From the crazy, mixed up world of social psychology:
Radio Open Source has a truly compelling interview with Philip Zimbardo, conductor of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, and author of a new book, The Lucifer Effect.
In the early 1970’s, Zimbardo recruited normal, healthy college students to act as guards and prisoners in a mock prison for two weeks. He had to end the experiment after six days. The guards had become “creatively sadistic”, Zimbardo says in the interview. They forced the prisoners to clean toilet bowls with their hands, threw their blankets in nettles, and sexually humiliated them in various ways. Five of the nine prisoners had emotional breakdowns.
Three decades later Zimbardo became an expert witness on the Abu Ghraib prison, which he found to be obscenely similar to his prison. He extensively interviewed Chip Fredickson, the MP who was found to be the most guilty of the horrible abuses. Zimbardo calls him the definition of an All-American, playing community softball, giving American flags as gifts, tearing up at the Stars and Stripes, etc. Not the sort of person one would expect to sit on a naked Iraqi prisoner and smile for the camera.
The most interesting part of the hour-long interview is when Zimbardo describes our concept of good and evil versus how vulnerable normal people are to doing evil, if given the right (or wrong) conditions. A situation in which you are more anonymous makes bad deeds permissible. Zimbardo says:
When all members of a group are in a deindividuated state, their mental functioning changes: they live in an expanded-present moment that makes past and future distant and irrelevant. Feelings dominate reason, and action dominates reflection. The usual cognitive and motivational processes that steer behavior in socially desirable paths no longer guide people. It becomes as easy to make war as to make love, without considering the consequences.
If you don’t have the leisure for the radio interview, check out Zimbardo’s article in Discover, or his short interview on the Daily Show. For more evil reading, Hannah Arendt wrote the book on the “banality of evil” and George Orwell followed through “On Shooting an Elephant.”
from 1989 thru 1998 i worked at a close custody (max security) prison in north florida for 2 years after that i traveled the us as an extradition agent, picking up fugitives. it effected me greatly dealing with evil men and evil hearts. for the past 6 years i have been working as security here at the space center and it has taken me this long to get over the htred you build up by being around people that seeth hate, it really rubs off and you feel ok about treating those people that way.
the two comments above will result in your computer protection ability being tested to its limits
Lindsay, are you asking whether we ALL have inside us this potential for sadistic behavior, when placed in certain stressful peer-driven situations?
Or just all of us who are “normal healthy college students?”
I mean, speaking as a 56-year-old woman, I just can’t see myself turning the cattle prod on anyone … except in self defense! I’m pretty sure I could have stood up to whatever peer pressure - or subtle authoritative pressure from above - would have been pushing me toward “evil.”
Plus … were all the mock prison guards men? Just wondering. I was talking with Jason at the Anthropik website last night about how different things might be if women (globally) were more empowered. What a different sort of ethic might apply everywhere.
Deborah
Yes, all the mock prison guards were men. What’s so interesting about Abu Ghraib is that women were also (famously) involved in the torture and abuse. Evil, apparently, does not discriminate based on gender. Also, the participants of the study were extensively interviewed and background checked for physical and mental health. Zimbardo says that some of them were hippies.
I do believe that we all have the potential for evil, just as much as we have the potential for good. Situations where evil happens are not normal, everyday situations in which you’re guided by your normal morals and emotions. I think we’ve all had the experience of being in sort of an enclosed environment in which we act differently than our normal selves. It would be hard to imagine a situation in which you would say that you’d commit an evil deed, but if the situation leaned that way you wouldn’t necessarily see yourself as doing evil.
There’s an interesting quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago:
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Certainly dark and light live inside us all.
And yet we do have the freedom to choose whether we empower the dark, or empower the light. That’s our task in life, isn’t it?
What’s scary about what you’re saying here is that “situations” cause people to commit evil deeds. There seems to be a kind of “peer pressure” in which evils deeds can begin to feel normal. And in a world with a population of 6.5 billion - headed toward 9 billion by 2050 - more and more we’re subjected to peer pressure of various kinds … simply because we all have so many fellow humans surrounding us. More people = more peer pressure? Will that mean more evil in the world?
I wonder if the reverse can work as well … a sort of situational “doing of good.” It seems like it should work both ways.
well first, its not peer pressure, its hearing the criminals express their ability to justify the crime, you would be suprised to learn that anyone can justify their behavior even rape and murder. then you must daily control monsters that outnumber you, you simply learn that only monsters scare monsters. second the state of florida has a sizable female workforce in mens prisons. and one of the women i worked with would get as indignant and fed up as i did at some of the violent behavior that these (misguided innocent men)would exhibit.women play a much larger part in law enforcement than apparently most people realise.and i dont know about those students but as a career law enforcement, is stressful and unappreciated and the irony is the public that blasts the police for excessive force is most likely to put themselves in positions where they believe they are being helpful or open minded yet the group they are speaking up for is most likely viewing them as the easiest to victimize
I truly believe that we are a product of our environment to a certain extent. However, we are also an intelligent species and should be aware that we can control certain things. And no one truly wants to be evil, to yell at our kids, to kick our dog. So, when we (hopefully) realize that things are negative, we need to instill some changes. This could be changing jobs, moving to the country, scaling down your lifestyle, whatever it takes. Life is way too short and if we are smart, we will surround ourselves with happy, hopeful people and things. Live, love and laugh..often.
I’m looking at Sam’s comments, and I have to ask: Sam, did you even read the post? How could guards torturing prisoners be due to murderers and rapists trying to justify their actions if it happens to innocent college kids guarding innocent college kids? Did their constant justifications for ordering pizza and not finishing their homework drive the mock-guards to torture them? No. It’s putting armed people in charge of unarmed, de-individualized people that causes the problem.
Your entire comment is justifications and excuses for people who torture, murder, and rape. When a person becomes a bigger monster than the murderers and rapists they are guarding, they are exactly that: a bigger monster than a murderer or rapist - and you are trying to justify and excuse it.
Yes, you’re absolutely right that being a career law enforcer is difficult, but that does NOT justify prison guards torturing and murdering people. If having a stressful, unappreciated job justifies torture and murder, then any rapist or murderer who worked for the postal service, DMV or public school system should be released.
People get upset with the police for using excessive force because they are allowed the tools of force ONLY in exchange for trusting that they will use it discriminately. We get more mad a bankers that embezzle than CEOs for the same reason. I don’t think it matters what drives a person to criminally violent behavior. A guard who mis-uses their position is doubly criminal, first for their criminal behavior, and second for violating the public trust of their position. Anybody (prison guard or not) who tortures people (inmates or not) deserves to be incarcerated and treated just like a violent criminal who tortures people, since that’s what they are.
Don’t excuse criminally violent behavior - there is no justifiable excuse, especially for individuals we pay to be trained for the prevention of criminal violence.
-Ben Z.
To add to Ben’s comment, it’s perhaps more important that the guards be de-individualized (see photo with regulation sunglasses). It makes the guards feel less like themselves and more like a group - a group that collectively agrees their behavior is justifiable.
If any of you are interested in reading a really chilling novel about good and evil, try Blindness by Jose Saramago. It’s about a world where suddenly everyone goes blind. Some people just struggle along, some try to help each other, but others descend into truly animal behavior: victimizing others.
Not exactly an enjoyable read. But - I have to admit - although I read it a year ago, I’m still thinking about it …
no, i read the post and i thought the experiment was crap it has no bearing in the real world.i personaly dont even see how it could be real.its not as if college students would lie,especially during a period of social change as was the case at the time. i will say that once you see your hundreth or thousandth victim and you see the same villans with no regard to anyone. it becomes easy to go overboard. if you are the victim of violent crime you will see that your feelings,the trauma you have been through and your physical safety are a non issue.victims are forgotten.but the predators are looking for people that will accept them with open arms.most people are good but the bad ones feel justified in what they do and the good ones cant change them.i have lived in florida all my life lived through hurricanes,and fires. 3 years ago 3 hurricanes swept through central florida, the bridges were closed and the power out for three days yet we did not resort to the savagery i saw during katrina(i should also mention we never saw fema either).other areas besides downtown new orleans were affected yet the people that felt justified in their behavior were all simply given excuses and told how they were let down. bull. personal responsibility seems to be out of fashion.i suppose what im trying to say is rather than make excuses for criminal behavior more people should be held accountable for their own behavior.
ben..i dont remember giving the ok to torture or murder what i meant was simply using excessive force, while using force, not hunting down people just to vent. loosing ones temper while subuing is where i was headed.but i did not mean to give the impression that i was condoning it, just explaining it.
as far as deindividualizing the group goes..they are wearing uniforms. if only sunglasses throw the whole thing out of whack what could be suggested? you can have mob mentality whether its a group an awful lot of individuals or a race that feel they are owed something. i think that brutal behavior crosses all bounds. it when one feels justified that makes it easy. if the photo is meant to convey your whole idea behind a story it should be a photo of the solution rather than your idea of the problem