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But the study's already been repeated all over the world in prisons, so it's reproducible.

by Zooper 8y ago

ALittleLight 8y ago
A confounding factor with real prisons is that (hopefully) most of the prisoners have antisocial tendencies which led to their incarceration and the prisoners and guards are under credible threat of violence from both parties. In other words, are the guards behaving like jerks because their power has corrupted them, or because behaving nicely is likelier to lead to them getting attacked by prisoners? Another consideration is that while I'm sure abuse in prisons is rampant hopefully it's still far from the majority of guards behaving poorly. If that's true, then real life prisons might be evidence against this conclusion as most (hopefully) prison guards wouldn't be jerks.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  And what about Abu Ghraib?
  - JackCh 8y ago
    What about it? The perpetrators at Abu Ghraib believed the tortured Iraqis deserving of it. In 2012 Lynndie England said, "They weren't innocent. They're trying to kill us, and you want me to apologize to them? It's like saying sorry to the enemy." Abu Ghraib doesn't boil down to uniform and a prison setting. The perpetrators believed themselves to be in the right and Iraqis to be deserving of punishment before they were ever placed in the prison setting. It doesn't map onto the SPE at all, despite countless commentators drawing comparisons between the two when the Abu Ghraib story broke.
- thefifthsetpin 8y ago
  > A confounding factor with real prisons is that (hopefully) most of the prisoners have antisocial tendencies which led to their incarceration and guards are under credible threat of violence from both parties. I suppose we could look at jails, then. They'd mostly be full of people still presumed innocent, and most of those who are guilty aren't guilty of a violent offense. If you just wait a while, you can find out which of those presumed innocent people people were found not guilty. It'd be interesting to see how the guards treated those people.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    The SPE was full of actually innocent people - you had to make a mental leap to imagine their guilt. People in jail are there because someone assumes they've done something wrong - it's (unfortunately) a mental leap to assume they are innocent, even though the law says that they are.

But the study's already been repeated all over the world in prisons, so it's reproducible.

by Zooper 8y ago

But the study's already been repeated all over the world in prisons, so it's reproducible.

A confounding factor with real prisons is that (hopefully) most of the prisoners have antisocial tendencies which led to their incarceration and the prisoners and guards are under credible threat of violence from both parties. In other words, are the guards behaving like jerks because their power has corrupted them, or because behaving nicely is likelier to lead to them getting attacked by prisoners? Another consideration is that while I'm sure abuse in prisons is rampant hopefully it's still far from the majority of guards behaving poorly. If that's true, then real life prisons might be evidence against this conclusion as most (hopefully) prison guards wouldn't be jerks.

partiallypro 8y ago
And what about Abu Ghraib?
- JackCh 8y ago
  What about it? The perpetrators at Abu Ghraib believed the tortured Iraqis deserving of it. In 2012 Lynndie England said, "They weren't innocent. They're trying to kill us, and you want me to apologize to them? It's like saying sorry to the enemy." Abu Ghraib doesn't boil down to uniform and a prison setting. The perpetrators believed themselves to be in the right and Iraqis to be deserving of punishment before they were ever placed in the prison setting. It doesn't map onto the SPE at all, despite countless commentators drawing comparisons between the two when the Abu Ghraib story broke.
thefifthsetpin 8y ago
> A confounding factor with real prisons is that (hopefully) most of the prisoners have antisocial tendencies which led to their incarceration and guards are under credible threat of violence from both parties. I suppose we could look at jails, then. They'd mostly be full of people still presumed innocent, and most of those who are guilty aren't guilty of a violent offense. If you just wait a while, you can find out which of those presumed innocent people people were found not guilty. It'd be interesting to see how the guards treated those people.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  The SPE was full of actually innocent people - you had to make a mental leap to imagine their guilt. People in jail are there because someone assumes they've done something wrong - it's (unfortunately) a mental leap to assume they are innocent, even though the law says that they are.