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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