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> It's only natural human behaviour to not put effort in if there's no consequences or risk in doing so. That’s nonsense. That’s like saying that it’s only nat

> It's only natural human behaviour to not put effort in if there's no consequences or risk in doing so. That’s nonsense. That’s like saying that it’s only natural human behavior to abuse and be abused. If I put myself in the shoes of an underpaid sewage worker, that has a family to maintain, that sees the owner and investors of said private companies getting obscenely rich just by closings contracts under their AC… yeah, I’d slack the s* out of it too.

imchillyb 3y ago
> ...That’s like saying that it’s only natural human behavior to abuse and be abused... I think that's exactly what experiments have shown the world. There are many follow-up experiments that prove exactly that. The Stanford Prison Experiment has become one of psychology's most dramatic illustrations of how good people can be transformed into perpetrators of evil, and healthy people can begin to experience pathological reactions - traceable to situational forces. Those traceable situational forces can be minor and subtle things, and yet.
- zimpenfish 3y ago
  > The Stanford Prison Experiment Thoroughly debunked[1][2][3], no? [1] https://themindlab.co.uk/academy/epic-fails-what-can-we-learn-from-recently-debunked-psychology-studies/ https://themindlab.co.uk/academy/epic-fails-what-can-we-lear... [2] https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-experiment-fraud-psychology-replication https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-exper... [3] https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/2019-letexier.pdf https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/2019-letexier.pdf
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    No. The SPE was unethical and its methodology was garbage, but the observations were valid enough. When someone refuses to commit an atrocity for you, all you have to do is ask the next person in line. You won't have to go too far down the line before you find someone who is not only willing to follow an illegal order from an authority figure, but happy to. See also Milgram. The conclusion was self-evident before they ran the experiment, so another criticism that could be leveled at the experiment was that it was redundant.
    - scubbo 3y ago
      > The conclusion was self-evident before they ran the experiment, so another criticism that could be leveled at the experiment was that it was redundant. "It's just common sense" is not a solid scientific proof. Testing something that we _think_ we know (but have no proven) is not a bad thing.
      - photonerd 3y ago
        Ish. It’s usually more useful to test hypotheses about why something is. If that something isn’t then you can’t get an answer & will often demonstrate the counter-factual. Simple “we confirmed water is wet” tests are not very good science. Whereas “what is wetness & why does it happen” is.
    - JackFr 3y ago
      Milgram experiment debunked too https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking-one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-experiments/384913/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinkin... https://www.psypost.org/2019/11/unpublished-data-from-stanley-milgrams-experiments-casts-doubts-on-his-claims-about-obedience-54921 https://www.psypost.org/2019/11/unpublished-data-from-stanle... https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/why-almost-everything-you-know-about-milgram-wrong https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/why-almost-everything-yo...
      - CamperBob2 3y ago
        The word "debunk" is doing some heavy lifting in those articles. "....Overall 58 per cent of people actually disobeyed the pushy experimenter [which means that 42 percent didn't.] How can we understand this variability, Reicher asked, if the agentic state is true?" What else would explain it -- and more important, what difference does it make? Milgram found that 42% of people will administer electric shocks to someone who appears to be screaming in pain, as long as the order is given by an apparent authority figure. What is there to debunk, exactly? Keep in mind what motivated these experiments: a desire to understand more about how the Nazis were able to accomplish what they did. It's not as if the findings of Milgram and Zimbardo were novel or controversial; they were merely trying to reproduce and understand something that the entire world had just observed.

imchillyb 3y ago

> ...That’s like saying that it’s only natural human behavior to abuse and be abused... I think that's exactly what experiments have shown the world. There are many follow-up experiments that prove exactly that. The Stanford Prison Experiment has become one of psychology's most dramatic illustrations of how good people can be transformed into perpetrators of evil, and healthy people can begin to experience pathological reactions - traceable to situational forces. Those traceable situational forces can be minor and subtle things, and yet.

zimpenfish 3y ago
> The Stanford Prison Experiment Thoroughly debunked[1][2][3], no? [1] https://themindlab.co.uk/academy/epic-fails-what-can-we-learn-from-recently-debunked-psychology-studies/ https://themindlab.co.uk/academy/epic-fails-what-can-we-lear... [2] https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-experiment-fraud-psychology-replication https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-exper... [3] https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/2019-letexier.pdf https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/2019-letexier.pdf
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  No. The SPE was unethical and its methodology was garbage, but the observations were valid enough. When someone refuses to commit an atrocity for you, all you have to do is ask the next person in line. You won't have to go too far down the line before you find someone who is not only willing to follow an illegal order from an authority figure, but happy to. See also Milgram. The conclusion was self-evident before they ran the experiment, so another criticism that could be leveled at the experiment was that it was redundant.
  - scubbo 3y ago
    > The conclusion was self-evident before they ran the experiment, so another criticism that could be leveled at the experiment was that it was redundant. "It's just common sense" is not a solid scientific proof. Testing something that we _think_ we know (but have no proven) is not a bad thing.
    - photonerd 3y ago
      Ish. It’s usually more useful to test hypotheses about why something is. If that something isn’t then you can’t get an answer & will often demonstrate the counter-factual. Simple “we confirmed water is wet” tests are not very good science. Whereas “what is wetness & why does it happen” is.
  - JackFr 3y ago
    Milgram experiment debunked too https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking-one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-experiments/384913/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinkin... https://www.psypost.org/2019/11/unpublished-data-from-stanley-milgrams-experiments-casts-doubts-on-his-claims-about-obedience-54921 https://www.psypost.org/2019/11/unpublished-data-from-stanle... https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/why-almost-everything-you-know-about-milgram-wrong https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/why-almost-everything-yo...
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      The word "debunk" is doing some heavy lifting in those articles. "....Overall 58 per cent of people actually disobeyed the pushy experimenter [which means that 42 percent didn't.] How can we understand this variability, Reicher asked, if the agentic state is true?" What else would explain it -- and more important, what difference does it make? Milgram found that 42% of people will administer electric shocks to someone who appears to be screaming in pain, as long as the order is given by an apparent authority figure. What is there to debunk, exactly? Keep in mind what motivated these experiments: a desire to understand more about how the Nazis were able to accomplish what they did. It's not as if the findings of Milgram and Zimbardo were novel or controversial; they were merely trying to reproduce and understand something that the entire world had just observed.