"How Good People Turn Evil, From Stanford to Abu Ghraib"

[thewayne]

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment several years ago at Stanford where some students were "prisoners" and others "jailers". It was a behavioralism experiment that had to be terminated when several students had nervous breakdowns and the guards began abusing the prisoners, including forcing them into simulated sex acts.

This is an interview with him discussing how things like Abu Ghraib could happen. Interesting stuff.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/02/ted_zimbardo?currentPage=all

Comments

[deborak]

Interesting article, although the author's conclusion about how to "train this out of people" is contradictory to one of his other statements.

He contends that if you come up with some "agreed upon" moral rights and wrongs (utterly impossible, LOL) you can condition kids to not step over the evil line. Yet he also states that "Heroes have to always, at the heroic decisive moment, break from the crowd and do something different." So why is he advocating more group-think?

What we really need to teach people is to say "fuck you, I'm not doing that/agreeing with that" and help them develop strategies to deal with whatever consequences result. It's something I practice frequently. Of course, a lot of people hate me, so YMMV. Henry David Thoreau for the win!

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I saw a movie quote yesterday, something along the lines of "we shouldn't teach kids how to succeed, we should teach them how to adapt!"