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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 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.

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.