[jgfoot]

The Stanford Prison Experiment still gets a lot of ink, but unfortunately the criticisms of it do not. I recommend this article: http://www.swans.com/library/art17/barker82.html

"""over the past forty-plus years, the Stanford Prison Experiment has had a strong, and arguably detrimental impact upon both scholarly and popular conceptions of social psychology. Contrary to Zimbardo's misleading conclusions, ordinary people do not mindlessly and helplessly succumb to brutality; instead the evidence (even from his own experiment) seems to suggest that individuals tend to engage in brutality only when they truly believe that such actions are warranted -- acting upon ideas that are condoned by equally brutal group ideologies. The guards in Zimbardo's experiment were thus coerced by Zimbardo and his researchers to brutalize the prisoners; while the prisoners did not simply submit to the guards' brutality, but instead, actively resisted their oppression, both collectively and individually. This resistance was considered intolerable to Zimbardo, and as this article has shown, he utilized his system power to intervene to increase guard brutality and undermine the prisoners' collective will to resist their abusers."""

[kitsune_]

I've spent over 400 days in a closed environment with "special" group dynamics - the armed forces of Switzerland. Service is mandatory. I was made a NCO against my will.

I've made some valuable unscientific, personal observations during this time. One is, that most people (I'd say 80%) do not speak up for themselves or others when it matters in groups with strict hierarchies.

Not only that, I think that most people don't have any basic moral convictions. Group punishment is highly effective.

I've learnt that sadistic, manipulative and narcissistic people thrive in such environments and if left uncontrolled, alike to a malign tumor that spreads rapidly to other parts of the body, they can impact the entire organization quickly.

[masklinn]

> I've learnt that sadistic, manipulative and narcissistic people thrive in such environments and if left uncontrolled, alike to a malign tumor that spreads rapidly to other parts of the body, they can impact the entire organization quickly.

Aye. The phrase "One bad apple (spoils the bunch)" is often misunderstood but applies dreadfully well to human organizations.

[antman]

I spent 540 days in a series of closed environments and it isn't that simple. I was chief sergeant in an army recruit center and every 45 days 130 people left and the system rebooted with another 130 people (in boot camp training...)

The more people in the group that have previously lived either in highly predatory enviroments, or have only seen life through TV tend to try and copy attitudes and behaviours as seen on TV.

If everybody start the same day, the most predatory get an advantage but they can't keep up with their image unless they form a subgroup. The subgroup enforces and the subgroup groupthinks. If they don't create a subgroup they soon become a nuisance and fade in to the background.

If everybody does not start at the same day then there is already an established group dynamic and people with social skills in competitive environments usually fit right in. I don't mean this always in a good way. A social skill that people adapted to was that, when nobody spoke to someone, they did not speak to him either. When they wanted to establish themselves they slowly tested their boundaries and tried to cease oportunities.

What most people did not see was that, after a few repetitions of the same procedure (new recruits) human behaviour given certain initial variables tended to repeat itself. That is bad for a predatory, freely evolving environment, but for somebody like me who had done and watched this again and again it was easy to control. The man in charge is the one who specifies how things will go.

People think they are smart and everything is a matter of intelligence. It isn't. You either know because you tested or because you studied social sciences (The second part is a guess).

So what happened: I learnt all there is to learn regarding rules and regulations. I failed one or two groups by applying everything I had seen in Hollywood movies,I was ignored and the situation turned in to a violent mess. Not violent against me but against each other... The next group I simply anticipated what would happen because I had already seen it (people attacking people, how somebody could sneak in drugs or how they used them) so it was an easy process that wasn't any more tiring for me or for them. I taught them all the rules and they would listen to me! I was very happy with myself. The recruits kept good relations to each other and they were model soldiers. So I ended my military service with a good feeling of giving.

Not a happy ending: One and a half year later I had to meet a friend of mine to a military hospital as he was being dismissed for medical reasons and nobody could drive him. There I met one of my recruits for whom I was very proud of, and I did't like what I was seeing. He looked like Charlie Seen after having served in Vietnam for 10years. Long story short, when they left my army recruit center, all of them had gained knowledge and it was better than most of their NCOs. They couldn't be forced by the book because they knew better, they knew how to assert themselves because I had shown them how it is done. They spent the rest of their days in the army manipulating people, getting power, and doing nothing themselves. Their behaviour still looked alike, and their behaviour repeated throughout the country.

Did not see that one coming.

[saraid216]

There are valid criticisms of the SPE, but this isn't one of them. Zimbardo, in his work on heroism, later referenced exactly how he himself came to recognize the mistake: his fiancee came in, took one look, and was terrified by what she observed.

I don't know how your author managed to read The Lucifer Effect and miss that. The last page he quotes from is page 194. The book is a good 400 pages long. The "unreflective" echo that Zimbardo gives ends a chapter offering evidence.

He spends the next two chapters answering it.

He also wrote http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_banality_of... which Barker apparently either found unworthy of mention or never read.

[kenjackson]

That paper seems to say that the only reason the guards were abusive is because they were told to be so. But wasn't that the point?