Who knows. The point is that what was reported isn't what happened so the original findings of the study are invalid and cannot be trusted.
To answer your question you'd want to do a new study where your question and the methodology is defined in advance. Defining the questions after an experiment has ended leads to bad conclusions because you are biased by having already seen what has happened and likely to fit your question to match the results.
The electric shock experiment (https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html) seems similar to your question showing a willingness for people to go further than they normally would when asked to do so by an authority figure.
There's quite a bit of criticism of that experiment too:
> In 2012, Australian psychologist Gina Perry investigated Milgram's data and writings and concluded that Milgram had manipulated the results, and that there was "troubling mismatch between (published) descriptions of the experiment and evidence of what actually transpired." She wrote that "only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter".[19][20] She described her findings as "an unexpected outcome" that "leaves social psychology in a difficult situation."[21] In the journal Jewish Currents, Joseph Dimow, a participant in the 1961 experiment at Yale University, wrote about his early withdrawal as a "teacher", suspicious "that the whole experiment was designed to see if ordinary Americans would obey immoral orders, as many Germans had done during the Nazi period."[22]
I can only speak as a psychology student who read about 'classics' such as Milgram and SPE, and participated in a number of experiments myself. I remember even when I read about the Migram experment, I figured that while I probably wouldn't have administered the severe shocks or participated at all, just in case, there's a chance I might have done so assuming it was all faked.
In fact, I'd argue this 'disconnect' from reality, if anything, is a much more interesting phenomenon. I've been part of various hazing rituals, some of them in hindsight quite irresponsible, and I think what made those 'work' wasn't that 'good people turned bad' or 'a few bad apples abused the mechanism', but rather that everyone involved just went along with the prank to an irresponsible degree.
One could argue that this supports the idea that people will do horrible things when told to do so by an 'authority', but I can't help but feel that the reality as I've experienced it doesn't fit the narrative of the Milgrams and Zimbardos.
tl:dr; I can't help but feel that many of these types of experiments are evidence of flawed reality more than morality. it's less going through some kind of moral reasoning and deciding to trust the lab coat, but more a flaw in our mental heuristics that leads us to construct an alternate reality. things like the bystander effect would support that view, and while it might seem like splitting hairs, I feel they're quite different interpretations.
I think what made those 'work' wasn't that 'good people turned bad' or 'a few bad apples abused the mechanism', but rather that everyone involved just went along with the prank to an irresponsible degree.
This is an important point. I guess this is kind of of a difficult thing to control for while still staying within the boundaries of experimental ethics.
As a side note, personally I think this idea of 'going along with a prank to an irresponsible degree' also goes quite a long way towards explaining the current political situation in the US...
What Zimbardo's SPE apparently did, was really more of a replication of Milgram's earlier experiments showing that people will do bad things if an authority figure tells them to. Which is interesting and important...and not new. It wasn't even new when Zimbardo did it. Milgram's experiment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) was well known even when Zimbardo was planning his, and while this would be supportive of the conclusions from Milgram's earlier work, it wouldn't break any new ground.
As I heard in https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/bad-show , Milgram's study is actually much more nuanced but insightful. The participants given an absolute order to administer the highest shocks are the ones who refused! Instead of showing that people do whatever they are told by authorities, the results showed that people go along up to the point where they feel they are still in control and choosing to go forward. When it's an absolute order, they rebel!
The difference being Milgram used actors as there was no actual suffering, only the intent to cause suffering on-command. Milgram's experiment proved what atrocities like the Holocaust and Armenian Genocide already made clear: most people are cowards, will happily turn you over to butchers, if not murder you themselves, if directed.
I think part of it is that they were kind of told they were doing something morally good by helping make the case against prisons and advancing a certain version of social justice. One takeaway could be that social justice ideology can be used to perpetrate horrific things, as long as the ends appear to justify the means.
"Will participants refuse the instructions of the experiment administrator?" is a different question than "will participants naturally fall hard into their fictitious roles?", which was the ostensible goal.
Well... It's easier to nudge people into doing something than asking or demanding. They then think it was their own decision.
e.g. "It's important that you act naturally at all times and only within the limits of what you are comfortable with. For the purposes of the experiment you should also carefully consider your role as guard and what those duties might entail. Sometimes you may need to speak confidently in your role for people to listen to you."
Or some such thing. I am by no means a master of nudging but you get the point. You can ask a thing with out actually asking.
I think many people do this without even realising.
“What we want to do”, Zimbardo’s Warden told the Guard, “is be able to go to the world with what we’ve done and say “Now look, this is what happens when you have Guards who behave this way … But in order to say that we have to have Guards who behave that way.”
There's parallels to normalization, ie, cult indoctrination.. look at how Scientology enslaves people, takes their money and their dignity to feed the egos of Tom Cruise and Muscaviage.
To answer your question you'd want to do a new study where your question and the methodology is defined in advance. Defining the questions after an experiment has ended leads to bad conclusions because you are biased by having already seen what has happened and likely to fit your question to match the results.
The electric shock experiment (https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html) seems similar to your question showing a willingness for people to go further than they normally would when asked to do so by an authority figure.