Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
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Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#2The criticism that the participants were just doing as they were told has always seemed to me as rather missing the point. What better demonstration is there of the human capacity for cruelty than a bunch of Stanford undergrads torturing other students because a professor told them to?
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#3The criticism that the participants were just doing as they were told has always seemed to me as rather missing the point. What better demonstration is there of the human capacity for cruelty than a bunch of Stanford undergrads torturing other students because a professor told them to?
What I find interesting are the people who are absolutely fanatical about disputing Zimbardo's conclusions. It's as if it's very important to them personally to be able to classify potential perpetrators of atrocities into two simplistic categories, People Who Do Stuff Like That and People Who, Somehow, Magically, Don't. Any experiments that might reveal human nature as the ultimate culprit are considered politically incorrect and unacceptable to perform.
Yes, the Stanford Prison Experiment was a dumpster fire. But so was the Nazi regime. When you want to study dumpster fires, you could do worse than to start a small-scale dumpster fire of your own and see how things progress.
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#4The criticism that the participants were just doing as they were told has always seemed to me as rather missing the point. What better demonstration is there of the human capacity for cruelty than a bunch of Stanford undergrads torturing other students because a professor told them to?
I don’t think that’s an accurate characterization of the criticism. The Milgram study, and its numerous replications, have pretty conclusively shown that most folks will do something they know is wrong if a perceived authority instructs them to. That’s not really in dispute.
The allegation is that Zimbardo orchestrated his project in order to produce a more dramatic narrative of spontaneous cruelty that wasn’t scientifically justified. It would be (it is alleged) as if Milgram had passed participants a note under the table that said, “FYI the subject is an actor— just go along with it, we’re trying to prove a point.”
Whether or not the Milgram results are valid, that certainly wouldn’t be a good demonstration of them.
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#5The criticism that the participants were just doing as they were told has always seemed to me as rather missing the point. What better demonstration is there of the human capacity for cruelty than a bunch of Stanford undergrads torturing other students because a professor told them to?
Depends on what you are trying to prove.
If that "ordinary men following orders and under expectation can be total bastards" then it's just Milgram's experiment all over again which result is itself obvious for any historian.
And if you are trying to prove that "ordinary men in position of power in jail setting spontaneously become total bastards" then the experiment is crap for that purpose if guards were encouraged to behave that way.
I don't think anybody doubts human capacity for cruelty.
The thing that Zimbardo built celebrity status on crap experiment and he still is a scientist and people give weight to his opinions on other psychology related subjects rubs some people the wrong way, I guess.
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#6The criticism that the participants were just doing as they were told has always seemed to me as rather missing the point. What better demonstration is there of the human capacity for cruelty than a bunch of Stanford undergrads torturing other students because a professor told them to?
What I find interesting are the people who are absolutely fanatical about disputing Zimbardo's conclusions. It's as if it's very important to them personally to be able to classify potential perpetrators of atrocities into two simplistic categories, People Who Do Stuff Like That and People Who, Somehow, Magically, Don't. Any experiments that might reveal human nature as the ultimate culprit are considered politically…
Well said. I think it's instinctual to want to believe there is some intrinsic, insurmountable difference between us and them (people who do morally repugnant things). At the heart of it, it's tribalism.
This quote from Solzhenitsyn springs to mind. I have always kept it close to heart:
>If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#7The criticism that the participants were just doing as they were told has always seemed to me as rather missing the point. What better demonstration is there of the human capacity for cruelty than a bunch of Stanford undergrads torturing other students because a professor told them to?
Much of what I've read about this, including Zimbardo's rebuttal linked above, makes it sound much more like Milgram's studies on willingness to do cruel things if you're told to. While I don't doubt that putting people in positions of power can often bring out their bad sides, that doesn't mean that this experiment was a great way of showing that, not least because it is intrinsically difficult to replicate.
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#8The criticism that the participants were just doing as they were told has always seemed to me as rather missing the point. What better demonstration is there of the human capacity for cruelty than a bunch of Stanford undergrads torturing other students because a professor told them to?
I don’t think that’s an accurate characterization of the criticism. The Milgram study, and its numerous replications, have pretty conclusively shown that most folks will do something they know is wrong if a perceived authority instructs them to. That’s not really in dispute. The allegation is that Zimbardo orchestrated his project in order to produce a more dramatic narrative of spontaneous cruelty that wasn’t scient…
Most of the people in the Milgram experiment knew it was fake.
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/12/12/interviews-with-milgram...
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#9Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17287319
I have no strong opinions either way, but one meta-point I personally find interesting is: why don't journalists send a final draft of an article to the people involved and get a final round of comments? That just seems fair. Zimbardo claims some facts in the article are simply wrong, and either 1) those errors would be corrected, or 2) Zimbardo's response to those claims could stand side-by-side, instead of this bifurcated situation of articles and response articles.
I think it would be even better if these arguments were in a wiki (or git) style instead of a series of articles.
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#10The criticism that the participants were just doing as they were told has always seemed to me as rather missing the point. What better demonstration is there of the human capacity for cruelty than a bunch of Stanford undergrads torturing other students because a professor told them to?
What I find interesting are the people who are absolutely fanatical about disputing Zimbardo's conclusions. It's as if it's very important to them personally to be able to classify potential perpetrators of atrocities into two simplistic categories, People Who Do Stuff Like That and People Who, Somehow, Magically, Don't. Any experiments that might reveal human nature as the ultimate culprit are considered politically…
> It's as if it's very important to them personally to be able to classify perpetrators of atrocities into two simplistic categories, People Who Do Stuff Like That and People Who, Somehow, Magically, Don't.
You don't see why that is something a person might want to believe, if at all possible? Humans have done some pretty terrible things; I think that being able to say "Yeah, but I wouldn't do that" is almost as important (regardless of truthiness) as believing in free will.
I mean, sure, maybe everyone would have done those horrible things, and maybe we don't have free will... But it's clear that you will make better decisions if you act as if you have free will... if you act as if you have some power to stop or at least not contribute to the horrible things that happen in the world.
So... yeah, I'm personally quite sympathetic to people who feel it's really important to believe that not all of us would become nazis.