Does it actually say anything at all? But many theories and essays have been produced on its results.
This famous experiment focused on power, simulating prison conditions where some students acted as prisoners, others as wardens. According to the experiment, some of the students acting as wardens became bullying, even sadistic. This and Milgram´s equally famous experiment was a reaction to WW2 and the way supposedly ordinary Germans did appalling things to Jews and prisoners of war. After, on trial, each claimed they were simply obeying orders.
The students were not told about the point of the experiment nor in fact given counselling after.
The recent evidence is tapes with the organiser , Zimbardo, exhorting some of the students acting as wardens to be more aggressive, even feign brutality thereby corrupting the results of the experiment.
Is modern psychology about half-truths, unproven assertions?
Dear Stanley,
to start this discussion, can you please substantiate your original claim? Otherwise it is just ping-pong about opinions in absentia. for an example, of course, the dummy « participant » instructors incite to violence and inhumanity, the issue being how weak we are when incited to it. These are experiments ABOUT bias. Please quote sources. Thank you for the interesting subject, Ioan
PS As for half-proven, what is an example of entirely proven?
Dear Stanley
The topic you arise seems very interesting to me. But as good scientist we have to be always critical and check carefully the sources.
Do you refer to the following article? https://nypost.com/2018/06/14/famed-stanford-prison-experiment-was-a-fraud-scientist-says/
This article does not really provide a source for the statements and may be simply an example of bad journalistic investigation, vengeance or sensationalism. However, if you got more trustable information, please keep me posted.
Best regards Alexander
Alexander it certainly could be, and yet the issue surely remains. The creation of ideas through the employment and over confidence in uncertain experiments. To prevent encouragement within the experiment´s structure would have been difficult, surely? To then propose that the experiment describes human approaches to authority might limit our understanding not increase it, as lets say the acceptance of an experiment´s conclusions can equally be determined by the role of the experimenters. Why is anyone prepared to accept thereby it wasn´t corrupted?
I must confess, I actually do have other reports but didn´t keep them.
Dear Stanley
It seems to me that we are mixing some points in our discussion.
1. I absolutely agree with you that we have to consider very carefully the accidental and the intended effect of the researcher (and not only in experiments)
2. We could add to this that experiments have many advantages, but we could question the ecological validity of such experiments and claim for other complementary designs.
3. But when we mix these questions with an unreliable source that claims that the experiment was an intended fraud, I have quite a problem with this. This is not serious and boards on slander.
And yes, we have to be critical, that’s our job. But we have to evaluate information carefully, not in the way: Yes "I actually do have other reports but didn´t keep them."
Best regards
Alexander
As they say at Wikipedia, "Citation required" :) That said, this is really serious!
Yes, Rad, true. I did actually have it but lost it. Not good enough I know.
EVIDENCE FOUND
https://www.livescience.com/62832-stanford-prison-experiment-flawed.html
@ Stanley Wilkin
Dear Stanley, re https://www.livescience.com/62832-stanford-prison-experiment-flawed.html I read carefully the "evidence found" offered and I would qualify it as "press work". "Scientifically" it looks like poor proof. As I had consistent practical experiece as a journalist I think know what I say and journalism is fairly opposable to journalism (but not to proper research). So, I comment as a former journalist who is also a psychologist for whom understanding human nature is paramount:
The issue being important, it can not be resolved based on tweets, reminiscences, revisions of witness and "articles" or other legal sounding investigation (certainly not peer-reviewed refutations as I see). To this, and at this level, I doubt, simply because my own journalistically and phenomenaly valid personal experience of living in a totalitarian country, observing military service situations it that country, experiencing for years many incidents of situational pressure and peer pressure in that social system of state and party organised bullying, gave me right to draw some conclusions about the perceivable reality of the Milgram effects and their "Zimbardo" replication.
Additionally, I run numerous workshops in my later career and observed with stupefaction that simply giving clean positive intructions to observers to "Catch the observers doing things well according to a list of adequate behaviours" without any hint or encouragement to be negative made them almost without exception severe and even punishing towards their colleagues observed. The mere institution of a "judging" role makes people less human.
Lat but not least, it will not be proper, nor academic to collapse the Zimbardo experiment (which I do not like at all, but does that matter?) with the Milgram experiment eternally replicated with similar conclusions and then draw, or worse, imply disparging conclusions; that sounds like alternative facts politics so trendy today.
In conclusion, thank you for continuing your inquiry to find some truth concerning this case. Please excuse me for being somewhat stern, no personal offense is intended. Best regards, Ioan Tenner
Ioan, in many ways I agree with you, but I notice that whenever 'moral' controls lessen in any society certain, but only certain, people come to the forefront. ISIS is a case in point. So although I agree with you that the experiments retain validity, psychologically they are nevertheless presumptive.
In the society you existed in, there were cultural triggers that caused some people to act in certain ways. In the Rawnda Massacres while some people picked up machetes, others hid the victims. According to evidence at the time (maybe not true) people from religious orders picked up machetes. So, perhaps not obedience in all cases, but negotiation with the authority figures.
@ Stanley
Yes, I definitely agrée with your opinion, some say "No!", this is why I am today a Swiss, living in Geneva and not an old aparatchik exchanging memories with other old crabs. My comment is a critique of the public opinion campaigns soetimes replacing facts and research to decide about "truth"... Kind Regards, Ioan
The question was and is provocative, Ioan. Not necessarily a position I cleave to.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Geoscience
- Asia
- India