New evidence challenges the story of the Stanford Prison Experiment

The N-1 simply have to wait for the teacher to come back, then explain that the name-taker was abusing his position, hoping the teacher will release them from punishment for name-taking the name-taker. AFAICT, there's no incentive for the N-1 to lie about whether or not the name-taker was taking advantage of them.

Same in Italy, though I never recall any actual punishment (not physical nor on paper) was ever administered on the base of these - let's say "opinionated" - reports.

The blackboard was divided in two columns by a vertical chalk line, on the left one would write at the top "good" and on the right "bad".

It was mostly a game (I believe it was intentional to just keep us kids busy while the teacher was briefly away) and a way for the kids to exercise in knowing the names of all the kids and reading and writing them, the "name taker" would start writing all the kids names and surnames on the "good" side.

Then he/she would write among the bad ones someone (for whatever reason), who would try to convince the "name taker" to delete his/her name and re-write it on the "good" side.

After a few minutes the blackboard was full of deletions/rewrites on both sides.

The teacher already knew anyway which one were the "good" and which one were the "bad" ones and at the most made a verbal reprimand (of two types) to the kids that were on the "bad" column finally:

1) "I knew you were going to ...., why don't you stop it for a change" (to the ones re-known as troublemakers)

2) "I am surprised you did ...., you won't go far by doing this" (to the ones re-known as being tranquil)

1. Reporting a crime to the police so they can check and sort it out if needed. This is extremely prevalent in Western societies and seems predicated on trust in the police to do the right thing. Examples: people reporting screams for help they overhear from a street; drivers reporting erratic behavior of other drivers on the road.

2. Knowingly reporting a thought crime to overzealous authorities that will severely punish for that crime, sometimes knowingly falsely, sometimes for your own benefit. Example: telling your local uchastkovuy that your noisy neighbors were doing anti-soviet jokes in the hope of getting rid of them.

In a lot of post-soviet countries there was a lot the latter and none of the former (in fact, a lot of Russians think the former is "ratting out" and is immoral). In Russia there were numerous cases of people being killed or raped in places where dozens or hundreds could hear the screams for help, with no one actually calling the police. On the other hand, you can be pretty sure that shady stuff happening on a Western city street will lead to police response.

It's kinda hard to tell where the exact boundary between those two kinds of behaviors is, especially lately with all the pushback against drug prohibition (is reporting someone smoking a spliff in Stockholm moral?). But it exists.

Ultimately, one major factor is the credentials of the experimenters. We may not like it, but some of the major experiments done today do boil down to "proof by authority".

> In 2012, Australian psychologist Gina Perry investigated Milgram's data and writings and concluded that Milgram had manipulated the results, and that there was "troubling mismatch between (published) descriptions of the experiment and evidence of what actually transpired." She wrote that "only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter".[19][20] She described her findings as "an unexpected outcome" that "leaves social psychology in a difficult situation."[21] In the journal Jewish Currents, Joseph Dimow, a participant in the 1961 experiment at Yale University, wrote about his early withdrawal as a "teacher", suspicious "that the whole experiment was designed to see if ordinary Americans would obey immoral orders, as many Germans had done during the Nazi period."[22]

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment#Critical_re...)

I can only speak as a psychology student who read about 'classics' such as Milgram and SPE, and participated in a number of experiments myself. I remember even when I read about the Migram experment, I figured that while I probably wouldn't have administered the severe shocks or participated at all, just in case, there's a chance I might have done so assuming it was all faked.

In fact, I'd argue this 'disconnect' from reality, if anything, is a much more interesting phenomenon. I've been part of various hazing rituals, some of them in hindsight quite irresponsible, and I think what made those 'work' wasn't that 'good people turned bad' or 'a few bad apples abused the mechanism', but rather that everyone involved just went along with the prank to an irresponsible degree.

One could argue that this supports the idea that people will do horrible things when told to do so by an 'authority', but I can't help but feel that the reality as I've experienced it doesn't fit the narrative of the Milgrams and Zimbardos.

tl:dr; I can't help but feel that many of these types of experiments are evidence of flawed reality more than morality. it's less going through some kind of moral reasoning and deciding to trust the lab coat, but more a flaw in our mental heuristics that leads us to construct an alternate reality. things like the bystander effect would support that view, and while it might seem like splitting hairs, I feel they're quite different interpretations.

This is correct, but a rather confused observation.

Since the question isnt whether the conclusions is true or not, but whether we are justified in believing it is true.

And we are not justified. The experiment engineered its results; and no subsequent experiment has demonstrated the conclusion. So if it is true, we have not yet discovered that it is.

My stereotype of a drill sergeant is yelling a lot, but fundamentally devoted to 'making unruly young boys into men' through bullying, disrespect - it seems to me that the conclusions predict that a quiet person who is assigned the role of a drill sergeant would suddenly start yelling a lot or a otherwise respectful person would become disrespectful.

The stereotype of a prison guard is much different. Rather than 'unruly boys' it's 'hardened criminals' - the difference in reaction to being assigned a role can be explained by the differing stereotypes of the roles, as an alternative to the experimental conclusion being wrong.

The topic itself is extremely important. If anyone is in the situation to make a study with consenting subjects in those circumstances, which is rather hypothetical, they should much rather stick to original research.

I do agree, the replication crisis is an important topic, but it assumes the studies in question have at least an academic standard. If they dont, and its not publicly acknowledged in the field but instead celebrated, its a failure of the field itself.

This is huge IMO and I haven't heard about it until now so I think it is good that is being pushed again.

Is it an interesting question? I think so. But right now I see no evidence that I trust one way or the other. Instead, I see a ton of posturing.

This is akin to picking a movie like Shawshank Redemption and claiming it proves something of human nature. No. It doesn't. I feel it helps me relate to and accept some behaviors. But it proves nothing. As it is fiction.

Indeed, by that line of reasoning every religion should be thought to be true simultaneously, as their respective adherents feel them to be true.

The only confirmation I see here is that of squishies being over-eager to fit facts to convenient and familiar narratives.

You're absolutely, completely, 100% right. It's an utter travesty that the flaws of this study are used to refute the notion of moral plasticity.

With that said, is it perhaps possible that we see moral plasticity everywhere because we have been taught that it is a thing we can expect to see everywhere? We may be caught in a self-fulfilling prophecy. On the basis of a single flawed study, we know exactly nothing except that Zimbardo was dishonest.

Wiser heads than mine might be well-advised to throw out any notions on the subject whatsoever and begin anew.