On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 07:11:36 -0700, Christopher D. Green wrote: >Mike Palij wrote: >> ...to what extent is the SPE a reflection of the "power of the >>situation" instead of the failure of authority to properly control its agents? > >How is the "failure of authority to properly control its agents" NOT >an aspect of the "power of the situation"? It seems to me that lack >of explicit control from authority figures wouls, for many people, >constitute implicit permission to do more or less whatever one wants, >especially if a specific goal (e.g., "break them") is specified by that >same autrhority figure.
I think I'm a little confused by what you're trying to say here. One interpretation of what the "power of the situation" means is that when one is placed in a particular situation, the situation would overwhelm the person's usual or "natural" behavior". That is, the situation makes a person will behave in ways that (a) the person would deny being capable of before being placed in the situation (e.g., in the Milgram experiment, predicting the level of shock intensity would one stop at if one thought he/she were hurting the learner) or (b) contrary to one's deeply held principles (e.g., not to hurt other people). In the Milgram situation, I believe that key elements are (a) an authority figure taking the responsibility for the consequences and (b) the subject's willingness to submit to this authority. We have a somewhat different situation in the Stanford Prison Experiment. There is a question of whether and why any person playing the role of a guard would necessarily degenerate into a sadistic beast? Why would one do so if not instructed to do so? One "power of the situation" explanation is that having that much power over other powerless individuals *necessarily* leads to abuse, humilation, and torture. Even as a New Yorker I'm not that cynical about human nature: some people would abuse their authority and some would use their authority in respectful and responsible ways. Indeed, as teachers we are regularly placed in positions where we hold power over others -- if there were no laws or consequences, would we *necessarily* humilate and abuse our students? Do nurses and doctors always torture their patients when they know that won't get caught? >You don't really think that people would behave well toward each >other if there WEREN'T laws, police, courts, prisons, etc., do you? When did Canada become such a dog-eat-dog anti-cooperative anti-altruistic country? :-) Just a couple of additional points: (1) On the HBE tape, one of the reservists who was in Abu Ghraib pointed out that the typical role of the Military Police (MP) was to protect prinsoners in the course of their processing (i.e., being held in dentention, transfer to court, etc.) but his superiors and the Military Intelligence people explicitly changed their role to one of "softening up" prisoners prior to interogation. This change in roles was disturbing to the reservist and to others such as Charles Granier who, in HBE, is reported to have said that he is behaving against his moral principles but his superiors keep telling him that if he does help break the "detainees" the blood of every American killed by an Improvided Explosive Device (IED) will be on his hands. Seems to me that *guilt* is a better explanatory variable for Granier's behavior (he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his activity) then the difference in power status between a guard and a detainee. There are also issues of whether one wants to challenge one's superiors on the legality of a command (i.e., exploring what exactly does "soften up" entail?) as well as the desire to stop injury to and the death of one's comrades, none of which were relevant in the SPE. (2) I might as well bring up the "BBC Experiment" which was a replication of the SPE but with different results. The experiment was conducted by Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher (British academics) and was shown on BBC TV in four programs. An article providing an alternative interpretation of SPE by Haslam & Reicher is available at: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:LVQNgrifQKEJ:www.psychology.ex.ac.uk/seorg/exp/02%2520Experiment%2520Dialogue.pdf+BBC+experiment+zimbardo&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=12 or http://tinyurl.com/oob39 There is a brief Wikipedia entry on the BBC Experiment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Experiment But one can get substantially more info from the following: http://www.psychology.ex.ac.uk/seorg/exp/index.html http://www.psychology.ex.ac.uk/seorg/exp/faq.html Of course, Zimbardo disagrees with Haslam and Reicher on a number of points but I thought I'd bring it up just to confuse things. :-) -Mike Palij New York University [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Regards, > >Christopher D. Green >Department of Psychology >York University >Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 >Canada --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
