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.
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/12/12/interviews-with-milgram...
I'm not weighing in one way or the other on the Milgram experiments, but we should not take reported experiences at face value in psychology experiments especially when there is a strong incentive for the subject to engage in self-deception.
That’s maybe too flippant. “This is fake” is a way someone can rationalize doing something that they know is wrong. It’s important that they came up with that idea themselves, in response to a seemly inappropriate demand from an authority.
Notice:
The most common explanation was that they believed the person they’d given the electric shocks to (the “learner”) hadn’t really been harmed. Seventy-two per cent of obedient participants made this kind of claim at least once, such as “If it was that serious you woulda stopped me” and “I just figured that somebody had let him out“.
It doesn’t seem that there was anything evident in the room to make participants believe that it was anything besides what it appeared to be. They’re not saying “the screams were obviously acted.” Not “I could see that the box wasn’t connected to anything.” Definitely not “the experimenter told me it was staged.”
What led them to that belief was the social and cultural context. They believed the experiment was fake primarily because they believed that the authority figure would not make or let them actually harm someone. They transferred responsibility for their own actions to the authority figure; “I knew it was fake” is merely the mechanism.
At least, that’s a coherent theory we could put together based on the evidence. If Milgram had sneakily passed participants a note under the table, it would be a foregone conclusion that participants would believe it was fake, the evidence collected would therefore be meaningless, and the experiment generally worthless. That’s why this allegation is so damning to Zimbardo’s project.
The popular narrative of the Milgram experiments is that there exists such a psychological phenomenon in humans. That most humans follow orders, even orders they find deeply distressing. That's why the Milgram experiments shocked so many people; they were being told that if placed in the same position as Eichmann, they probably would have followed those same orders.
But we now know Eichmann's defense was bullshit, and a reexamination of the Milgram experiment results backs that up. People comply with orders when they agree with the motivation behind those orders; in the case of Eichmann the motivation behind the orders that he found agreeable was the wholesale slaughter of jews. In the case of the Milgram experiments, the motivation the teachers found agreeable was the advancement of science. An Amish man doubtlessly would have refused to comply in Milgram's experiments; and somebody opposed to the ideology of the Nazis would have refused to comply with the orders Eichmann received.
Milgram's Experiments are often casually tossed around as proving that people blindly follow orders, but they actually showed the opposite. Teachers complied when they believed they shared a common cause with the experimenter (advancing science.) When this common cause was taken away, compliance rates plummeted. Removed from the prestige of Yale, compliance rates dropped; when the experimenter was not appealing to the necessity of science, compliance rates dropped.
What this demonstrates contrary to popular wisdom is that Adolf Eichmann's "I was just following orders" excuse was a load of shit. When the Milgram experiment results were first made public the narrative sold to people is that any common person would have become a Nazi had they been on the receiving end of those orders, just like Eichmann pleaded. The public was sold a bogus narrative about the experiments and this bogus narrative was subsequently reinforced by claims of the experiments being replicated (they were, but like in the original the experiments weren't demonstrating what they were claimed to demonstrate; that people blindly follow orders.)
Adolf Eichmann was not merely following orders, he was a true believer. This of course was revealed in quotes that came to light later:
>"Hätten wir 10,3 Millionen Juden getötet, dann wäre ich befriedigt und würde sagen, gut, wir haben einen Feind vernichtet. … Ich war kein normaler Befehlsempfänger, dann wäre ich ein Trottel gewesen, sondern ich habe mitgedacht, ich war ein Idealist gewesen." [If we would have killed 10.3 million Jews, then I would be satisfied and would say, good, we annihilated an enemy. … I wasn't only issued orders, in this case I'd have been a moron, but I rather anticipated, I was an idealist.]
This doesn't debunk anything. The thesis was that people would unquestioningly obey "an authority figure". What your observation shows is that people don't attach the same authority to scientists with less eminent affiliations which makes perfect sense.
I'm not saying that Milgram's experiment isn't flaweed, it most certainly is [0] but your analysis is weak.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinkin...
It debunks precisely that. The phenomena of obeying authoritiy figures is not ideologically neutral as the popular narrative suggests. Rather people make a decision about whether or not to comply with the authority figure based on whether or not their personal ideology aligns with the goals and motivations of that authority figure. In other words, it's not unquestioning obedience. People question the circumstance, question the motivation of the authority figure, and then make a decision about whether or not they will comply.
To put a finer point on it, people who follow orders from Nazis do so because they are themselves Nazis. People who follow orders from scientists do so because they believe in science. Demonstrating that x% of the general population near [university] during [year] follow the orders of scientists does not demonstrate that x% of that same population would follow orders from Nazis. This is contrary to the popular Milgram narrative that was sold to the public.
I don't want to spend too much time on this, but your position is itself informed by ideology.
I don't believe you fully grasp what went on in WW2 and are happy to promulgate a hurdurr bad guys narrative, which is fine to be honest but is antithetical to the tradition of "unconditional positive regard" upon which modern psychology is built, and so I believe any "good faith" analysis of this study is impossible for you.
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.
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.
But as I pointed out in the other thread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17289154 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17289386 ), Milgram has his own detractors. His conclusions were far from obvious to many, and are still controversial today. And it's true that his work was not above criticism. It seems you can't touch this subject on HN without getting personal, though. Unjustifiably-flagged comments and scores clamped to the -4 minimum are the order of the day.
I'm not a psychologist and have only a casual interest in the subject, so my experience in the last thread was like stumbling into a bar fight that I didn't know was going on. I suspect this thread will evolve along similar lines, but it's hard to be sure without conducting a formal study that will probably come under heavy dispute. /s
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.
As everdev points out, that's the whole idea behind prison guard training! If you insist on studying these scenarios in a sterile, painstakingly-ethical academic environment, you will always be left scratching your head when an Abu Ghraib or a My Lai or a Guantanamo happens, wondering why reality stubbornly refuses to conform to your approved methodology.
If you're trying to prove a more general point, you do have to be much more careful. After all, if you do train your subjects to be soldiers or to blindly follow orders this does not prove the general point anymore.
If you additionally filter your experimental group (as typicalsoldier training does) then the point is even less general.
So you're missing the point. Now, a study on how effective military training is at instilling blind obedience is still very useful and important.
> that's the whole idea behind prison guard training! If you insist on studying these scenarios in a sterile, painstakingly-ethical
Thing is though, when the behaviour emerges you can't see if it's to do with the training, or the mere adoption of the prison guard role.
When you "condition" your participants to behave in a particular way then that can become a confounding factor and then when it comes time to appraise the results you can be left scratching your head.
Precisely what you want to understand when an Abu Ghraib scenario occurs is whether it could be the training or innate characteristic emerging from the role.
Of course you could do a between-groups study where some were conditioned and some weren't but what would that prove? That the conditioning had the expected effect?
I think they were told to act in a dominant manner because actual prison guards are trained on how to be dominant.
> 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".
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.
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?
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.
Different conclusions, just as fascinating.
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.
The people I respect want to know the truth, even if it's upsetting or disillusioning. I think Zimbardo and Milgram were similarly motivated, even if their methods were questionable.
We are, after all, talking about a scientific experiment here. Starting with a conclusion and looking for evidence to justify it is what the researchers are being criticized for, so we need to avoid making the same mistake in support of our own comforting biases.
I have read Solzhenitsyn, Mayer, Ma Bo, and any number of other authors who have recounted similar 'experiments' that also took place outside the comforting oversight of a peer-reviewed ethics committee, though. At some point, patterns emerge and conclusions are drawn.
Even if it makes you dramatically less effective?
As far as I can tell, the best evidence is that we probably don't have free will in a way we would find meaningful.
However I can tell you that you will have a much better life if you act as if you have free will, in spite of that evidence.
Even if I'm wrong on that point of fact, and I could be; this isn't really my field, my point stands. Would you prefer to believe in something, even if the 'upsetting or disillusioning' side of that belief is that truly believing it would cripple you as a human?
I'm unquestionably less 'effective' as a member of society because I'm not religious, and I might even be happier if I took advantage of the free social capital that comes with participation in communal irrationality. But at some point, it would threaten my sense of self-actualization. I don't want to die feeling like a successful, happy fraud. Do you? For the same reason, I don't want to pretend that Zimbardo's results can be ignored because of the unscientific manner in which they were obtained.
It was a scientific dumpster fire as well. What was the control group exactly?
So whether that would be useful is a matter of opinion, I guess. In the real world, you don't always have the luxury of controlled experiments. Ask astronomers, climatologists, paleontologists, or any number of other practitioners about that.
What you're misrepresenting as "fanaticism" is simply a strong but justified emotional reaction to what the debunking of Zimbardo implies.
An emotional reaction triggered by the revelation of a revealed hostile bias against normal people just like themselves by formerly trusted scientists, formerly trusted journalists, and other formerly trusted opinion leaders.
Interesting times ahead.
"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.
I have. The conclusion I've reached is that we're incredibly fortunate that few of those circumstances exist in the US today. If they did, the outcome would be the same, because -- get ready for this, it's a radical statement -- we're no different than the Germans.
The Nazis were not aliens or monsters or demons. They were us. Just a matter of the right (wrong) circumstances combined with the right (wrong) leadership, that's all.
That's basically what the infamous psychological experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo showed, when all of the academic hair-splitting and infighting is said and done. Their observations were, and are, a big problem for anyone who's invested in the "Some people are just evil monsters" model.
Among other things, the social darwinism and race believes of Nazi were formed by bad contemporary science (and misuse of it). They believed themselves to be rational and the right kind of man. Guess someone needed to hair split those ideas more loudly long before.
The academic hair splitting matters. The truth matters and the truth here is that this particular experiment did not shown what Zimbardo claimed to show.
In practical politial consequences of time, this experiment was used as argument that you can't possibly make prison less abusive. It did not shown that at all, it shown only that it is possible to make it abusive if you want to. Difference matters, because if you stop trying, well then conditions won't improve.