The Stanford Prison Experiment
In my PACS (Peace and Conflict Studies) class, we've been talking about the "just following orders" defense for the prison guards at Abu Ghraib. And the creepy thing is, it's actually pretty strong... They did this study in the 1960s with white males 20-50 years of age at Yale. They told the guys that they were participating in an experiment about the role of negative reinforcement on learning processes. The men were told to give a word list to another guy (pretending he was in the study, but actually a scientist conducting the study) and make him memorize it. Then, they were told to test him on the list...and for each wrong answer, he would administer an electric shock to the other guy. In actuality, the experiment was to see how far the men would go to follow orders... About halfway through, the guy being shocked would pretend that he was having a heart attack and demand to be let out, and the scientist would tell the subject that he had to continue... Amazingly, 50 percent of the subjects kept shocking the other man, on the orders of the scientist in charge, even though the other guy was "having a heart attack" and yelling and screaming from the other room. Even when the man in the other room went totally silent (as if he'd passed out or something), they kept shocking him because they were given orders.
It isn't an "isolated" occurance either... They conducted similar experiments around the world, and they never got much lower than 50 percent participation... And then there's the "Stanford Prison Experiment." The professor kept referring to it, but he never explained it, so I googled it. Basically, they picked a bunch of college students from Stanford, and made half of them prisoners, and the other half of them guards. They dressed the prisoners up, locked them under the Psychology building and told the guards that it was up to them to keep everything orderly and stuff. The experiment was supposed to last for three weeks. Six days in, the guards had become so violent toward the prisoners, and the prisoners had...degenerated so badly psychologically that the experiment had to be shut down. I guess you could make the case that, well, they *are* Stanford students... (jk jk!!!!) In all seriousness though, it's really really creepy...
I sould so Discovery Channel, but "for more information on the Stanford Prison Experiment..."
http://www.prisonexp.org/
It isn't an "isolated" occurance either... They conducted similar experiments around the world, and they never got much lower than 50 percent participation... And then there's the "Stanford Prison Experiment." The professor kept referring to it, but he never explained it, so I googled it. Basically, they picked a bunch of college students from Stanford, and made half of them prisoners, and the other half of them guards. They dressed the prisoners up, locked them under the Psychology building and told the guards that it was up to them to keep everything orderly and stuff. The experiment was supposed to last for three weeks. Six days in, the guards had become so violent toward the prisoners, and the prisoners had...degenerated so badly psychologically that the experiment had to be shut down. I guess you could make the case that, well, they *are* Stanford students... (jk jk!!!!) In all seriousness though, it's really really creepy...
I sould so Discovery Channel, but "for more information on the Stanford Prison Experiment..."
http://www.prisonexp.org/