On 6/12/2002 10:43 AM, "lbo-talk-digest" <owner-lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Dec 2002 topp8564 at mail.usyd.edu.au wrote:
>
>> As for the SPE, a central issue for me was the theme of 'depersonalisation' -
>> ie. the structure of the experiment induced people to take up personalities
>> which they thought fit in with the unequal power relations and through which
>> they could understand their actions and situation. Maybe that's not the
>> Kosher
>> interpretation of it, but I don't think it is an entirely bad one.
>
> Sorry, I guess I misunderstood your earlier posts. I think this is a
> quite reasonable interpretation of the SPE. However, to call it
> depersonalization is misleading: it's better to say the social structure
> facilitated specific subjectivities, particular personalities.
>
> Miles
I agree. That's Zimbardo's term, and it reflects the idea that you have a natural personality most of the time which you give up when you enter a SPE-type situation. This, along with the talk about 'roles' is really liable to create misunderstandings, for instance, the idea that SPE-type structures don't shape your personality in the ordinary course of your life. That they do, for me, is the real critical bite of the SPE, the authority and summer camp experiments. (Incidentally, Zimbardo has a rather ostentatious homepage at http://www.zimbardo.com.)
It is remarkable how strong the pressure to form a clique _feels_. In my psych undergraduate I participated in an experiment where we were divided into two groups given meaningless names and asked to look at abstract paintings, then rate them and come to a group consensus on the rating. The two groups were then put together and asked decide which painting was better. The other group's paintings actually _looked_ uglier - apparently a sentiment most people have. I was shocked. I had thought my group were a bunch of loosers and couldn't care less for their opinions or the painting.
All of this doesn't contradict the point that the actualisation of power relations, even in highly contrived set ups such as these, occurs in people. I would strongly suspect that had Zimbardo chosen his subjects on grounds other than 'normality', he would have had a very different dynamic in his prison: you could very well see the experiment as an investigation of the group dynamics of the 'normal' personality type.
Thiago
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