Aliens to ourselves?

Do we ever wonder why people... normal, human beings... degrade themselves so with such acts of abuse on other fellow human beings? American and British soldiers have been making the headlines lately - again - for abusing Iraqi civilians and prisoners in Abu Ghraib, among others.

A famed study in 1971 may shed some light on the physchological basis for such occurances. Not sure why the media hasn't really mentioned this research case in their many ramblings about the abuses... perhaps it's because of the controversy surrounding it but I thought it was a rather decent way of explaining everything scientifically. The Stanford Prison Experiment was a study of how a group of intelligent, middle-class students randomly assigned as 'guards' abused their 'prisoners'.

The designer of the experiment (which lasted for only six days, under the planned 2-week duration), Stanford's Prof Zimbardo, who was also the principle investigator and superintendent of the mock prison, wrote in a report that:

"Good boys chosen for their normalcy were having emotional breakdowns as powerless prisoners. Other young men chosen for their mental health and positive values eased into the character of sadistic guards inflicting suffering on their fellow students without moral compunction...

Human behavior is much more under the control of situational forces than most of us recognize or want to acknowledge. In a situation that implicitly gives permission for suspending moral values, many of us can be morphed into creatures alien to our usual natures. My research and that of my colleagues has catalogued the conditions for stirring the crucible of human nature in negative directions."

So that's human nature for ya. Just some food for thought.

posted by Husky @ 1/20/2005 05:40:56 PM  |