority said it was okay -- hence explaining the "just following orders" defense that came out of Nazi trials.
And that finding is disturbing and sufficient enough on its own. Stanford claimed to go a step further and demonstrate that setting up systems of power would naturally cause abusive behavior... And honestly if the experiment is bad, one need only look to actual behavior of prison guards in real prisons or police brutality frequency to see that it may not be pervasive for everyone, but if the "system" is okay with such behavior, it clearly tends to be prevalent. Add in someone in charge who approves (or perhaps merely "looks the other way") and it's a Milgram variant, which again has multiple confirmations.
Maybe this experiment at Stanford was set up or run in a crappy way. But I'd say we have PLENTY of evidence that humans are willing to abuse others when mildly encouraged by systems of power, both experimentally and throughout the real world.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 21 2018, @12:21PM (9 children)
Also, one important reason why the Stanford Prison Experiment has never been repeated to see whether it was a fluke is that no ethics board will allow it. So all we have to go on now is the real-world examples of what happens when people are thrown into a prison where their guards are told they can do pretty much whatever they want.
And the overwhelming evidence is that guards in that situation torture prisoners when they are allowed to do so, regardless of whether those prisoners are guilty of anything.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Zinho on Tuesday August 21 2018, @12:49PM
Someone did; TFA links to the BBC Prison Study [bbcprisonstudy.org] which attempted to repeat the SPE in 2001-2002 and published their results. I don't have time to read through their website, but they're pretty proud of themselves for having repeated the experiment. It's interesting to note in the context of this thread that the BBC's results differed somewhat from Stanford's:
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Tuesday August 21 2018, @12:51PM (7 children)
But is this a statement about human nature in general or about the "type" of people who are drawn to such occupations? One of the distinctions between our real world examples and the cited experiments is that prison guards are not a randomly selected representation of humanity as a whole.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 21 2018, @01:43PM (6 children)
That would be a good question for the US soldiers at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. My guess is that a fair number of them were ordinary people who had joined the army to pay for college or something along those lines.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday August 21 2018, @01:53PM (5 children)
I would say that people who sign up for a job whose entire purpose is to kill people, directly or indirectly, are probably also not a great representative sample. Regardless of their primary motivation for considering the job.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday August 21 2018, @02:41PM (4 children)
I would venture a guess that some people who volunteer for the military in exchange for generous compensation and benefits, especially in a time of continuous never to end warfare, might do so because they have no other opportunities to get ahead in life.
So it might be a sample of people with limited opportunity, limited access to college education, later civilian job opportunities, etc.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 21 2018, @03:20PM (2 children)
Or sometimes even make ends meet. If your available options are homelessness, crime, and joining the army, I can understand choosing the army.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday August 21 2018, @04:42PM (1 child)
It's certainly understandable, but even if those three were truly the only options, then those who chose the military would *still* be a biased self-selected sample of those presented with the choice.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Wednesday August 22 2018, @01:23AM
Don't forget the fourth option; those who are given the opportunity to "volunteer" by a judge as an alternative to jail.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday August 21 2018, @04:36PM
If there were truly no other opportunities, then yes, those "some" might make a representative sample of their impoverished subset of the population (though still NOT of the population as a whole, nor of military personnel as a whole). But the reality is that there are always other opportunities - maybe not always as easy to access, but more appealing to those individuals who don't relish the idea of risking their life trying to kill complete strangers.