Dear Tipsters,
Having looked over the original article in Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, I see that the results were the people who signed up for a prison
experiment were said score higher on certain personality traits (e.g.,
aggressiveness, RWA) than people who signed up for an experiment with no
mention of prison.
However, unless I missed it, general population norms for the test scores are
not presented, so we do not know how high the "higher" scores are. Could it be
that the people who signed up for the experiment with no mention of prison
scored "lower" than the others, who were actually scoring in the normal range
for the general population?
I am reminded of the Rozensweig work with rats on the effect stimulating
environments on brain growth. For many years they were taken to mean a positive
effect until it was pointed out that the "stimulating" environments were
actually "normal". The study really showed the effects of understimulation.
Sincerely,
Stuart
______________________________________________
Stuart J. McKelvie, Ph.D.,
Department of Psychology,
Bishop's University,
2600 College Street,
Sherbrooke,
Québec J1M 0C8,
Canada.
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Phone: (819)822-9600, Extension 2402
Fax: (819)822-9661
Bishop's Psychology Department Web Page:
http/:www.ubishops.ca/ccc/dev/soc/psy
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