quote:

Originally posted by The Highroller I have also seen this documentary, and I was astounded by what happened. What struck me the most is when the one prisoner, who after only a few days started going crazy because his prison mates turned against him, didn't leave when given the opportunity because he wanted to make his prisonmates like him again. This happened in a matter of a few days!!! I spent a lot of time thinking about this experiment for a couple of days after I watched this movie in my class. I will definitely check out Das Experiment. Thanks for the suggestion.

No problem.

Das Experiment does, however, take the narrative far past the point of what actually transpired during the experiment. The movie is basically a 'what would happen if the experiment was permitted to continue until the bitter end' kind of portrayal.

I am quite familiar with The Stanford Prison Experiment...

An additional thing that came out of this experiment was the idea of accountability.
In the days following the experiment, Zimbardo argued that he should not be held responsible for the harms that were caused. Yet people were tortured. Someone had to be held accountable though didn't they?
Innocent people were tortured.

There are shocking parallels that exist between this experiment and the Adolph Eichmann trial from the holocaust. Eichmann claimed that he was not guilty of sentencing thousands of jews to die (despite his signature being on their death warrants), because he was merely following orders from the state.

The idea of personal responsibility, versus who has responsibility when working in part of a mechanism is something that continues to plague society today (look at international corporations for example).

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An additional experiment that explores similar ideas is...

The Milgram Experiment

In this experiment, three people are involved.





In this picture the person labelled "E" represents the experimenter(often Milgram himself). The person labelled "S" represents the subject, the person labelled "A" represents another subject.

The instructions of the experiment were that "S" would read word pairs to "S". After reading combinations like dog-lamp, rug-door, etc "S" would then read one word and expect "A" to be able to remember the second. If he answered incorrectly "S" would administer an electric shock to "A". The experiment was supposed to test shock therapy with memory.

What it was actually testing was how much people were obedient to authority. What actually was taking place was that "A" was an actor, and no shocks were being administered. For every wrong answer that "A" gave "S" was to increase the amount of voltage he would administer to him.

After a while the shocks would be reaching what would be lethal levels. The person being shocked "S" would start reacting stronger and stronger, saying things like "I have a heart problem, I demand that you stop."

Whenever the person administering the shock would want to stop the experimenter "E" would say something like, "you will not be held responsible, the experiment must go on."


The end results were that an alarming number of people continued to shock past what would have been the lethal limit. The experiment showed that people are willing to do things that they would not normally want to do when being watched by a figure of authority.

The wikipedia article does a good job of explaining further details about the experiment and is located here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

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Check out more of my ramblings at:
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Where Are The Tunes?
Good things happen to good people

it's an extremely famous experiment...most psychology or ethics students will come across it in one class or another, because of the various issues touched upon.

IMHO, the most interesting aspect was Zimbardo's own involvement (i.e. being sucked in himself) and how he sugarcoats it as being an bonus observation gleaned from the study.

He also seems to dispute that the main reason for the experiment being stopped was due to the Phd student being shocked at the lack of ethics on display. IIRC, he was in so deep that until she questioned him, he was not really going to terminate the study.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6567335.stm

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Though not part of the plan, there were also prisoner rebellions. And, notoriously, there was chilling abuse and torture by the guards. The experiment was supposed to last two weeks, but we had to pull the plug after only six days because nearly half the prisoners had emotional breakdowns in response to the extreme stress and psychological torments invented by their guards - good, young men who'd been overwhelmed by situational forces in the roles they were playing.

interesting...no mention of the near 'intervention', as if Zimbardo had some epiphany on his own and called a stop to it.

In addition to providing some very interesting results, the experiment remains a classic example of flawed, unethical methodology.

I would not agree with suggestions that we ought to substantially mitigate how much responsibility people need to take for their own actions...though I do agree that situational psychology needs to be considered.

Last edited by MarkT on Apr-27-2007 at 08:25

This is DEF uber interesting

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Originally posted by ShadoWolf http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250258/

This is an amazing film!!!! everyone should watch it.