The Hitler In Everyone: The Stanford Prison Experiment

[Jay GW]

The prison abuse stories remind me of a study I read along time ago.

This is an excerpt from one of the most famous studies of all time, the Stanford University Prison Experiment.

College students were told they were a "guard" or a "prisoner". They lived in a make shift prison block in the university.

The experience was so traumatic that the experiment had to be ended prematurely.

_____

http://www.prisonexp.org/

The view through the doorway was too familiar _ like something she had seen in the international news sections of Life or Newsweek.

Several young men _ dressed in khaki uniforms and wearing reflector sunglasses that hid their eyes _ were herding a larger group of men down a hallway. The latter were dressed in shapeless smocks that exposed their pale legs and the chains that bound one ankle of each man to another. Paper bag blindfolds covered their heads.

Christina Maslach's stomach reacted first. She felt queasy and instinctively turned her head away. Her peers, other academic psychologists, noticed her flinch. "What's the matter?" they teased.

On that fateful Thursday night a quarter-century ago, Maslach would take actions that made her a heroine in some circles as "the one who stopped the Stanford Prison Experiment."

In the prison-conscious autumn of 1971, when George Jackson was killed at San Quentin and Attica erupted in even more deadly rebellion and retribution, the Stanford Prison Experiment made news in a big way. It offered the world a videotaped demonstration of how ordinary people _ middle-class college students _ can do things they would have never believed they were capable of doing. It seemed to say, as Hannah Arendt said of Adolf Eichmann, that normal people can take ghastly actions.

In August 1971, an advertisement appeared in the Palo Alto Times: "Male college students needed for psychological study of prison life. $15 per day for 1-2 weeks..." Seventy men responded. Among them, two dozen were chosen to participate in the experiment because based on interviews and a battery of psychological tests they were judged to be the most normal, average and healthy. They were then assigned randomly, by a flip of coin, either to be guards or prisoners.

On Sunday morning, Aug., 17, 1971, nine young men were "arrested" in their homes by Palo Alto police. At least one of those arrested vividly remembers the shock of having his neighbors come out to watch the commotion as TV cameras recorded his hand-cuffing for the nightly news.

Later that evening, Maslach said, she suddenly got sick to her stomach while watching guards taking the prisoners with paper bags over their heads to the bathroom before their bedtime. Her fellow researchers teased her about it.

Repeatedly, guards also punished prisoners by forcing them to do push-ups, jumping jacks, cleaning out toilet bowls with their bare hands, and acting out other degrading scenarios. Often, they also coerced prisoners to become snitches in exchange for reduced abuse.

Especially when they were bored or thought that the experimenters were not watching, their treatment to the prisoners would escalate and became more pornographic. The humiliation and dehumanization got so severe, that the experimenters had to frequently remind the guards to refrain from such tactics.

[Cd.]

Fascinating.

It reminds me of the Columbia University experiment where they had a interigator and his or her "victim". They would toss a coin (2 headed) and the volunteer would win. He then would flick switches which, he was told would send electrical currents through the victim. The victim would answer questions. The volunteer was told that the University would assume all responsibility and he or she was also told that a breech of contract would result in a lawsuit. They volunteer was also told that each switch was a higher and higher current. Towards the end the victim would screem and beg. But they were told by the staff that they had to complete until they flicked a red switch marked "lethal level".

The results were shocking. Every one of the volunteers inflicted the final level on their victim.

Rather shocking to immagine how cruel human beings can be.

[Ponycar_302]

Originally posted by Jay GW
College students were told they were a "guard" or a "prisoner". They lived in a make shift prison block in the university.

The experience was so traumatic that the experiment had to be ended prematurely.

How completely ****ing asinine. No college campus can remotely compare to even a minimum security prison. You're a fool if you believe otherwise.

[Sinclair]

It is, however, quite disturbing that ordinary people began to act like that under the right circumstances.

It says a lot about how an ordinary person, put in the right situation, will do all sorts of things they normally wouldn't.

[Jay GW]

No college campus can remotely compare to even a minimum security prison.

How would you know?

[ÆSiR]

Originally posted by Jay GW


How would you know?

LOL

[Katalina]

oh boy..

[igofast]

Originally posted by Ponycar_302
How completely ****ing asinine. No college campus can remotely compare to even a minimum security prison. You're a fool if you believe otherwise.

Before you jump down Jay's throat defending why you know about prisons (because we all know you do), consider that to find the point of the experiment, mimicking actual conditions of a prison wasn't important.

It was a psychological experiment to see how people react to being told "you're a guard" or "you're a prisoner." The 'rules' and setting are inconsequential.

[ÆSiR]

Originally posted by igofast

Before you jump down Jay's throat defending why you know about prisons (because we all know you do), consider that to find the point of the experiment, mimicking actual conditions of a prison wasn't important.

It was a psychological experiment to see how people react to being told "you're a guard" or "you're a prisoner." The 'rules' and setting are inconsequential.

Jeds smarter than he looks. SMRT

[Ponycar_302]

Originally posted by Jay GW


How would you know?

Because I've been to both. Penn State University for architectural engineering, and SCI Waynesburgh, a level 2 (minimum security) prison is Pennsylvania. I have worked at the maximum security prison SCI Greene since 1995.

Is that good enough to qualify?

[Snouter]

Originally posted by igofast
...It was a psychological experiment to see how people react to being told "you're a guard" or "you're a prisoner." The 'rules' and setting are inconsequential.

Not really. This was a sample of the techniques used in academia for classroom brainwashing. The left attempts to reshape the attitudes and consciousness taught by the families of the students with such idiocy as this "experiment." The objective is not to educate, but to condition the emotions and create clones who respond to issues with knee jerk reactions rather than rational analysis.

[Ponycar_302]

Originally posted by Snouter


Not really. This was a sample of the techniques used in academia for classroom brainwashing. The left attempts to reshape the attitudes and consciousness taught by the families of the students with such idiocy as this "experiment." The objective is not to educate, but to condition the emotions and create clones who respond to issues with knee jerk reactions rather than rational analysis.

This man get's it.

[Snouter]

Thank you sir.

[igofast]

uh, no, he doesn't get it. Psychological experiments are set up so that the people involved in the experiment have as little knowledge of the experiment as possible and aren't led to think/act a certain way. I'll admit that the results could possibly be interpreted differently based on the agenda of whoever is reviewing the results, but the results themselves are pretty much objective.

Your take on it as intentional brainwashing is more than a little bit paranoid.

[SpabSFW]

There have been similar experiments in group think. There is a an entire psychology dedicated to that field. Some links up somewhere in regard to neofascism. I'll try to chase them down, but ksis originally posted them.

[Sinclair]

I remember reading about an experiment in which adults were put in charge of 3 groups of children.

One group was run democratically, one fascistically (word?) and one in a laissez-faire manner.

The democratic group came in first for productivity, with the fascist group second I believe, and the laissez-faire group last.

[Jay GW]

Is that good enough to qualify?

Only if you've seen the mock prison. You didn't look at the pictures on the site, did you?

Yes, there's a big difference, but comparing the behaviors in prisons like making weapons and throwing urine in guards faces, all the same things are happening.

How many people posting here have ever been in jail as a prisoner? My guess is none.

[Bo]

Extremely interesting. Kind of reminds me of boot camp.

[Jay GW]

Dateline NBC is now airing the video tapes from the Stanford Prison Experiment if anyone wants to watch it - NBC, Sunday May 9 at 8pm Eastern time.