8 ms·
The Stanford Prison Experiment was hugely influential. We learned it was a fraud (2018)
- CodeWriter23 3y agoI think the fact the guards did what they did when coached even more solidly affirms this research. Maybe the methodology is shaky but the cause and effect is palpable.
- batch12 3y ago[2018]
- pmarreck 3y agoThis doesn't necessarily mean that the whole principle of unquestioning obedience when it comes to being asked to do immoral/unethical acts is false. Also, we've probably all had bosses who were a bit too drunk with power. And unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), due to new ethics regulations, no such experiment could ever be conducted again- Except in real life, as happens every day in repressive countries around the world.
- superduperer 3y agoYes it does.
- pmarreck 3y agoNo it doesn't. Quod grātīs asseritur, grātīs negātur (aka Hitchens' Razor)
- JacobThreeThree 3y ago>Also, we've probably all had bosses who were a bit too drunk with power. Yeah, exactly. This type of real-world experiment is being done inside corporations and other bureaucratic fiefdoms. I think there's some truth to our order-following, obedient nature but people also seemed to put way too much stock into this particular study. It's just one study.
- enasterosophes 3y ago> This doesn't necessarily mean that the whole principle of unquestioning obedience when it comes to being asked to do immoral/unethical acts is false. The article didn't claim that the study's conclusion was false. The article only points out that the study was flawed, and therefore cannot be relied upon to draw any conclusions either way. The article is about replication issues in modern science, not about whether people in uniforms can be mean to people.
- pdonis 3y ago> The article didn't claim that the study's conclusion was false. The article only points out that the study was flawed Not "flawed", fraud. Which is a claim that the conclusion is false--and that the author knew it and published it anyway. That's what "fraud" means in this context. That's an extremely strong claim, which the article does not actually justify. Zimbardo's response, which others upthread have posted a link to, is, IMO, required reading to evaluate anything this article says.
- thfuran 3y agoA scientific paper can be fraudulent without the author knowing that its conclusion is false if it has falsified data or otherwise is known to the author to misrepresent the extent to which the conclusion is supported.
- taeric 3y agoFair, in that it provides null evidence. My understanding is that there have been several studies that showed that the results specifically did not replicate. Complicating things, this has been somewhat seen as something that is not "universal" and that the general upbringing of the test subjects matters a ton into how they will react to instructions.
- jbaber 3y agoMandatory smbc: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/zimbardo https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/zimbardo
- MilStdJunkie 3y agoYeah, you don't even need to know it's debunked to know the experimental setup is garbage. We talked about that when it was the seminar discussion in undergraduate anthro, back in the last century sometime. That it's also been recently debunked makes it double-garbage.
- car 3y ago"Humankind" by Rutger Bregman also makes a counterpoint to the assumption that all humans are bad. It has a chapter about the Stanford Prison Experiment.
- psychlops 3y agoThank you! I was just trying to remember the book, it is excellent!
- justanotherjoe 3y agoi dont think spe says that humans are evil, rather than humans are, largely equal. It all depends on outside factor rather than something endogenous.
- legitster 3y agoWhile it wasn't popularly debunked until 2018, I actually remember hearing the Freakonomics guys actually talked about this way back in 2014: > LEVITT: Yeah, he said it was real, too. But a lot of times what I’ve found is that that when I try to do experiments as an economist that work great for psychologists, I cannot get them to work. And I really have come to believe that it’s because the people in the study are so keen on doing what the researcher wants them to do, and they think that the psychologist wants them to behave in one way, and they think the economist wants them to behave in a different way, and so it’s hard to reproduce some of those psychological findings. I’d love to do the prison study, and I’d love to do it in a way that was unbiased. And I just, it’s one thing, I would bet a lot of money that things wouldn’t turn out the way that they did in that old Zimbardo study. > DUBNER: Well, you know, let me read you, here’s what a couple of the volunteers who played guards back then 40-some years ago. Here’s what they said recently. One said that he was playing a role from the outset trying to create drama to quote, “give the researchers something to work with.” And another guard said, “I didn’t think it was ever meant to go the full two weeks. I think Zimbardo wanted to create a dramatic crescendo and then end it as quickly as possible. I felt that throughout the experiment, he knew what he wanted and tried to shape the experiment by how it was constructed and how it played out to fit the conclusion that he had already worked out. He wanted to be able to say that college students, people from middle-class backgrounds, that people will turn on each other just because they are given a role and given power.” > LEVITT: So people won’t believe me, I have never heard those quotes, I didn’t know anyone else thought that way, what I said before was just my intuition that that was not human behavior what got revealed in those studies. To give credit where it's due, Levitt basically made a whole career out of showing the replication problems of psychology experiments.
- nomel 3y ago> so keen on doing what the researcher wants them to do, and they think that the psychologist wants them to behave in one way This was the dark conclusion of the Milgram experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
- jhbadger 3y ago
- mensetmanusman 3y agoI'm guessing most ted talks reference ""science"" that can't be replicated as well. It's ironic that this of happening immediately before we enter the ai fueled post-truth era.
- smt88 3y agoTED Talks are a disaster in general. Lots of charlatans and bad science. People should treat them aa entertainment, not as a reputable, fact-checked publication of science.
- oobuffet 3y agoA rule of thumb is if the speaker talks in the signature TED(tm) tone of voice, it's probably just entertainment.
- jtriangle 3y agoThat paper towel guy was right on the money though and I use way less paper towels and use them more effectively now. No science required, just an old dude who had an idea he wanted to share. That's what TED should be, not anything authoritative or declarative. That is indeed their slogan "ideas worth spreading", they should really stick to that.
- jjeaff 3y agoso funny. and I remember people commenting about how stupid and simple his talk was. and yet I think about it every time I use a public restroom.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoI have always assumed that they are done for financial gain. Some are entertaining, but you have 18 minutes. How deep can you go? Isn't it more lucrative to use it to push a few talking points?
- Sophistifunk 3y agoI'm still waiting for my anti-mosquito star wars system. Maybe the "AI" will help.
- AlbertCory 3y agoEveryone's heard the stories of how it was "fake." How many of you have actually read Dr. Zimbardo's own response to the debunking? https://www.prisonexp.org/response https://www.prisonexp.org/response
- echan00 3y agoThank you
- EA-3167 3y agoI always wonder how people square "It's a fraud" with "It's a fraud that fits the reality of power and abuse incredibly well." I get the sense that some people really just don't like to talk or think about the banality of evil.
- scotty79 3y agoIt's a fraud because if guards were pressured or knew the experimenters expectation then it's just yet another Milgram's experiment that is apparently enough to explain banality of evil as a result of few bad apples in various places of power with complacent masses willing to do amoral things when ordered. Nothing that should make Zimbardo world famous.
- romusha 3y agoNo one because they want it to be false cuz of neo-romanticism
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sirspacey 3y agoThank you for sharing, fascinating to understand the study’s intended purpose.
- pas 3y ago
- obblekk 3y ago> … offers convincing evidence that the guards in the experiment were coached to be cruel. This was the point of the experiment. That simply coaching people in banal ways to be cruel caused them to be cruel. Yes the study participants were just doing what they thought the scientists wanted to see… exactly as many humans do in many human organizations. Perhaps the guards believed deep down there was no real danger to the prisoners. Exactly as many people assume about civil society and the social safety net. How many people would do things that are quite evil or disastrous to another human’s life if instructed to do so by a company’s performance management system, at risk of losing their job? Remember the context in the early 70s was the relatively recent discovery of the Nazi’s unimaginably cruel treatment of people, and the unknown question of what could cause humans to behave that way. It turns out, just some authoritative instructions. Worth reading the original PIs 2018 response to recent criticism in full. Well written. https://www.prisonexp.org/response https://www.prisonexp.org/response
- cantrevealname 3y agoAre there discoveries or theories from the field of psychology that are (a) not obvious and (b) generally regarded as correct? For example, things like general relativity, continental drift, or evolution from the fields of physics, geology, and biology. Does psychology have anything like that?
- pikma 3y agoNot a psychology researcher, but I think that the Milgram experiment has been fairly well replicated. Please anyone let me know if not. I personally found it to be non-obvious.
- eco 3y agoMilgram's results are also not as cut and dry as they are usually presented. Obedience rates varied wildly in subsequent variations he ran of the experiment and his initial experiment that got all the attention was a pretty low sample size. 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...
- sarchertech 3y ago“Many of Milgram’s participants believed it to be impossible that the prestigious Yale University experimenter would allow real harm to be inflicted on an experimental subject. Although Milgram claimed that 75% of his participants thought they were administering painful shocks, Perry’s re-analysis of the data showed that “It’s more truthful to say that only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real, and of those, two-thirds disobeyed the experimenter” (p. 163). Furthermore, she argues that many of those who did administer the maximum amount of shock did so because they were confident the shock wasn’t real or that the experiment was an elaborate ruse.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201301/the-secrets-behind-psychology-s-most-famous-experiment https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/...
- kmoser 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mgh2 3y agoIs there anything similar on Milgram's experiment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
- sarchertech 3y ago“Many of Milgram’s participants believed it to be impossible that the prestigious Yale University experimenter would allow real harm to be inflicted on an experimental subject. Although Milgram claimed that 75% of his participants thought they were administering painful shocks, Perry’s re-analysis of the data showed that “It’s more truthful to say that only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real, and of those, two-thirds disobeyed the experimenter” (p. 163). Furthermore, she argues that many of those who did administer the maximum amount of shock did so because they were confident the shock wasn’t real or that the experiment was an elaborate ruse.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201301/the-secrets-behind-psychology-s-most-famous-experiment https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/...
- lupusreal 3y agoThe popular shocking interpretation of the Milgram experiment is that most people will follow orders and obey authority, even in service of an ideology they don't believe in. For instance, if given an order by Nazis to kill Jews, most people would follow the order and do so. There's a Nazi in all of us, that's the shocking result that made the experiment famous. It's BS though. The Milgram experiments actually showed that the explanations given with the orders mattered a lot. When the orders were given by people dressed like scientists and explained with "this is necessary for science", compliance rates were highest. When these factors were changed, compliance rates dropped. Compliance rates also dropped when the experiment was performed outside of college towns. What it actually demonstrated is that people do check orders against their pre-existing ideological commitments, and that people who trust scientists and believe in the necessity of science may be willing to commit atrocities in the service of science. Those same people, if given orders by Nazis, would refuse and walk away from the situation (presuming they could do so without being shot.). In other words, the shocking result is wrong and the real result is mundane. People may commit atrocities for causes they believe in, when given those orders by people they trust.
- jongjong 3y agoI'm not surprised. I never believed in the "power corrupts" narrative. It's just a cover for an uglier reality that we are ruled by people who want to do evil and corrupt people are selected for positions of power because they can be controlled into enabling and covering for those evil deeds.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mcv 3y agoDoes power corrupt or does power attract the corrupt? I do think power is unhealthy, but its corruption works more slowly and subtly than these experiments can possibly test. Not to mention that these guards didn't have real power; they weren't the ones running the experiment. They had a very limited pretend power. If you want to know whether power corrupts, it's better to look at Zimbardo himself.
- qingcharles 3y agoI've spent sufficiently long time in jails to watch new guards start the job and go from being fun, friendly guys, to being power-infesting evil jerks. There are few guards who manage to keep their nice ways intact. And on another note, I have run forums with hundreds of thousands of users. Almost every time I have promoted a user to staff they became (literally) Hitler within six months and I had to ban them. IMO, power definitely corrupts.
- zw123456 3y agoIn a funny way, it proves the point about people with power being corrupted because the researches were the ones with power and abused it in order to generate a fake study to gain notoriety for themselves perhaps.
- alan-crowe 3y agoIn the original understanding of the Stanford Prison Experiment, the public policy take away is the anti-prison argument: you can try to set up a prison system that treats the prisoners in a kind, reforming way, but the guards will treat the prisoners in a brutal, deforming way because that is what humans with power do automatically. The kind of experiment that would provide convincing evidence would have a pro-prison psychologist trying to rig the experiment by tipping off the guards that they are supposed to show the best side of human nature and treat the prisoners in a kind, reforming way; but it all goes horribly wrong when the guards ignore the push from the experimenter and are brutal anyway. What do we expect would be the outcome of an experiment where the pro-prison psychologist running it tips off the guards about how they are supposed to behave? Zimbardo's work is rather ambiguous. Perhaps it generates the expectation that the guards will be brutal. Perhaps it generates the expectation that the guards will conform to the clues and hints injected by the psychologist running the experiment. The work suffers from a fundamental wrong way roundness in relation to the public policy controversy.