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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

#91

Post by DanBC »

dp141 wrote: post #18
schizoidboy wrote: post #9

Previous 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…

Having worked as a journalist previously, it's funny how this is often almost impossible in practice. Most of the time subjects don't want to comment, ignore, or responses are handled by a PR person who doesn't provide adequate comment. Then, when you do publish and you get X detail wrong they blast you, or the subject themselves bemoans how they were never given the opportunity to comment. Not that journalists are a…

Providing a rebuttal can confirm details that the journalist isn't sure about.

One journalistic technique to get info from an unwilling subject is to make up a dramatic lie, and then record the rebuttal.

"I hear you're going to close your North American factory, laying off 5,000 workers"

"No no, we're not closing the factory, and it's only 400 staff who'll lose their jobs."

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#92

Post by nailer »

DanBC wrote: post #91
dp141 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked as a journalist previously, it's funny how this is often almost impossible in practice. Most of the time subjects don't want to comment, ignore, or responses are handled by a PR person who doesn't provide adequate comment. Then, when you do publish and you get X detail wrong they blast you, or the subject themselves bemoans how they were never given the opportunity to comment. Not that journalists are a…

Providing a rebuttal can confirm details that the journalist isn't sure about. One journalistic technique to get info from an unwilling subject is to make up a dramatic lie, and then record the rebuttal. "I hear you're going to close your North American factory, laying off 5,000 workers" "No no, we're not closing the factory, and it's only 400 staff who'll lose their jobs."

That's actually a great way to get an answer to any question someone may not want to answer, regardless of your profession.

Say your friend exits for an undisclosed sum and you want to know how much:

> "What was your exit price?"

> "Dude I can't tell you."

Compare this with:

> "Was the cash part 84 million US?

> "No way man, like half that"

Your friend existed for around 40 million US.

Ethics are up to you.

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#93

Post by JdeBP »

wslack wrote: post #48
scotty79 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Being encouraged to be "tough" and creating rituals of humiliation are different IMO.

Actually, "React as you imagine pigs reacting." according to this self-published source. According to another source from a decade ago by the very same author and published by Random House, a somewhat longer instruction:

> The guards have to know that every guard has to be what we call a "tough guard" [...] we need you to act a certain way. For the time being, we need you to play the role of "tough guard". We need you to react as you imagine the pigs would. We're trying to set up the stereotype guard – your individual style has been a little too soft.

Not "real prison guards", but "pigs", which latter carried in the 1970s a whole bunch of connotations that the former does not. As does "stereotype guard".

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#94

Post by JdeBP »

rusk wrote: post #90
duxup wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was taught it.... in a way to say "this is not how to research things and if you heard about this you should probabbly rethink anything you think about it".

> "this is not how to research things Yes, this is how it was taught to me also. An example of "how not to do it" and something that would never pass the ethical review board in modern academia.

Whilst that may indeed be what you were taught, Jared M. Bartels paints a rather different picture of what introductory textbooks have been found to say on this subject.

* http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1475725714568007

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#95

Post by nailer »

dp141 wrote: post #67
wildmusings wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving a statement to a journalist who has already made up their mind that you’re a bad guy is probably a mistake. Especially when it comes to politics, the other side will take whatever you say out of context and present it in the light most unfavorable to you. Morally-exculpatory nuance goes out the window, or buried at the bottom of the article (the part that we know no one reads). The headline will be spun to mak…

True, there are 100 per cent people on vendettas hatchet jobs but more reputable publishers are better at curtailing the ill-will of a single writer.

There are many people that believe CNN is a reputable publisher. Even after the Japan fish feeding hoax, fabrications about the contents of the Damore memo, and even denying their own "I'm sure in individual cases" interview with Obama administration re: child seperation this last 24 hours.

Quick edit due to downmods: dear partisan Americans: I don't particularly care for either side of your politics. I'm not saying Fox is any better, and I think Donald Trump's a nasty and very hypocritical individual. But 1 and 3 are easily proven false on video, and 2 is clearly different from the content of the Damore memo, which you can read online. You're lying to yourself if you refuse to believe evidence about CNN fabricating any of these stories.

As @Notradamus says before, giving a quote to a journalist allows them to shape the story. There is no reason to do that: you can self publish and still reach the masses in your own words, without risking someone else cutting video, lying about you, or denying something happened even when they filmed it themselves.

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#96

Post by [deleted] »

schizoidboy wrote: post #9

Previous 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…

[deleted]

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#97

Post by watwut »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #3
wildmusings wrote: post #2

The 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…

Except that, you are the one who makes simplistic categories. You want it to be about human nature and don't want it to be about ideologies and opinions.

"It is human nature to escalate abuse within week in position of power" and "we can make people escalate abuse quickly if we indoctrinate them right" are very different conclusions with very different implications.

If you are really interested in Nazi regime, you would do better if you would study history, what happened when Nazi were still small, what real Nazi were saying, ideas and fears that shaped German opinions, journals of contemporary people, what opposition did and how they lost, that sort of thing.

You will find better understanding of historical German actions in there then in single study on few American students.

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#98

Post by JackFr »

knight-of-lambd wrote: post #6
CamperBob2 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 on…

> 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.

Or maybe they’re just tired of crap science that just won’t die.

When you want to make your point, just use “Lord of the Flies” instead. It makes compelling, similar points about the human condition. But it just does it as a novel, not as a fake experiment.

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#99

Post by spruciefic399 »

AstralStorm wrote: post #80
alexandercrohde wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anything, this whole debacle has revealed to me how pathetic the whole "science" of psychology is in its current state. What? How an academic being defensive of his study, conducted in 1971, an invalidation of "current" psychology? That's 40 years ago. > I mean, has the field of psychology given us anything of value? I'm asking genuinely. What an extreme leap, and an odd generalization for me to have to argue ag…

You're mixing up psychology with psychiatry and neuroscience... These are intertwined to about 80s. Not anymore, hopefully. The hardest of these is probably neuroscience and produces very micro results, but at least they are known to be valid.

I think the evidence begs to differ:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3475

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009130571...

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#100

Post by overlordalex »

donutte wrote: post #4
wildmusings wrote: post #2

The 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…

> 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.

Actually, this has also seen some recent dispute. Here it is brought up as part of an old radiolab podcast: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/180092-the-bad-show/

The Milgram study needs to be contextualised in that participants will follow the orders as part of a scientific experiment, when prompted by the experimenter. You can see this in the order of prompts they were given when showing hesitation:

1. Please continue. 2. The experiment requires that you continue. 3. It is absolutely essential that you continue. 4. You have no other choice, you must go on.

It would be interesting to see a similar experiment outside of a "this is for science" setting, although I'm not sure what that would look like and how unethical it would be.

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