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Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

• marcoperaza 8y ago
  The criticism that the participants were just doing as they were told has always seemed to me as rather missing the point. What better demonstration is there of the human capacity for cruelty than a bunch of Stanford undergrads torturing other students because a professor told them to?
  • CamperBob2 8y ago
    What I find interesting are the people who are absolutely fanatical about disputing Zimbardo's conclusions. It's as if it's very important to them personally to be able to classify potential perpetrators of atrocities into two simplistic categories, People Who Do Stuff Like That and People Who, Somehow, Magically, Don't. Any experiments that might reveal human nature as the ultimate culprit are considered politically incorrect and unacceptable to perform. 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.
    • knight-of-lambd 8y ago
      Well said. I think it's instinctual to want to believe there is some intrinsic, insurmountable difference between us and them (people who do morally repugnant things). At the heart of it, it's tribalism. 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?
      • JackFr 8y ago
        > Well said. I think it's instinctual to want to believe there is some intrinsic, insurmountable difference between us and them (people who do morally repugnant things). At the heart of it, it's tribalism. 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.
        • knight-of-lambd 8y ago
          For a more solid experiment, there's the BBC prison study: http://www.bbcprisonstudy.org http://www.bbcprisonstudy.org Different conclusions, just as fascinating.
    • lsc 8y ago
      > It's as if it's very important to them personally to be able to classify perpetrators of atrocities into two simplistic categories, People Who Do Stuff Like That and People Who, Somehow, Magically, Don't. 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.
      • CamperBob2 8y ago
        You don't see why that is something a person might want to believe, if at all possible? 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.
        • WillPostForFood 8y ago
          Yes, even if your comforting bias is pro-Zimbardo.
          • CamperBob2 8y ago
            Sigh, here come the ad hominems. I do not have a "pro-Zimbardo bias," whatever that is. I wouldn't know Zimbardo if he came to the door selling encyclopedias. 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.
    • jldugger 8y ago
      > Yes, the Stanford Prison Experiment was a dumpster fire. It was a scientific dumpster fire as well. What was the control group exactly?
      • CamperBob2 8y ago
        If there had been a control group, it would have consisted of prisoners held by guards who didn't behave anything like prison guards are trained to behave. 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.
    • YouAreGreat 8y ago
      > fanatical about disputing Zimbardo's conclusions 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.
    • watwut 8y ago
      Except that, you are the one who makes simplistic categories. You want it to be about human nature and don't want it to be about ideologies and opinions. "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.
      • CamperBob2 8y ago
        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. 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.
        • watwut 8y ago
          Oh yeah, we are very different then Germans. We have different values and political system. We have overall much lower levels of violence. We could become like Germans, but overall, we are not nearly there. Hitler did not became leader randomly and his ideas and opinions were not formed randomly. His competitors for power were different then him. 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.
  • donutte 8y ago
    I don’t think that’s an accurate characterization of the criticism. The Milgram study, and its numerous replications, have pretty conclusively shown that most folks will do something they know is wrong if a perceived authority instructs them to. That’s not really in dispute. 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.
    • bobcostas55 8y ago
      Most of the people in the Milgram experiment knew it was fake. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/12/12/interviews-with-milgram-participants-provide-little-support-for-the-contemporary-theory-of-engaged-followership/ https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/12/12/interviews-with-milgram...
      • EthanHeilman 8y ago
        Most of the people in the Milgram experiment said they knew it was fake which isn't the same thing as actually knowing. On one hand of course they knew it wasn't a real prison, they were told it wasn't a real prison and it clearly wasn't. Did they believe they weren't hurting "the prisoners"? That is far less clear and plenty of people have used the excuse that they didn't think they were actually hurting the other person. 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.
        • albedoa 8y ago
          The Milgram experiment did not involve a prison, real or otherwise.
          • deleted 8y ago
  • scotty79 8y ago
    Depends on what you are trying to prove. 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.
    • CamperBob2 8y ago
      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. But as I pointed out in the other thread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17289154 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17289154 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17289386 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.
      • AstralStorm 8y ago
  • rossdavidh 8y ago
    Much of what I've read about this, including Zimbardo's rebuttal linked above, makes it sound much more like Milgram's studies on willingness to do cruel things if you're told to. While I don't doubt that putting people in positions of power can often bring out their bad sides, that doesn't mean that this experiment was a great way of showing that, not least because it is intrinsically difficult to replicate.
• schizoidboy 8y ago
  Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17287319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17287319 I have no strong opinions either way, but one meta-point I personally find interesting is: why don't journalists send a final draft of an article to the people involved and get a final round of comments? That just seems fair. Zimbardo claims some facts in the article are simply wrong, and either 1) those errors would be corrected, or 2) Zimbardo's response to those claims could stand side-by-side, instead of this bifurcated situation of articles and response articles. I think it would be even better if these arguments were in a wiki (or git) style instead of a series of articles.
  • akvadrako 8y ago
    This sounds like a good feature of the future of science, but doesn't really fit into the current publishing model. They aren't vetting the papers published there more than on a very basic level. If you want to respond to a paper, you should write another paper titled "Comments on..."
  • marcoperaza 8y ago
    News in general should be presented this way. But people don’t want to read what they didn’t consider or why they might be wrong.
    • JasonFruit 8y ago
      Is there anyone who is doing news that way? I would pay good money for that.
  • dp141 8y ago
    Having worked as a journalist previously, it's funny how this is often almost impossible in practice. Most of the time subjects don't want to comment, ignore, or responses are handled by a PR person who doesn't provide adequate comment. Then, when you do publish and you get X detail wrong they blast you, or the subject themselves bemoans how they were never given the opportunity to comment. Not that journalists are above reproach but I can't tell you how many times people got annoyed about not being able to to tell their side of the story or how X or Y was misrepresented when they were given countless ops to do put forward their own case. Attitude toward journalists these days, partly because of more professionalised PR is hugely adversarial rather than co-operative. Anyway /rant.
• didibus 8y ago
  If anything, this whole debacle has revealed to me how pathetic the whole "science" of psychology is in its current state. I mean, the emblem of its field can't even acknowledge any flaw in his experiment. I'm not saying it was bogus, but it's pretty obviously biased and flawed in many ways. Even if executed with perfect methodology, which it clearly wasn't, that sample size and the bias in participants literally provides no value. At least if they had the humility to acknowledge how primitive the whole thing was, and that there's much more to learn. But it seems they're just like, here it is folks, undeniable unarguable proof, we're done, let's close shop. I mean, has the field of psychology given us anything of value? I'm asking genuinely. I'm now under the impression it did not. In fact, it seems it has mostly been used as a tool to justify atrocities under the guise of science instead of religion, more often then it actually enabled us to understand ourselves better and thus organise our society more optimally, or correct and alter negative behaviours.
  • EthanHeilman 8y ago
    The problem, from where I sit, is that certain types of experiments have a built error detection or safety rails and psychology doesn't have this. For instance if a physics experiment has a result which appears to violate conservation of momentum or has information being sent faster than the speed of life, then it is likely that there is a flaw in the experiment. Unfortunately many of the social sciences don't have these easily detected error conditions. Thus, it becomes much harder to determine is an experiment is flawed or not. Making this situation even worse social sciences are very hard to control for and replicate because you can't just order "one standard human" for the experiment. Two experiments may not replicate each other due to no fault of the experiment. What we need is a model of human psychology that provides clear boundary conditions.
    • fabatka 8y ago
      But there are methods to deal with more or less all of these problems, that is why social scientists learn research design/methodology separately so much. In my opinion being able to replicate results should still be required to accept a theory. My problem with this case is that things that I consider basics for the scientific method (replication or even a control group) are obviously missing.
• Svexar 8y ago
  Psychology isn't falsifiable. It is not science.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • erikpukinskis 8y ago
    Your hypothesis seems too broad to be true. Let’s get specific and see if you’re right. The theory of classical conditioning says if you present a neutral stimulus together with a biologically significant one, an animal will eventually show the same response to the neutral stimulus alone as it does to the biologically significant one. Is this falsifiable? Seems like it. You’d just have to show cases where qualifying stimuli are repeated and the neutral stimulus alone provoked no reaction.
  • YouAreGreat 8y ago
    Not necessarily. In an ideal world psychology could be scientific. In this world, however, we observe that the Behaviorists, who were uniquely concerned with holding psychology to strict scientific standards, where ganged up upon and hounded out of the field. The hounders can't be trusted.
    • catamorphismic 8y ago
      Behaviorism isn't simply about holding psychology to a higher scientific standard and it is misguided to imply it is the only psychological paradigm to have done so. As an easy counterexample, take a look at cognitive psychology.
• chiefalchemist 8y ago
  What's there to debate? Run it 2 or 3 times again. Publish the results. Is that not the definition of Science?
  • anitil 8y ago
    I think that the experiment would struggle to pass ethical review these days, so this might never be possible.
    • pmoriarty 8y ago
      In the US and other countries with similar ethical standards. It might be doable in other countries that have different ethical standards.
  • wavegeek 8y ago
    It is very hard to get reproduction experiments published. Even though reproducibility is absolutely core to the scientific process. You cannot make this stuff up.
    • chiefalchemist 8y ago
      Can I presume that last sentence is irony? Or even sarcasm? Because if no one is bothering to replicate, you __can__ make stuff up. And no one is going to know.
  • AlexCoventry 8y ago
    You volunteering to be a prisoner?
• bruthafez 8y ago
  Zimbardo has lost all credibility, the fact that this begins with anything but a point-by-point refutation of the Medium article just highlights that fact. The Medium article was highly illuminating and included so many different sources that Zimbardo's response here just reads as a desperate attempt to regain credibility that's LONG gone.
• madhadron 8y ago
  Ah yes, the Stanford Prison Experiment, which makes serious psychologists sigh and roll there eyes. Putting aside ethical considerations, it was so confounded as to be completely useless.
  • twblalock 8y ago
    It's taken seriously enough to be taught in every university survey course on psychology and sociology, and that wouldn't still be happening if the "serious" people in those disciplines wanted to stop.
    • philwelch 8y ago
      I've typically only seen it taught as a cautionary tale, both about research ethics and about experiment design.
      • euyyn 8y ago
        Yeah, the reason I was taught it was in an experiment design class, because it caused psychological harm to the subjects (not the prisoners) without their consent. Thus being an exemplary case of an ethical failure.
    • duxup 8y ago
      I was taught it.... in a way to say "this is not how to research things and if you heard about this you should probabbly rethink anything you think about it".
      • rusk 8y ago
        > "this is not how to research things Yes, this is how it was taught to me also. An example of "how not to do it" and something that would never pass the ethical review board in modern academia.
        • JdeBP 8y ago
• AlexCoventry 8y ago
  > He had befriended both Carlo and me in an attempt to get me to agree to give him screen rights to a Hollywood movie about the SPE. When instead, I chose to go with Maverick Films producer, Brent Emery, Lazarou began writing negative critiques of both me and the SPE. Why does anyone need Zimbardo's permission to write a screenplay involving the SPE?
• bunkydoo 8y ago
  Does anyone even get that hacker news is the epitome of 'fake news' ? This study was done years ago, read tbe lucifer effect and move on fellas.
  • wavefunction 8y ago
    People here are critically discussing the study. That's not "fake news" aka "propaganda according to assholes."
  • frankquist 8y ago
    As it is phrased your comment is not helpful. Besides the huge generalization (how is hacker news fake news?), you barely provide any arguments for your points. Can you elaborate on how this post is 'fake news'? (I'm not going to go down a 'hacker news is fake news' rabbit hole but am interested in your criticism of this post specifically)
• wavefunction 8y ago
  This guy is completely unethical. In addition to his famous 'Prison Experiment' he engaged in relations with one of his graduate students. Psychology is full of hucksters like Zimbardo.
  • valuearb 8y ago
    Sure, Psychology isn’t much of a science, but the list of college professors who didn’t sleep with students in the 70s has to be very, very, short.
    • catamorphismic 8y ago
      Since when is psychology not much of a science?
      • michaelt 8y ago
        I'm guessing valuearb means the few decades of research that lead up to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_psychology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_psycholo... ?
  • red75prime 8y ago
    Consensuality is such a fragile thing, when benefits and/or potential for exerting pressure are involved. Well, at least we don't need evidence that it wasn't consensual. /s ETA: I've added sarcasm tag.
• phobosdeimos 8y ago
  Anyone who is criticizing this experiment I challenge to go undercover as a prison guard or go work for ICE. In fact many journalists have done this in the past. Dehumanization of the other mixed in with a bit of fear and poof civilization is out the window. Hello Colonel Kurtz.
  • Nokinside 8y ago
    The effect the experiment attempts to demonstrate can be true while the prison experiment itself can be complete sham.
• mindgam3 8y ago
  Zimbardo is a disgrace. There are legitimate results in the field of psychology, but the Stanford Prison Experiment is not one of them. All it ever proved was that Zimbardo's ethics was highly compromised. In the final paragraph, he claims to be "promoting what is best in human nature. That in [sic] my current life mission." In reality the only thing he's ever been good at promoting is himself. And I know this is trivial and stupid, but he couldn't even avoid a typo in the last line of his rebuttal? Come on.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• viburnum 8y ago
  He should STFU and be glad he isn't in prison for kidnapping.