----- Original Message ----- On Sat, 05 May 2007 20:19:04 -0400, "Christopher D. Green" wrote: > This might be reassuring to people who don't want to believe that anyone > can be influenced by the environment to become sadistic. > http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2007/05/what_sort_of_person_.html > On the other hand, it won't be of any comfort who want to believe that > the Stanford Prison Study has nothing to do with what happened at Abu > Graib. After all, if people who volunteer for prison studies score > higher on "aggressiveness, authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, > narcissism, and social dominance and lower on empathy and altruism," > imagine what people who volunteer for the army are like on these traits.
I think that Chris is being somewhat provocative in his statements above but I can't tell whether he is being wickedly humorous or merely sensational. A few points: (1) Although Zimbardo and others may feel that the "power of the situation" is overwhelmingly demonstrated in the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) I have felt that they have never adquately dealt with the alternate rival hypothesis that it is an interaction between situational factors and personality traits which may not have been detected in their original study because of lack of statistical power (focus on such an interaction is actually an important part of the article that served as the basis for the news items Chris linked to above). (2) Chris can correct me if I'm wrong but the assertion that what happened at Abu Ghraib can be understood in terms of the what happened in the SPE is an argument by analogy whose validity is dependent upon having more or less complete knowledge about the two situations, specifically about the causal factors that led to abusive treatment. If I am not mistaken, in the original SPE study only about a third of the "guards" were actively abusive while the remainder either ignored the abuse and just "tried to do their job" and some guards actually tried to help the "prisoners". Whatever was going on in the SPE it is clear that not all the "guards" became brutal sadistic instruments of oppression comparable to the prison guards in the movie "Cool Hand Luke" (which served as the inspiration for the use of mirrored sunglasses in SPE and the source of the phrase "What we have here is a failure to communicate"). If the power of the situation is so great, why weren't all of the guard turned towards the dark side? Also, the guard known as "John Wayne" can be seen as instrumental in helping to esculate the level of abuse against the SPE prisoners; what would have happend if "John Wayne" weren't one of the "guards" but instead one of the "prisoners"? One wonders how "John Wayne" would score on Sidanius & Pratto's social dominance scale as well as Altemeyer's authoritarianism scales? I think that there were many things going on in the SPE that we still don't understand and may never completely understand and which, I think, make any arguments of analogy to it weak though I do think that it does suggest how one might think about situations like Abu Ghraib (though I dobut that the general public will ever really know all of the details about the Abu Ghraib situation). (3) In thinking about the SPE and how it could be made into something that is actually an experiment, one manipulation that seems apparent to me deals with nature of how authority operated in that situation and how were figures of authority supposed to operate. Consider the following distinctions that could be implemented as experimental manipulations: (A) Roles of guards: (A1) guards are told to maintain order and discipline among the prisoners in accordance to specific rules (e.g., respecting the civil rights of the prisoners, etc.) (A2) guards are told to maintain order and dsicipline by any means necessary as long as it can be kept secret from "outsiders". (B) Role of Warden and Supervisors: (B1) The warden and supervisors are told to maintain order and discipline among the GUARDS, making sure that they are not abusive and treat the "prisoners" humanely. (B2) The warden and supervisors are told to maintain order and discipline among the GUARDS but not to limit guards "good faith" efforts to maintain order and discipline among the "prisoners" by whatever means necessary. It appears to me that the SPE and possibly Abu Ghraib represent the combination of (A2) and (B2) above (however, Abu Ghraib may have additional significant factors operating since issues of life and death were involved as well as significant consequences for soldiers disobeying direct orders no matter how morally repugnant they might see). Would we obtain the same results of the SPE if we had the combination of (A1) and (B1)? I don't think so. I believe that the level of abuse and mistreatment would be much lower though perhaps not completely absent. Indeed, I think it is in this combination of conditions that potentially pathological features of "guards" may break through because a specific situation might produce a loss of self-control in a guard and personality traits (e.g., psychopathy, sensation-seeking, etc.) may play significant roles. In this context, personality traits might be attributed as playing the major causal role. It probably is unlikely that one could replicate the SPE and manipulate the factors I've specified above but I have a feeling that one could probably examine actual prisons and categorize them according to these distinctions. The question then becomes under which conditions does one see the greatest and lowest level of prisoner abuse and mistreatment. Just my 2 cents. Take care, -Mike Palij > Regards, > Chris --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
