2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
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They made a movie about this ..... and it is fake.....
No, Human Beings Aren't Natural Sadists. And The Famous Psychology Experiment That Told Us We Were Is A Fraud.
What it was...
Youāve all heard the story about the Stanford Prison Experiment, run by now-famous Stanford Professor Philip Zimbardo. Itās been made into a film, documented in innumerable books, and repeated ad infinitum in psychology 101 textbooks. The experiment supposedly went something like this: a group of volunteers was randomly separated into two groups. The first group became prisoners; the second became prison guards. Within days, the prison guards had become brutal monsters and the prisoners hapless victims driven to the brink of insanity. The experimenters shut down the experiment within a week.
Now, the truth....
Thereās only one problem with the study: it hasnāt been replicated. Itās not true.
According to a new article at Medium from Ben Blum, it was all nonsense. One of the prisoners, who famously began shouting about how he couldnāt stand it in the prison anymore, told Blum that he had faked his breakdown, and that when he led a prison ārebellion,ā it was all in good fun: āWe knew [the guards] couldnāt hurt us, they couldnāt hit us. They were white college kids just like us, so it was a very safe situation. It was just a job. If you listen to the tape, you can hear it in my voice: I have a great job. I get to yell and scream and act all hysterical.ā
The only scary part of the experiment was that the prisoners were told they couldnāt leave for any reason, apparently. At least one of the prisoners said he wished he had sued Zimbardo.
As for the guards, Zimbardo deliberately told them to play nasty. His graduate student āwarden,ā David Jaffe, āwas given the responsibility of trying to elicit ātough-guardā behavior.ā Jaffe, in other words, instructed the guards to be brutal ā and corrected them when they werenāt being brutal enough. The worst guard, Dave Eshelman, later explained, āI took it as a kind of improv exercise. I believed that I was doing what the researchers wanted me to do, and I thought Iād do it better than anybody else by creating this despicable guard persona. Iād never been to the South, but I used a southern accent, which I got from Cool Hand Luke.ā
No, Human Beings Aren't Natural Sadists. And The Famous Psychology Experiment That Told Us We Were Is A Fraud.
What it was...
Youāve all heard the story about the Stanford Prison Experiment, run by now-famous Stanford Professor Philip Zimbardo. Itās been made into a film, documented in innumerable books, and repeated ad infinitum in psychology 101 textbooks. The experiment supposedly went something like this: a group of volunteers was randomly separated into two groups. The first group became prisoners; the second became prison guards. Within days, the prison guards had become brutal monsters and the prisoners hapless victims driven to the brink of insanity. The experimenters shut down the experiment within a week.
Now, the truth....
Thereās only one problem with the study: it hasnāt been replicated. Itās not true.
According to a new article at Medium from Ben Blum, it was all nonsense. One of the prisoners, who famously began shouting about how he couldnāt stand it in the prison anymore, told Blum that he had faked his breakdown, and that when he led a prison ārebellion,ā it was all in good fun: āWe knew [the guards] couldnāt hurt us, they couldnāt hit us. They were white college kids just like us, so it was a very safe situation. It was just a job. If you listen to the tape, you can hear it in my voice: I have a great job. I get to yell and scream and act all hysterical.ā
The only scary part of the experiment was that the prisoners were told they couldnāt leave for any reason, apparently. At least one of the prisoners said he wished he had sued Zimbardo.
As for the guards, Zimbardo deliberately told them to play nasty. His graduate student āwarden,ā David Jaffe, āwas given the responsibility of trying to elicit ātough-guardā behavior.ā Jaffe, in other words, instructed the guards to be brutal ā and corrected them when they werenāt being brutal enough. The worst guard, Dave Eshelman, later explained, āI took it as a kind of improv exercise. I believed that I was doing what the researchers wanted me to do, and I thought Iād do it better than anybody else by creating this despicable guard persona. Iād never been to the South, but I used a southern accent, which I got from Cool Hand Luke.ā
