The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment | Hacker News Reader

The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment

newyorker.com

72 pointsdanso28 comments

>Those who thought that they would be participating in a prison study had significantly higher levels of aggressiveness, authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and social dominance, and they scored lower on measures of empathy and altruism.

So the experiment suffered from the same sort of selection bias that goes into hiring for prison guards or other authoritative punitive figures? Seems pretty realistic to me. Prison guards are not selected from the population at random.

Absolutely. The problem, however, is that the experiment has been used in popular culture to make broader statements about other social settings.

Where has it been used that it wouldn't apply?

It would seem to me that the only place it wouldn't apply would be where authority figures are somehow picked at random. How common is that?

Generally, it's cited you make a point about how anyone's moral behavior is caused by the roles society expects of them. E.g. "we would all be war criminals if we were drafted into a criminal army", or the like.

The article explicitly mentions that point and discusses the implications in the conclusion.

Except that the experiment has mainly been used to make sweeping statements about all humans, not just prison guards.

That's correct. However, the experiment was later popularly interpreted as `ordinary people turning tyrannical`, and that's what incorrect.

Higher than average levels of authoritarianism and aggressiveness doesn't mean that they are especially abnormal.

Agreed. But it doesn't mean that they are not especially abnormal as well. So, essentially, we don't know it and we shouldn't pretend that we know.

This is an interesting angle to further understand the Stanford Prison Experiment.

IwasA Guard in the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment. AMA!

Quote-

"I felt that Zimbardo had a conclusion and he constructed "an experiment" to demonstrate it. That was my belief at the time and now."

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2y5sbt/iwasa_guard_in_...

The AMA has a lot of quotes that reinforce Milgram's Obedience To Authority over Zimbardo's Innate Human Evil.

The AMA guy says he engaged in all the prisoner mistreatment out of a sense of duty and respect for the experimental setup.

The inability of the answerer there to see the experiment as being (at least in part) about how the guards responded to the construct is just fascinating.

It's atrociously bad science. It's not worthwhile to talk about what it means. I appreciated the BBC anecdote as well as the research about the advertisement's phrasing, but trying to interpret it at all is irresponsible pop science wiring.

Briefly: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3025

It is not worthwhile to talk about what it means while framing it as an experiment, but it is still worthwhile to talk about it as a historical incident. We still talk about what other human rights abuses imply about the human condition, no?

On the contrary, I think Britain especially is sliding into an authoritative, totalitarian nightmare. The parallels between the government workers turning the wheels of oppression against their own citizens and the way the "Guards" acted cannot be ignored.

None of that makes the study good science.

Exactly. There was nothing valuable derived from this study, except perhaps as a lesson on how not to allocate research funds. Terrible experimental design. Bias everywhere.

The fact something is bad science doesn't mean there's nothing to learn from it. It just means that the conclusions don't have scientific validity, but how many of the conclusions we draw every day do? How many policy decisions can be made that are supported by clear, significant and undisputed scientific results?

For me, the most interesting part of the experiment was how it was ended. A moral person objected. That's a real lesson in leadership.

Wikipedia: "Zimbardo aborted the experiment early when Christina Maslach, a graduate student in psychology whom he was dating (and later married),[14] objected to the conditions of the prison after she was introduced to the experiment to conduct interviews. Zimbardo noted that, of more than fifty people who had observed the experiment, Maslach was the only one who questioned its morality."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

So being the absolute pessimist here, did he suggest that she speak up? Since he was the ultimate authority? Or did it happen as stated. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and history is repeated.

> For me, the most interesting part of the experiment was how it was ended. A moral person objected.

Do to the fact the entire set-up was so dubious you can't really say that actually happened. I certainly doubt it did.

> ...of more than fifty people who had observed the experiment, Maslach was the only one who questioned its morality.

Zimbardo was actually running an early-stage speed-dating experiment. The other 50+ candidates failed the real real purpose of the experiment. Later, ABC would use a similar experimental setup to wide acclaim with it's hit series The Bachelor. /s

That sounds like an SMBC comic.

Professor Zimbardo created a tyrannical environment and found "proof" that humans were innately tyrannical. Right.

As this article suggests, but doesn't quite state openly: the Stanford Prison Experiment says as much about Zimbardo's psyche as it does about human nature.

Similar criticisms of the called "Lord of the Flies" study where they got two groups of boys to fight each other.

Preconceived outcome, manipulation of the subjects. Deliberate provocation to amp up the conflict etc.

If anyone's unaware, parent is likely referencing the Robber's Cave experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realistic_conflict_theory#Robb...

I really wonder why an article like this about a study of questionable quality, low points, and already eight hours old is still on the front page. Far more popular articles get pushed to the second page much faster.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com