THINKER'S ALMANAC - March 23

Is it possible to run a sociological experiment that could determine the innate nature of the human species?

Subject:   Social Psychology - The Stanford Prison Experiment

Event:  Birthday of Philip Zimbardo, 1933

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.  -Mahatma Gandhi

On this day in 1933, psychologist Philip Zimbardo was born in New York City.  After earning his Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University in 1959, Zimbardo became a professor of psychology.  Zimbardo is best known for what is perhaps the single most famous psychological experiment in history:   his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment.

The experiment began with the “arrest” of nine young men who actually volunteered for the experiment.  On the morning of August 15, 1971, each of the men was arrested at his home and booked for either theft or armed robbery.  Instead of being taken to an actual jail, however, all nine were transported to the basement of the Stanford University psychology department building, where a makeshift jail had been set up for the two-week experiment.  Greeting the inmates were nine additional volunteers who had been selected to play the role of guards.  Each wore a khaki uniform and mirrored sunglasses.

The inmates were first stripped of their clothes, chained around their ankles, and given a knee-length smock and a stocking cap to wear.  They were then confined three to a cell; from this point on each inmate was addressed only his four-digit ID number.  In only the second day of the experiment, the prisoners staged a rebellion by barricading themselves in their cells by pushing their beds against the doors.  The guards countered by punishing the inmates, spraying them with fire extinguishers, taking away their beds, and stripping them of their clothes.

The behavior of the guards continued to devolve, becoming more and more inhumane and sadistic.  On the sixth day Philip Zimbardo, who was playing the role of prison superintendent, was visited by his girlfriend.  As she watched the cruel behavior of the guards and the emotional distress of the inmates, she questioned Zimbardo and made him realize how out of control the whole experiment had become.  He immediately stopped the experiment, putting an end to it eight days early.

For years the Stanford Prison Experiment has been held up as proof of how ordinary people can be transformed and stripped of their individual wills when put into certain situations or roles.  Zimbardo calls this the Lucifer effect, where normal individuals become capable of evil, sadistic acts when put in the right circumstances.  In short, it’s not bad apples, but bad barrels that lead to evil actions.

Although many have accepted Zimbardo’s Lucifer effect, others have raised doubts.  In his 2020 book Humankind, historian Rutger Bregman claims to have evidence that Zimbardo’s experiment was a hoax.  One key question is the behavior of the guards.  Although Zimbardo claims that the guards made their own rules and that their sadistic behavior was not at all directed, Bregman claims that Zimbardo briefed the guards before the experiment, in effect coaching them to be cruel and to create fear in the inmates.  Furthermore, Bregman claims that one of the guards, an undergraduate named David Jaffee, was the person who actually came up with the idea of the experiment.  And not only did Jaffee have the idea, he also ran a dry run of the experiment in May 1971 with six guards and six inmates.  Jaffe’s active role in the planning and carrying out experiment places an element of doubt into the experiment’s outcome, making us wonder how much of the Stanford Prison Experiment was true science and how much was staged.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the Lucifer effect, and what doubts about the running of the Stanford Prison Experiment make some doubt the validity of the Lucifer effect?

Challenge - Rousseau And Hobbes:  What is the natural inclination of humans?  Are we innately good or evil?  Whenever these two philosophical questions arise, the discussion typically begins with the contradictory views of the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78).  In his great work Leviathan (1651), Hobbes claimed that in the state of nature the life of humankind is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  For Hobbes, only a civil society held together by a strong governing authority held humankind in check.  Rousseau, however, saw human nature as innately good.  For him, life before the modern state was peaceful and happy.  It is the institutions of civilization that have turned humans toward wickedness.  What is your view?  Do you see the cup of humanity as half full of good or half-empty with bad?  State your claim, and include evidence from your reading, observation, or experience that supports it.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

March 23, 1775:  Patrick Henry delivered one of the most memorable and most important speeches in American history.  The speech was delivered at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, to the 120 delegates of the Second Virginia Convention, which included George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.  (See THINKER’S ALMANAC - May 29)

March 23, 1926:  Writing in her journal on this day, American writer Edith Wharton (1862-1937) reflected on life by juxtaposing two metaphors:  “Life is always a tightrope or a featherbed.  Give me the tightrope.”

Sources:

1-Bregman, Rutger. Humankind: A Hopeful History.  New York:  Little, Brown and Company 2019: 140-57.