His comments are pretty interesting. He seems to lay the entire blame for the conditions of the experiment on Professor Zimbardo.
> Looking at the prisoners, they were all just like me. Unlike in real prisoners, there wasn't social or racial disparity. There was no animosity. They looked just like me, or people I knew.
This is an odd comment to make; I'm not sure what he'd be trying to get at here. The most charitable interpretation I could give it is that abuse is more expected if there are racial or social differences between prisoners and guards.
I'm really disappointed that nobody thought to ask him directly why he didn't object to anything that he observed. He says a couple of times that there were parts of the experiment he didn't agree with, but that he didn't want to taint or harm the experiment. So, he seemed to be willing to at least passively accept the abuse of other people -- his own schoolmates -- for the sake of a purpose.
He wasn't apparently aware of how the experiment is taught in modern Psych classes, and it's funny, some of his comments reinforce what those classes teach:
> We used the Stanford experiment to talk about prison mentalities actually and how prison effects people and changes them. How people become what the situation calls for. Like you said above that Lombardo set up that experiment and you did what you were told as a kid
and
> While the popular idea from this may be the inherent evil, I hope you at least know that those who learn about this in college/university do not learn it that way, it's more along the topics of conformity, and diffusion of responsibility.
...in response to his saying,
> In that prison experiment, leaving would have been an option, but I didn't for several reasons: first off, from my perspective, I didn't see that much happening that was bad. People looking back now ... can see it in black-and-white, two-dimensionally. At the time, it went on pretty much as advertised. ... Also, I felt a commitment when I agreed to participate in the experiment. For all I knew, if I left, the whole experiment could have unraveled. Also, I felt like this was a unique experience and I enjoyed getting paid for doing something unusual.
> The most charitable interpretation I could give it is that abuse is more expected if there are racial or social differences between prisoners and guards.
I believe he meant that the feeling of "us vs them" on either side was not reinforced by this.
Also, isn't it a well know fact that empathy is weaker if one can identify the other as "different" ?
Other than common sense, I recall it has been put to test in some variations of the milgram experiment.
It's a little disingenuous to use the word "schoolmates" to describe his fellow prisoners. This was at Berkeley; as far as I'm aware, none of the guards knew the prisoners before the experiment.
Honestly, if it weren't unethical, I'd be curious as to the results of a re-run of the SPE except that you spend the first day out-of-character doing icebreakers before role assignment. I suspect that it'd make things better on the whole, but you'd have the occasional case where a guard uses it as an occasion to fish for ways to get under a prisoner's skin much more quickly and effectively.
> Looking at the prisoners, they were all just like me. Unlike in real prisoners, there wasn't social or racial disparity. There was no animosity. They looked just like me, or people I knew.
This is an odd comment to make; I'm not sure what he'd be trying to get at here. The most charitable interpretation I could give it is that abuse is more expected if there are racial or social differences between prisoners and guards.
I'm really disappointed that nobody thought to ask him directly why he didn't object to anything that he observed. He says a couple of times that there were parts of the experiment he didn't agree with, but that he didn't want to taint or harm the experiment. So, he seemed to be willing to at least passively accept the abuse of other people -- his own schoolmates -- for the sake of a purpose.
He wasn't apparently aware of how the experiment is taught in modern Psych classes, and it's funny, some of his comments reinforce what those classes teach:
> We used the Stanford experiment to talk about prison mentalities actually and how prison effects people and changes them. How people become what the situation calls for. Like you said above that Lombardo set up that experiment and you did what you were told as a kid
and
> While the popular idea from this may be the inherent evil, I hope you at least know that those who learn about this in college/university do not learn it that way, it's more along the topics of conformity, and diffusion of responsibility.
...in response to his saying,
> In that prison experiment, leaving would have been an option, but I didn't for several reasons: first off, from my perspective, I didn't see that much happening that was bad. People looking back now ... can see it in black-and-white, two-dimensionally. At the time, it went on pretty much as advertised. ... Also, I felt a commitment when I agreed to participate in the experiment. For all I knew, if I left, the whole experiment could have unraveled. Also, I felt like this was a unique experience and I enjoyed getting paid for doing something unusual.