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> But Eshelman, who had studied acting throughout high school and college, has always admitted that his accent was just as fake as Korpi’s breakdown. His overar

> But Eshelman, who had studied acting throughout high school and college, has always admitted that his accent was just as fake as Korpi’s breakdown. His overarching goal, as he told me in an interview, was simply to help the experiment succeed. There are countless other quotes of guards and prisoners saying they were "just acting". But isn't that equally as powerful? I'm not sure it matters so much why you're locking someone in a closet for 6 hours (just acting, wanting the experiment to succeed, wanting to please your teacher, having sadistic tendencies, etc.), it's that you followed through and performed that action. The fact that you did something you wouldn't normally do might be even more significant. It's one thing if the guards and prisoners all know they're acting, but that doesn't appear to be the case. It sounds as if individuals were acting on their own accord, but unaware what behaviors and instructions were real vs. not real. Even in real life, how many people in the hierarchy of a dictatorship are "just trying to please" the dictator vs. really "buying in" to the philosophy? I guess it matters in terms of trying to change the system in the future, but it doesn't matter that much in evaluating the harm done to the powerless in the past. I don't think power always veers towards dangerous dominant/submissive behavior, but history seems to have an amply supply of evidence that that certainly can be the case, regardless of why it gets there.

j2kun 8y ago
It's not the same because the conclusions are about humans becoming sadistic just because they put on a uniform. The whole pitch of the experiment was their behavior was spontaneous, unsolicited, and caused by the setting. I.e., not caused by the experimenters asking the participants to behave a certain way. The Milgram effect (superiors asking you to cause pain because science + authority) has been replicated many times. This is all explained quite well in the article.
- everdev 8y ago
  > the conclusions are about humans becoming sadistic just because they put on a uniform The experiment was not about how clothing affects behavior but was about presenting a group with power and encouraging them to use it. The uniforms were important in establishing group identity, but not the sole or even primary focus of the experiment.
  - JasonFruit 8y ago
    Please don't create arguments by taking clearly figurative language literally. There's plenty to fight about without that.
    - everdev 8y ago
      From OC: > I.e., not caused by the experimenters asking the participants to behave a certain way I think the point is, OC is presenting the experiment as something that comes about as a result of the setting (including uniform). But, I think from the researcher's and participants perspective, the instructions played a significant role. From article: > For Korpi, the most frightening thing about the experiment was being told that, regardless of his desire to quit, he truly did not have the power to leave. > Another prisoner, Richard Yacco, recalled being stunned on the experiment’s second day after asking a staff-member how to quit and learning that he couldn’t. A third prisoner, Clay Ramsay, was so dismayed on discovering that he was trapped that he started a hunger strike. > a taped conversation between Zimbardo and his staff on day three of the simulation: “An interesting thing was that the guys who came in yesterday, the two guys who came in and said they wanted to leave, and I said no,” So, yeah, the instructions were a huge part of the experiment. People wanted to leave and couldn't. The action/reaction between the participants ("I want to leave"/"No.", complain/6 hours in solitary) probably made the scenario much more real than the hallway posing as a jail or the fake uniforms. So, figuratively or literally I don't think it was about what happens when you put on a uniform. I think it's more about what happens when someone tells you to follow a set of rules that create an empowered/disempowered dynamic.
- JackCh 8y ago
  I'm under the impression that the Milgram experiments are also not quite what people have generally been lead to believe. I've not read the book yet (I just got a copy though) >"Over 700 people took part in the experiments. When the news of the experiment was first reported, and the shocking statistic that 65 percent of people went to maximum voltage on the shock machine was reported, very few people, I think, realized then and even realize today that that statistic applied to 26 of 40 people. Of those other 700-odd people, obedience rates varied enormously. In fact, there were variations of the experiment where no one obeyed." -Gina Perry, author of Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments. https://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/209559002/taking-a-closer-look-at-milgrams-shocking-obedience-study https://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/209559002/taking-a-closer-loo... (I've not read the book yet, but I just got a copy.)
  - shkkmo 8y ago
    The milgram experiments are far more interesting, and much better science that the SPE, but the popular understanding (and teaching) of them misses some of the most interesting conclusions that can be drawn from them. It's been a while since I studied this, but the most interesting part of the Milgram experiments are not that this behavior can be induced but the follow up studies which studied exactly which elements are most important to this inducement.
    - romwell 8y ago
      >It's been a while since I studied this, but the most interesting part of the Milgram experiments are not that this behavior can be induced but the follow up studies which studied exactly which elements are most important to this inducement. Well, to many people that hear about it for the first time, the mere fact that this behavior can be induced is shocking. It goes against the narrative that there are "good" and "bad" people.
      - JackCh 8y ago
        What those shocked people (Ha) are often not told is that Milgram went to great lengths to appeal to people's altruism (desire to progress the state of science) when selecting subjects and to persuade them of the scientific validity of what they'd be asked to do. That once the experiments began the experimenter would frequently pressure the 'teacher' by invoking the necessity of science. He was measuring "obedience to authority" insofar as "authority" meant trust in scientists credentialed by Yale. One variation on the experiment following the same script as the infamous variation tested obedience rates outside of the Yale campus and, of course, there was significantly less compliance. Or put another way >'according to academic Don Mixon, Milgram didn't measure immoral behavior in his lab. On the contrary, he argued that what Milgram measured was misplaced trust. [...] Don found the same results as Milgram but came to completely different conclusions. he argued that it wasn't immorality that drove Milgram's subjects to flip the switches but trust in the experimenter, who, despite the cries from the learner, calmly told them to continue and gave the impression that there was nothing to worry about. [...] According to Don, Milgram simply measured the faith that people put in experts: "He found just the opposite of what he thought he found; nothing about the subjects' behavior is evil. In fact, people go to great lengths, will suffer great distress, to be good. People got caught up in trying to be good and trusting the expert. [...] The only evil in the obedience research, Don came to believe, was "the unconscious evil of the experimenters"'
EthanHeilman 8y ago
>There are countless other quotes of guards and prisoners saying they were "just acting". It seems entirely possible that "just acting" was an after the fact justification. People are very unreliable witnesses of their internal processes, this is probably even more true when someone has reason to feel guilt for their actions. >I'm not sure it matters so much why you're locking someone in a closet for 6 hours (just acting, wanting the experiment to succeed, wanting to please your teacher, having sadistic tendencies, etc.) Fake it until you make it, torturer edition.
- wpietri 8y ago
  Yes, exactly. Imagine trying to explain to people that you participated in something where you did horrible things for structural reasons. To really pull that off, you need to convince every interlocutor that they too would be prone to this. When it's much easier for your audience to believe that it's just you that's horrible, and they are fine and decent people who wouldn't do as you did. Especially decades later, I'd be very reluctant to naively credit people's explanations here.
  - shkkmo 8y ago
    Except we don't have to, we have experimental evidence that shows what happens and what happens is not what 'happened' in the SPE.
    - wpietri 8y ago
      We don't have to what? I could believe that the SPE doesn't really get at it, but people do end up doing horrible things for structural reasons. That doesn't change the incentives for trying to explain that to people who weren't there.
    - pas 8y ago
      What's the p-value on these? How many trials were there? We have separate events, and we try to compare them, and use them as "evidence". I don't think the SPE is great science, but people are very easily driven by circumstances, and it'll take a lot of time to fully unpack the dynamics and ethical consequences of that.
clairity 8y ago
while the submissiveness angle is interesting, the most intriguing/important conclusion of the article is how impelled we are to see ourselves as the "good guys/girls", and how that's rationalized. time and again, the author comes back to this specific rationalization, including in reference to his bank-robbing cousin and zimbardo himself. when you're trying to understand someone else's "bad" actions, it's important to realize that they don't see themselves as a bad person, that their rational brains will wrap memories around an inherent belief in their own "goodness". that comes from a regular failing in how we narrate our lives into simple categories of "good" and "bad". people make mistakes constantly, and are constantly making up for them. social life is an endless chain of conflict resolution with ourselves as the protagonist.
- lolc 8y ago
  The scary thing is that even torturers convince themselves of their "goodness". They will classify their violations as "necessary" or "warranted by the situation" and go further to assert that they have "standards". They say they don't do the things these other, "real" torturers are known for.
da_chicken 8y ago
When I was in middle school in the late 80s, our social studies teachers coordinated a mock segregation experiment. 1 out of every 8 students was identified as an "Other". We were told that the "Others" were less deserving of respect and that it would be okay to make fun of them. The "Others" would always be last in line, would be required to use "Others"-only restrooms, etc. Teachers were told to favor the regular students and not the "Others." There were no prisoners and guards. The distinction was those with privilege and those without. The experiment was planned to last three days. It was stopped after less than a day and a half. I remember the principal coming on over the PA and announcing that the experiment was ending immediately and that treating any "Others" any differently from then on would result in a suspension. There were students showing up in the office crying about it. Not just complaining. Literally in tears. The problem, primarily, was that it was a middle school. There's already a group of students that all the other students mistreat or pick on or don't respect as well. There's already a social pecking order. When some of those low social rank students were assigned to the "Others" group, they really got bullied by people. What I remember being the most shocking was how several teachers were bullying and treating students badly. Yelling at them or punishing them for no reason at all. Just because they had a paper sign that said "Other" on their shirt. The thing that this drilled into me is how vile people can be to each other when they think they deserve it or otherwise aren't deserving of basic respect or equality. The older I get the more I look back on this little experiment and am shocked by what happened. Xenophobia and sectarian divisiveness is a remarkably easy way to dehumanize and strip other people of basic human rights. It's really quite terrifying how easy it was and how quickly it happened. How all the students and staff just readily accepted the new social order because that's what the authority said was true. How people abused that social order for no good reason. How people who were ostensibly pretending were actually acting in horrific ways. It's difficult to know in the moment what's acting and what isn't when it's a stranger doing it.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Wow. Middle school is already a zoo; to deliberately open the cage doors and let the animals out was a crazy idea.
- colonelxc 8y ago
mseebach 8y ago
I think the significance of "just acting" is the knowledge that the suffering inflicted isn't real. That obviously has ramifications for the experiment: what people are willing to act out in a theatre isn't very indicative of what they might be capable of in a non-theatre setting.

j2kun 8y ago

It's not the same because the conclusions are about humans becoming sadistic just because they put on a uniform. The whole pitch of the experiment was their behavior was spontaneous, unsolicited, and caused by the setting. I.e., not caused by the experimenters asking the participants to behave a certain way. The Milgram effect (superiors asking you to cause pain because science + authority) has been replicated many times. This is all explained quite well in the article.

everdev 8y ago
> the conclusions are about humans becoming sadistic just because they put on a uniform The experiment was not about how clothing affects behavior but was about presenting a group with power and encouraging them to use it. The uniforms were important in establishing group identity, but not the sole or even primary focus of the experiment.
- JasonFruit 8y ago
  Please don't create arguments by taking clearly figurative language literally. There's plenty to fight about without that.
  - everdev 8y ago
    From OC: > I.e., not caused by the experimenters asking the participants to behave a certain way I think the point is, OC is presenting the experiment as something that comes about as a result of the setting (including uniform). But, I think from the researcher's and participants perspective, the instructions played a significant role. From article: > For Korpi, the most frightening thing about the experiment was being told that, regardless of his desire to quit, he truly did not have the power to leave. > Another prisoner, Richard Yacco, recalled being stunned on the experiment’s second day after asking a staff-member how to quit and learning that he couldn’t. A third prisoner, Clay Ramsay, was so dismayed on discovering that he was trapped that he started a hunger strike. > a taped conversation between Zimbardo and his staff on day three of the simulation: “An interesting thing was that the guys who came in yesterday, the two guys who came in and said they wanted to leave, and I said no,” So, yeah, the instructions were a huge part of the experiment. People wanted to leave and couldn't. The action/reaction between the participants ("I want to leave"/"No.", complain/6 hours in solitary) probably made the scenario much more real than the hallway posing as a jail or the fake uniforms. So, figuratively or literally I don't think it was about what happens when you put on a uniform. I think it's more about what happens when someone tells you to follow a set of rules that create an empowered/disempowered dynamic.
JackCh 8y ago
I'm under the impression that the Milgram experiments are also not quite what people have generally been lead to believe. I've not read the book yet (I just got a copy though) >"Over 700 people took part in the experiments. When the news of the experiment was first reported, and the shocking statistic that 65 percent of people went to maximum voltage on the shock machine was reported, very few people, I think, realized then and even realize today that that statistic applied to 26 of 40 people. Of those other 700-odd people, obedience rates varied enormously. In fact, there were variations of the experiment where no one obeyed." -Gina Perry, author of Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments. https://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/209559002/taking-a-closer-look-at-milgrams-shocking-obedience-study https://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/209559002/taking-a-closer-loo... (I've not read the book yet, but I just got a copy.)
- shkkmo 8y ago
  The milgram experiments are far more interesting, and much better science that the SPE, but the popular understanding (and teaching) of them misses some of the most interesting conclusions that can be drawn from them. It's been a while since I studied this, but the most interesting part of the Milgram experiments are not that this behavior can be induced but the follow up studies which studied exactly which elements are most important to this inducement.
  - romwell 8y ago
    >It's been a while since I studied this, but the most interesting part of the Milgram experiments are not that this behavior can be induced but the follow up studies which studied exactly which elements are most important to this inducement. Well, to many people that hear about it for the first time, the mere fact that this behavior can be induced is shocking. It goes against the narrative that there are "good" and "bad" people.
    - JackCh 8y ago
      What those shocked people (Ha) are often not told is that Milgram went to great lengths to appeal to people's altruism (desire to progress the state of science) when selecting subjects and to persuade them of the scientific validity of what they'd be asked to do. That once the experiments began the experimenter would frequently pressure the 'teacher' by invoking the necessity of science. He was measuring "obedience to authority" insofar as "authority" meant trust in scientists credentialed by Yale. One variation on the experiment following the same script as the infamous variation tested obedience rates outside of the Yale campus and, of course, there was significantly less compliance. Or put another way >'according to academic Don Mixon, Milgram didn't measure immoral behavior in his lab. On the contrary, he argued that what Milgram measured was misplaced trust. [...] Don found the same results as Milgram but came to completely different conclusions. he argued that it wasn't immorality that drove Milgram's subjects to flip the switches but trust in the experimenter, who, despite the cries from the learner, calmly told them to continue and gave the impression that there was nothing to worry about. [...] According to Don, Milgram simply measured the faith that people put in experts: "He found just the opposite of what he thought he found; nothing about the subjects' behavior is evil. In fact, people go to great lengths, will suffer great distress, to be good. People got caught up in trying to be good and trusting the expert. [...] The only evil in the obedience research, Don came to believe, was "the unconscious evil of the experimenters"'

EthanHeilman 8y ago

>There are countless other quotes of guards and prisoners saying they were "just acting". It seems entirely possible that "just acting" was an after the fact justification. People are very unreliable witnesses of their internal processes, this is probably even more true when someone has reason to feel guilt for their actions. >I'm not sure it matters so much why you're locking someone in a closet for 6 hours (just acting, wanting the experiment to succeed, wanting to please your teacher, having sadistic tendencies, etc.) Fake it until you make it, torturer edition.

wpietri 8y ago
Yes, exactly. Imagine trying to explain to people that you participated in something where you did horrible things for structural reasons. To really pull that off, you need to convince every interlocutor that they too would be prone to this. When it's much easier for your audience to believe that it's just you that's horrible, and they are fine and decent people who wouldn't do as you did. Especially decades later, I'd be very reluctant to naively credit people's explanations here.
- shkkmo 8y ago
  Except we don't have to, we have experimental evidence that shows what happens and what happens is not what 'happened' in the SPE.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    We don't have to what? I could believe that the SPE doesn't really get at it, but people do end up doing horrible things for structural reasons. That doesn't change the incentives for trying to explain that to people who weren't there.
  - pas 8y ago
    What's the p-value on these? How many trials were there? We have separate events, and we try to compare them, and use them as "evidence". I don't think the SPE is great science, but people are very easily driven by circumstances, and it'll take a lot of time to fully unpack the dynamics and ethical consequences of that.

clairity 8y ago

while the submissiveness angle is interesting, the most intriguing/important conclusion of the article is how impelled we are to see ourselves as the "good guys/girls", and how that's rationalized. time and again, the author comes back to this specific rationalization, including in reference to his bank-robbing cousin and zimbardo himself. when you're trying to understand someone else's "bad" actions, it's important to realize that they don't see themselves as a bad person, that their rational brains will wrap memories around an inherent belief in their own "goodness". that comes from a regular failing in how we narrate our lives into simple categories of "good" and "bad". people make mistakes constantly, and are constantly making up for them. social life is an endless chain of conflict resolution with ourselves as the protagonist.

lolc 8y ago
The scary thing is that even torturers convince themselves of their "goodness". They will classify their violations as "necessary" or "warranted by the situation" and go further to assert that they have "standards". They say they don't do the things these other, "real" torturers are known for.

da_chicken 8y ago

When I was in middle school in the late 80s, our social studies teachers coordinated a mock segregation experiment. 1 out of every 8 students was identified as an "Other". We were told that the "Others" were less deserving of respect and that it would be okay to make fun of them. The "Others" would always be last in line, would be required to use "Others"-only restrooms, etc. Teachers were told to favor the regular students and not the "Others." There were no prisoners and guards. The distinction was those with privilege and those without. The experiment was planned to last three days. It was stopped after less than a day and a half. I remember the principal coming on over the PA and announcing that the experiment was ending immediately and that treating any "Others" any differently from then on would result in a suspension. There were students showing up in the office crying about it. Not just complaining. Literally in tears. The problem, primarily, was that it was a middle school. There's already a group of students that all the other students mistreat or pick on or don't respect as well. There's already a social pecking order. When some of those low social rank students were assigned to the "Others" group, they really got bullied by people. What I remember being the most shocking was how several teachers were bullying and treating students badly. Yelling at them or punishing them for no reason at all. Just because they had a paper sign that said "Other" on their shirt. The thing that this drilled into me is how vile people can be to each other when they think they deserve it or otherwise aren't deserving of basic respect or equality. The older I get the more I look back on this little experiment and am shocked by what happened. Xenophobia and sectarian divisiveness is a remarkably easy way to dehumanize and strip other people of basic human rights. It's really quite terrifying how easy it was and how quickly it happened. How all the students and staff just readily accepted the new social order because that's what the authority said was true. How people abused that social order for no good reason. How people who were ostensibly pretending were actually acting in horrific ways. It's difficult to know in the moment what's acting and what isn't when it's a stranger doing it.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Wow. Middle school is already a zoo; to deliberately open the cage doors and let the animals out was a crazy idea.
colonelxc 8y ago

mseebach 8y ago

I think the significance of "just acting" is the knowledge that the suffering inflicted isn't real. That obviously has ramifications for the experiment: what people are willing to act out in a theatre isn't very indicative of what they might be capable of in a non-theatre setting.