Reading about the Stanford Prison Experiment was an interesting experience for me. This is not the first time I’ve heard of or researched this experiment. We also covered it in my Leadership and Social Sciences course, and I watched the drama of it on Netflix. I find experiments of this sort interesting as they reveal something a lot of people prefer not to admit that power corrupts easily and that it isn’t hard to corrupt people.
Something the article doesn’t really touch on that we looked at in my previous class is the role responsibility plays. A huge factor all these studies reveal is that for a person, such as one of guards, to descend into the barbarism they end up committing, responsibility has to be removed. In another study where participates thought they were shocking test subjects with ever higher shocks, if the scientist also in the room said they would take responsibility for whatever happened, the majority of participates administered increasingly high, even lethal shocks. However, when told they would be responsible, over 90% of participates refused to continue. This reveals that responsibility plays a massive factor in how far most people are prepared to go. Sadly, the article describing the experiment never really touches on this, and it would have been interesting to see if the guards’ actions would have changed if told they were responsible for the safety and well-being of the prisoners.
I completely agree with your statements about the removal of responsibility. If there were consequences for the actions of the guards, they most likely would not have acted in that manner. As I said in my response, this shows the need for regulations and laws on law enforcement and the government to ensure checks and balances are in place. I wonder if the type of personality that comes out when there is a lack of responsibility is the “true self” or an altered version.
I didn’t think about responsibility aversion as a factor! Now I want to know if the researchers discussed this with the “guards” in the experiment. It is interesting to see when individual morals interact with corruption of power in any situation, but I want to know more about the reflections the guards had after the experiment was over. Did they feel guilty? Did they realize their actions were wrong in the moment, after or not at all?
I think there is a crucial difference between these two experiments. All participants of the Milgram experiment were told what’s the range of a safe disturbance, so they knew when they’d harm someone.
The Stanford participants didn’t know how far they could go and didn’t have a scale of what’s harmful and what’s “safe”.
Your commentary on consequences is really interesting as an overlooked aspect of this. When humans don’t have to face the consequences of their actions, they act differently than when they have to face the consequences. If the guards were told that they were being watched and that there would be consequences for that action, even that vague hint would likely change their behavior. They don’t know what rules they’re being judged on, so they’ll follow what is more acceptable in their minds.