Well, I like the phrase "wickedly humorous," but I think I was just
being a little wry. For what it is worth, I suspect that there is an
interaction between personality traits and situational variables, but I
am always wary of others who claim this as a "foot in the door" toward
effectively denying that relatively normal-seeming people can be led to
act brutally in situations in which it is permitted (not to mention
demanded).
Chris Green
===============
Mike Palij wrote:
----- Original Message -----
On Sat, 05 May 2007 20:19:04 -0400, "Christopher D. Green" wrote:
This might be reassuring to people who don't want to believe that anyone
can be influenced by the environment to become sadistic.
http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2007/05/what_sort_of_person_.html
On the other hand, it won't be of any comfort who want to believe that
the Stanford Prison Study has nothing to do with what happened at Abu
Graib. After all, if people who volunteer for prison studies score
higher on "aggressiveness, authoritarianism, Machiavellianism,
narcissism, and social dominance and lower on empathy and altruism,"
imagine what people who volunteer for the army are like on these traits.
I think that Chris is being somewhat provocative in his statements
above but I can't tell whether he is being wickedly humorous or
merely sensational. A few points:
(1) Although Zimbardo and others may feel that the "power of
the situation" is overwhelmingly demonstrated in the Stanford Prison
Experiment (SPE) I have felt that they have never adquately dealt
with the alternate rival hypothesis that it is an interaction between
situational factors and personality traits which may not have been
detected in their original study because of lack of statistical power
(focus on such an interaction is actually an important part of the
article that served as the basis for the news items Chris linked to
above).
(2) Chris can correct me if I'm wrong but the assertion that
what happened at Abu Ghraib can be understood in terms of
the what happened in the SPE is an argument by analogy whose
validity is dependent upon having more or less complete knowledge
about the two situations, specifically about the causal factors that
led to abusive treatment. If I am not mistaken, in the original SPE
study only about a third of the "guards" were actively abusive while
the remainder either ignored the abuse and just "tried to do their
job" and some guards actually tried to help the "prisoners". Whatever
was going on in the SPE it is clear that not all the "guards" became
brutal sadistic instruments of oppression comparable to the prison
guards in the movie "Cool Hand Luke" (which served as the inspiration
for the use of mirrored sunglasses in SPE and the source of the phrase
"What we have here is a failure to communicate"). If the power of
the situation is so great, why weren't all of the guard turned towards
the dark side?
Also, the guard known as "John Wayne" can be seen as instrumental
in helping to esculate the level of abuse against the SPE prisoners;
what would have happend if "John Wayne" weren't one of the "guards"
but instead one of the "prisoners"? One wonders how "John Wayne"
would score on Sidanius & Pratto's social dominance scale as well as
Altemeyer's authoritarianism scales? I think that there were many
things going on in the SPE that we still don't understand and may
never completely understand and which, I think, make any arguments of
analogy to it weak though I do think that it does suggest how one
might think about situations like Abu Ghraib (though I dobut that the
general public will ever really know all of the details about the
Abu Ghraib situation).
(3) In thinking about the SPE and how it could be made into something
that is actually an experiment, one manipulation that seems apparent to
me deals with nature of how authority operated in that situation and how
were figures of authority supposed to operate. Consider the following
distinctions that could be implemented as experimental manipulations:
(A) Roles of guards:
(A1) guards are told to maintain order and discipline among the
prisoners in accordance to specific rules (e.g., respecting the civil
rights of the prisoners, etc.)
(A2) guards are told to maintain order and dsicipline by any means
necessary as long as it can be kept secret from "outsiders".
(B) Role of Warden and Supervisors:
(B1) The warden and supervisors are told to maintain order and
discipline among the GUARDS, making sure that they are not abusive
and treat the "prisoners" humanely.
(B2) The warden and supervisors are told to maintain order and
discipline among the GUARDS but not to limit guards "good faith"
efforts to maintain order and discipline among the "prisoners" by
whatever means necessary.
It appears to me that the SPE and possibly Abu Ghraib represent
the combination of (A2) and (B2) above (however, Abu Ghraib may
have additional significant factors operating since issues of life and
death were involved as well as significant consequences for soldiers
disobeying direct orders no matter how morally repugnant they might
see).
Would we obtain the same results of the SPE if we had the combination
of (A1) and (B1)? I don't think so. I believe that the level of abuse
and mistreatment would be much lower though perhaps not completely
absent. Indeed, I think it is in this combination of conditions that
potentially pathological features of "guards" may break through because
a specific situation might produce a loss of self-control in a guard
and personality traits (e.g., psychopathy, sensation-seeking, etc.)
may play significant roles. In this context, personality traits might be
attributed as playing the major causal role.
It probably is unlikely that one could replicate the SPE and manipulate
the factors I've specified above but I have a feeling that one could
probably examine actual prisons and categorize them according to
these distinctions. The question then becomes under which conditions
does one see the greatest and lowest level of prisoner abuse and
mistreatment.
Just my 2 cents.
Take care,
-Mike Palij
Regards,
Chris
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