We discussed the Stanford Prison Experiment in my 102 class in depth, but reading about it a second time still unsettles me. It reminds me that you never truly know what a person is capable of, especially if you know them just on a surface level. Similar to the Milgram experiment, where an alarming number of people shocked the unseen “subject” with a seriously harmful or even deadly amount of volts, an innocent looking stranger on the street could be wiling to do things you don’t want to think about. Of course, the Milgram experiment was looking at obedience to authority instead of simulating a prison environment, but the results of both experiments didn’t exactly put faith in humanity. The SPE is maybe a little more unsettling, because the “victims” were real humans who faced real abuse, not just a voice behind a wall. I don’t think it was ethical to run this experiment, because the subjects were clearly scarred for life, and even the head researcher admitted that he got lost in his role and probably wouldn’t have snapped out of it for a while if a third party hadn’t pointed out how cruel the experiment was becoming.
I think the Goethals and Allison article was fascinating. I found that it further expanded on the evolutionary preferences for leaders in an LSS that we read about, especially when it comes to political leaders like Kennedy and Reagan. It was also a little alarming, because it reminded me that people make a crazy amount of assumptions about you as a person based on first impressions and rumors that they’re content to never follow up on. How you perceive yourself vs how other perceive you could be completely different and you might never know about it.
I was shocked to read how far the experiment was taken. In past readings, we learned about a person’s unwillingness to “act” to make a bad thing happen even when the “letting happen” event was worse. This experiment seems to be the polar opposite. People were eager to inflict pain, physical or psychological. I wonder why people were so willing to act the part and if it had to do with the immense power they held. It speaks a great deal to the corruption that comes with power.
Yeah, I definitely believe that saying one has gotten lost in their role doesn’t clear them of responsibility or accountability. Phillip Zimbardo clearly did not have control over the subjects in his experiment and allowed the prisoners to be treated as non-human variables. While the experiment was ended, there should have been some serious ramifications for Zimbardo and his researcher staff.
I also question the ethics of this experiment. It would be interesting to read more about how the prisoners were impacted weeks, months, and years after the experiment took place because I can really see it having long-lasting effects.
I really liked how you mentioned how everyone views different events or people differently due to their precocieved notions about that person, it reminded me a lot about our discussion from Mindbugs. I think its fascinating how our brain creates patterns, most of the time, without us realizing it.
The Goethals and Allison reading also unsettled me when it came to remembering that other people have perceptions of you. In some ways it almost makes me think that people never truly know themselves. A person can understand themselves as they perceive themselves but a large component of a person is how they interact with others. While a person can see that interaction from their own point of view, they will never truly know someone else’s perception of them and how that other person has placed them into schema’s. This disconnect in understanding one’s self is fascinating and terrifying at the same time.