Article about murder & mutilation by US troops

[The Dark Lord]

At the very least this experiment was done incorrectly and the results inconclusive.

 

How so?

[marcustullius]

Here are some criticisms from wiki:

 

The guards and prisoners adapted to their roles more completely than expected, as Zimbardo himself also did, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine sadistic tendencies," while many prisoners were emotionally traumatizedfive of them had to be removed from the experiment early. After being confronted by Christina Maslach, a graduate student in psychology whom he was dating,[5] and realizing that he had been passively allowing unethical acts to be performed under his direct supervision, Zimbardo concluded that both prisoners and guards had become too grossly absorbed in their roles and terminated the experiment after six days.[6] Ethical concerns surrounding the famous experiment often draw comparisons to the Milgram experiment, which was conducted in 1961 at Yale University by Stanley Milgram, Zimbardo's former high school friend. Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr wrote in 1981 that the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment were frightening in their implications about the danger which lurks in the darker side of human nature.[7]

[edit] Ethical criticisms

 

This study was cleared by the Ethics Code of the American Psychological Association, showing that experiments on paper can look very different than the way that they play out in reality. The experiment was criticized as being unethical and unscientific. Subsequently-adopted ethical standards of psychology would make it a breach of ethics to conduct such a study in more modern times. The study would violate the Ethics Code of the American Psychological Association, the Canadian Code of Conduct for Research Involving Humans, and the Belmont Report.

[edit] Peer-review criticisms

 

Because it was a field experiment, Dr. Zimbardo found it impossible to keep traditional scientific controls in place. He was unable to remain merely a neutral observer, instead influencing the direction of the experiment as its "superintendent." Conclusions and observations drawn by the experimenters were largely subjective and anecdotal, and the experiment would be difficult for other researchers to reproduce.

 

Critics including Erich Fromm challenged how readily the results of the experiment could be generalized. Fromm specifically wrote about how the personality of an individual does in fact affect behavior when imprisoned, using historical examples from the Nazi concentration camps. This ran counter to the study's conclusion that the prison situation itself controls the individual's behavior. Fromm also argued that the amount of sadism in the "normal" subjects could not be determined with the methods employed to screen them.[8]

[edit] Biases

 

Some of the experiment's critics argued that participants based their behavior on how they were expected to behave, or modelled it after stereotypes they already had about the behavior of prisoners and guards. In other words, the participants were merely engaging in role-playing. In response, Zimbardo claimed that even if there was role-playing initially, participants internalized these roles as the experiment continued.

 

More directly, though, it has been pointed out that, in contrast to Zimbardo's claim that participants were given no instructions about how to behave, his briefing of the guards gave them a clear sense that they should oppress the prisoners. In this sense the study was an exploration of the effects of tyrannical leadership. In line with this, certain guards, such as one known as "John Wayne", changed their behavior because of wanting to conform to the behavior that Zimbardo was trying to elicit.

[edit] Other criticisms

 

Additionally, the study has been criticized on the basis of ecological validity. Many of the conditions imposed in the experiment were arbitrary and may not have correlated with actual prison conditions, including blindfolding incoming prisoners, not allowing them to wear underwear, not allowing them to look out of windows and not allowing them to use their names. Zimbardo argued that prison is a confusing and dehumanizing experience and that it was necessary to enact these procedures to put the prisoners in the proper frame of mind; however, it is difficult to know how similar the effects were to an actual prison, and the experiment's methods would be difficult to reproduce exactly so that others could test them.[citation needed]

 

Some said that the study was too deterministic: reports described significant differences in the cruelty of the guards, the worst of whom came to be nicknamed John Wayne. (This guard alleges he started the escalation of events between guards and prisoners after he began to emulate a character from the Paul Newman film Cool Hand Luke. He further intensified his actions because he was nicknamed "John Wayne," even though he was trying to mimic actor Strother Martin, who had played the role of the sadistic Captain in the movie.[9]) Most of the other guards were kinder and often did favors for prisoners.[citation needed]

 

Also, it has been argued that selection bias may have played a role in the results. Researchers from Western Kentucky University recruited students for a study using an advertisement similar to the one used in the Stanford Prison Experiment, with and without the words "prison life." It was found that students volunteering for a prison life study possessed dispositions toward abusive behavior.[

[Star_Fox]

Soldiers are people. You cannot expect them to always act ethically.

 

Same with cops and pretty much anyone under the authority.

[marcustullius]

Soldiers are people. You cannot expect them to always act ethically.

 

Same with cops and pretty much anyone under the authority.

 

Then why give them authority if they are no better then commen men are?

 

Because they receive more training than common men, and are common men themselves. There will always be a few bad apples, it's unavoidable in any job type

[Giordano]

Soldiers are people. You cannot expect them to always act ethically.

 

Same with cops and pretty much anyone under the authority.

 

Then why give them authority if they are no better then common men are?

Unfortunately, that question is unanswerable. But I totally agree with said question.

[Zierro]

But it is, and you know what? It's not going to stop.

Yeah. Terrible isn't it? This whole world is terrible.

I wholeheartedly disagree with you. This world is not terrible, but there are terrible people like the soldiers above. If we carry with us into war the mindset that these kinds of atrocities are "just going to happen" and should be swept under the rug, we invite a very disturbing style of warfare to return from the not-so-distant-past. Give these soldiers the fate their victims received, not a dishonorable discharge or any lesser punishment. I will admit, these things do happen, but if we pursue justice in a swift and unyielding manner, soldiers can get the message. We may not catch all war-criminals but at the same, we do not catch all of our domestic criminals either. Apathy has no place here.

 

Have to agree here. This stuff is commonplace, but being accepting of it does nothing but spread the mentality that it's okay and that nothing needs to be done about it. And even if the world never does get better, that's not going to stop me from complaining. No, I don't shut up so easily.

 

But wow, you really think the soldiers should get the death penalty? Of course I agree with that, it's just surprising that you think so when our last conversation you were very anti-murder.