[lbo-talk] The Stanford Prison Experiment

[snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com]

hell, Zimbardo already updated his site to include a pic of England mocking 
detainees in Iraq. Also, I had forgotten that not all guards became 
assholes, only about 1/3 of them. Zimbardo's research, though, suggests 
that we can't predict based on their pscyhological evaluations, which 
guards will become assholes:

Types of Guards

By the fifth day, a new relationship had emerged between prisoners and 
guards. The guards now fell into their job more easily -- a job which at 
times was boring and at times was interesting.

There were three types of guards. First, there were tough but fair guards 
who followed prison rules. Second, there were "good guys" who did little 
favors for the prisoners and never punished them. And finally, about a 
third of the guards were hostile, arbitrary, and inventive in their forms 
of prisoner humiliation. These guards appeared to thoroughly enjoy the 
power they wielded, yet none of our preliminary personality tests were able 
to predict this behavior. The only link between personality and prison 
behavior was a finding that prisoners with a high degree of 
authoritarianism endured our authoritarian prison environment longer than 
did other prisoners.

In 2003 U.S. soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners held at Abu Ghraib, 20 miles 
west of Baghdad. The prisoners were stripped, made to wear bags over their 
heads, and sexually humiliated while the guards laughed and took 
photographs. How is this abuse similar to or different from what took place 
in the Stanford Prison Experiment?

http://www.prisonexp.org/slide-33.htm