of it. These so-called guards in the Stanford experiment were random
selected from a volunteer population. Here's what Zimbardo recently has said
about it:
--
Types of Guards
By the fifth day, a new relationship had emerged between prisoners and
guards. The guards now fell into their job more easily -- a job which at
times was boring and at times was interesting.
There were three types of guards. First, there were tough but fair guards
who followed prison rules. Second, there were "good guys" who did little
favors for the prisoners and never punished them. And finally, about a third
of the guards were hostile, arbitrary, and inventive in their forms of
prisoner humiliation. These guards appeared to thoroughly enjoy the power
they wielded, yet none of our preliminary personality tests were able to
predict this behavior. The only link between personality and prison behavior
was a finding that prisoners with a high degree of authoritarianism endured
our authoritarian prison environment longer than did other prisoners.
In 2003 U.S. soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners held at Abu Ghraib, 20 miles
west of Baghdad. The prisoners were stripped, made to wear bags over their
heads, and sexually humiliated while the guards laughed and took
photographs. How is this abuse similar to or different from what took place
in the Stanford Prison Experiment?
--
His third type of guard do definitely sound like the ones who were
tormenting those Iraqi prisoners. What is really telling is his other
comments regarding the guards and why he ended the study only 6 days into a
2 week experiment.
--
I ended the study prematurely for two reasons. First, we had learned through
videotapes that the guards were escalating their abuse of prisoners in the
middle of the night when they thought no researchers were watching and the
experiment was "off." Their boredom had driven them to ever more
pornographic and degrading abuse of the prisoners.
Second, Christina Maslach, a recent Stanford Ph.D. brought in to conduct
interviews with the guards and prisoners, strongly objected when she saw our
prisoners being marched on a toilet run, bags over their heads, legs chained
together, hands on each other's shoulders. Filled with outrage, she said,
"It's terrible what you are doing to these boys!" Out of 50 or more
outsiders who had seen our prison, she was the only one who ever questioned
its morality. Once she countered the power of the situation, however, it
became clear that the study should be ended.
And so, after only six days, our planned two-week prison simulation was
called off.
--
Damn this is beginning to sound familiar. One common thread running through
the reports by the various guards in the prison and the Army's own report on
these prison abuses (btw its at
http://www.npr.org/iraq/2004/prison_abuse_report.pdf) has been the lack of
training. The original whistle blower said that they were military police,
and never were trained as prison guards.
larry
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kevin Graeme [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Friday, May 07, 2004 3:01 PM
> To: CF-Community
> Subject: Re: POW Abuses in IRaq..
>
>
> I'm familiar with it, as any Psych 101 student is. I'm just
> cynically amused that it takes an event like this to finally
> get it to hit home. There are prison abuses all the time, but
> Abu Ghraib has such a geopolitical impact that it can't help
> but be noticed.
>
> IMO though, it will be unfortunate that the Stanford study
> comparison will be compartmentalized to compare strictly to
> the prison problems since that is what it specifically
> modeled. But the larger issue it indicated was the impact of
> a power differential. The labels of the players, "guard" and
> "prisoner" can easily be transferred to "soldier" and
> "Iraqi", or "Police" and "suspect".
>
> On a related tangent, I was just driving home the other night
> and was shadowed by an unmarked Police car. After he
> determined that I wasn't going to help fill the city coffers,
> he pulled ahead of me and sped off (about 20 over the speed
> limit). I noticed on the back of his car an identifier like
> those of dealerships that said "Police Interceptor" and it
> had a stylized cobra. This is how they view themselves. As a
> dangerous, poisonous snake. And police wonder why the public
> is afraid of them. Maybe if they changed their psyche enough
> to think that a logo of a fuzzy puppy was appropriate, they
> would also have to change their behaviour accordingly and
> thus have more community support.
>
> -Kevin
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Lyons, Larry"
>
>
> > It's a classic work in the social psychology field. In that
> experiment
> > the Stanford Psych department mocked up a floor to look
> like a typical
> > prison. The students were randomly divided into 2 groups
> prisoners and
> > guards.
> Very
> > rapidly the "guards" operated like the reported MP's in that Iraqi
> > prison.
> >
> > larry
>
>
>
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