The Stanford Experiment

[Amazon 7]

As our country becomes more of a police state every year, should our police officers, prison guards, border patrol, and others in positions of authority be tested for personality flaws that lead to abuse of their power? It has been proven over and over that people tend to use and abuse others as often as not just by virtue of a flaw in human nature.
The thread on the border guards brought this to mind.


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

The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Twenty-four undergraduates were selected out of 70 to play the roles of both guards and prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Roles were assigned at random. They adapted to their roles well beyond that expected, leading the guards to display to authoritarian and even draconian measures. Two of the prisoners were upset enough by the process to quit the experiment early, and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. The experimental process and the results remain controversial. The entire experiment was filmed, with excerpts soon made publicly available, leaving some disturbed by the resulting film. Over 30 years later, Zimbardo found renewed interest in the experiment when the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal occurred.

Comparisons to Abu Ghraib
When the Abu Ghraib military prisoner torture and abuse scandal was published in March 2004, many observers immediately were struck by its similarities to the Stanford Prison experiment — among them, Philip Zimbardo, who paid close attention to the details of the story. He was dismayed by official military and government efforts shifting the blame for the torture and abuses in the Abu Ghraib American military prison on to "a few bad apples" rather than acknowledging it as possibly systemic problems of a formally established military incarceration system.

Eventually, Zimbardo became involved with the defense team of lawyers representing Abu Ghraib prison guard Staff Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick. He had full access to all investigation and background reports, testifying as an expert witness in SSG Frederick's court martial, which resulted in an eight-year prison sentence for Frederick in October 2004.

Zimbardo drew on the knowledge he gained from participating in the Frederick case to write The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (Random House, 2007), dealing with the striking similarities between the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Abu Ghraib abuses.[2]

Similar studies
BBC Prison Study
Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher, psychologists from the University of Exeter and University of St Andrews, conducted the BBC Prison Study in 2002[8]. This was a partial replication of the SPE conducted with the assistance of the BBC, who broadcast events in the study in a documentary series called The Experiment. Their results and conclusions differed from Zimbardo's and led to a number of publications on tyranny, stress and leadership. Moreover, unlike results from the SPE, these were published in leading academic journals such as British Journal of Social Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, Social Psychology Quarterly. The BBC Prison Study is now taught as a core study on the UK A-level Psychology syllabus.

While Haslam and Reicher's procedure was not a direct replication of Zimbardo's, their study does cast further doubt on the generality of his conclusions. Specifically, it questions the notion that people slip mindlessly into role and the idea that the dynamics of evil are in any way banal. Their research also points to the importance of leadership in the emergence of tyranny (of the form displayed by Zimbardo when briefing guards in the Stanford experiment).[9][10]

Experiments in the USA
The Third Wave was a 1967 recreation of Nazi Party dynamics by high school teacher Ron Jones in Palo Alto, California, though the veracity of Jones' accounts has been considered questionable.[11]

In April 2007, it was reported that high school students in Waxahachie, Texas, who were participating in a role-playing exercise fell into a similar abusive pattern of behavior as exhibited in the original Stanford experiment.[12]

[redlegphi 0]

It seems to me that the point of the Stanford Experiment (if I"m not mistaken, which I often am) was that pretty much anybody would abuse power given to them if left unchecked. It pretty much goes back to the old quote about absolute power corrupting absolutely. So testing people for character flaws wouldn't really help matters, since most people would demonstrate those flaws if left to their own devices. Which really highlights why Abu Gharaib happened. It wasn't that you had a bunch of morally deficient people guarding the Iraqis. It was that you had a bunch of normal people guarding them with very little oversight and very little guidance on where the line between right and wrong were. Which is why it was surprising to me (though not really that surprising) that none of the officers who should have been checking in on the enlisted personnel ever stood trial for neglecting their duties.
Just my two cents.

[wayneflorida 0]

Our country could never become a real police state.
Our congressional representatives and senators would never let that happen because they would protect "the people".

But then, if they thought it was for our own good . . . . . . . .

[Remster 30]

What Red said...

It's not about "filtering out" bad elements. Its that we all are potential bad elements.

Remster

[Amazon 7]

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What Red said...

It's not about "filtering out" bad elements. Its that we all are potential bad elements.

It is certainty that within any group that is tasked with "protecting and serving" there are those that do show a propensity to forget they are supposed to be serving....Personally I think there are those who work with them who realize who the bad apples are so they could be removed from a position of public trust for abusing their power.

[justinb138 0]

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Personally I think there are those who work with them who realize who the bad apples are so they could be removed from a position of public trust for abusing their power.

It's unfortunate that it rarely works out that way.

[philh 0]

I believ the Stanford experiment had a number of methodological flaws, read this:
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4102

[pirana 0]

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What Red said...

It's not about "filtering out" bad elements. Its that we all are potential bad elements.

Agreed; there is a dark beast in everyone, and all it takes is to be put in a situation where the layers of civility are allowed to be relaxed or worse, encouraged to be ignored. At our core, we are all beasts of survival and greed.

Our most base needs are quite beastial. Only if those are met do we don the gown of civility; and we regress quite readily. Sometimes that is good, sometimes not. If it to protect young from prey, that is good. If it is to behave like a glutton or exercize dominance for dominance's sake - it is destructive.

It's tough to be a species with large frontal lobes.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[rehmwa 2]

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there is a dark beast in everyone, ....It's tough to be a species with large frontal lobes.

I got pretty much all I need from just that part -

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Remster 30]

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I believ the Stanford experiment had a number of methodological flaws, read this:
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4102

Perhaps, but the same trends have been observed in several other experiments/situations since: the Milgram experiment and its replications is probably the most notable.

Remster