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War Crimes: Causes, Excuses, and Blame

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1 Explaining Behavior: The Person or the Situation?

  • Published: October 2018
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This chapter explores the relationship between the crimes committed by American troops at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Philip Zimbardo’s 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment. Zimbardo’s experiment is one of the most famous of a large body of social psychology experiments that support the “situationist” perspective on human behavior. A central situationist claim is that features of the situations in which people act have a greater influence on behavior than we ordinarily suppose, and enduring features of personality and character have a correspondingly smaller role in explaining behavior. We explain how this research has been interpreted by psychologists such as Lee Ross and Richard Nisbett and by philosophers such as Gilbert Harman and John Doris.

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Rotten barrel spoils the apples: how situational factors contribute to detention officer abuse toward inmates--a review of the lucifer effect, by philip zimbardo, additional details, no download available, availability, related topics.

The Stanford Prison Experiment: The Power of the Situation

  • First Online: 20 January 2024

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abu ghraib and stanford prison experiment similarities

  • Harry Perlstadt   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0233-0463 3  

Part of the book series: Clinical Sociology: Research and Practice ((CSRP))

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Philip Zimbardo is best known for his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). Early in his career, he conducted experiments in the psychology of deindividualization, in which a person in a group or crowd no longer acts as a responsible individual but is swept along and participates in antisocial actions. After moving to Stanford University, he began to focus on institutional power over the individual in group settings, such as long-term care facilities for the elderly and prisons. His research proposal for a simulated prison was approved by the Stanford University Human Subjects Research Review Committee in July 1971. He built a mock prison in the basement of the University’s psychology building and recruited college-aged male subjects to play prisoners and guards. The study began on Sunday, August 8th, and was to run for 2 weeks but ended on Friday morning August 13th. In less than a week, several of the mock guards hazed and brutalized the mock prisoners, some of whom found ways of coping, while others exhibited symptoms of mental breakdown.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. — attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead

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Alexander, M. (2001, August 22). Thirty years later, Stanford Prison Experiment lives on. Stanford Report . Accessed April 22, 2022, from https://news.stanford.edu/news/2001/august22/prison2-822.html?msclkid=7d17df2ec26f11ec8086da6bf715d359

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I wish to thank Chris Herrera, Jonathan K. Rosen, David Segal and Ruth Spivak for their comments on this chapter.

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Perlstadt, H. (2023). The Stanford Prison Experiment: The Power of the Situation. In: Assessing Social Science Research Ethics and Integrity. Clinical Sociology: Research and Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34538-8_8

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  1. Comparisons to Abu Ghraib and the Stanford Prison Experiment

    Zimbardo drew from his participation in the Frederick case to write the book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, published by Random House in 2007, which deals with the similarities between his own Stanford Prison Experiment and the Abu Ghraib abuses.

  2. How Can the Science of Human Behavior Help Us Understand Abu Ghraib?

    The Stanford prison experiment taught us important lessons about the potential for prisoner abuse, even at the hands of ordinary and stable guards. It demonstrated, once again, the power of the situation. Yet, the experiment also showed that some of the guards were more abusive than others. Chalk one up for personality and individual differences.

  3. Similarities Between Stanford Prison Experiment And Abu Ghraib

    Even though Stanford Prisons never escalated to physical damage, torture was a major factor in both facilities. Prisoners in Abu Ghraib and case studies in the Stanford prison experiment both experienced humiliated. Another factor was the unprofessionalism. Stanford prison experiment consisted of college student that wasn't really aware of ...

  4. Psychological science offers clues to Iraqi prisoner abuse

    In 1971, Philip G. Zimbardo, PhD, conducted a simulated jail study known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. Mirroring the Abu Ghraib situation, the Stanford guards--who had no apparent prior psychological problems --became brutal and abusive toward prisoners.

  5. The Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Ghraib: Two Studies in Human

    In this Viewpoints episode, Dr. Phil Zimbardo, Professor of Psychology, Stanford University and the author of 'The Lucifer Effect,' draws parallels between h...

  6. Demonstrating the Power of Social Situations via a Simulated Prison

    The eerily direct parallels between the sadistic acts perpetrator by the Stanford Prison Experiment guard and the Abu Ghraib Prison guards, as well as the conclusions about situational forces dominating dispositional aspects of the guards' abusive behavior have propelled this research into the national dialogue.

  7. Apples, Barrels, and Abu Ghraib

    The abuses at Abu Ghraib were partly rooted in the same psychological mechanisms underlying the obedient behavior of Stanley Milgram's subjects in his classic experiments (Milgram 1963, 1974); (2) The events at Abu Ghraib are real-world examples of the behavior exhibited during thie Stanford Prison Experiment (Zimbardo 1973, 2000); and

  8. 1 Explaining Behavior: The Person or the Situation?

    This chapter explores the relationship between the crimes committed by American troops at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Philip Zimbardo's 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment. Zimbardo's experiment is one of the most famous of a large body of social psychology experiments that support the "situationist" perspective on human behavior.

  9. Rotten Barrel Spoils the Apples: How Situational Factors Contribute to

    Perhaps the book's most valuable contributions are the parallels drawn between the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Abu Ghraib atrocities, in which young men and women of the military were conditioned to engage in wanton acts of abuse and torture through systemic and situational influences. The second half of The Lucifer Effect presents an ...

  10. The Stanford Prison Experiment: The Power of the Situation

    Zimbardo (2008, 331,347, 358-359) was asked to testify on behalf of Staff Sargent Ivan Fredrick, who was in charge of the night shift at Abu Ghraib. Since Frederick had pleaded guilty, Zimbardo's testimony focused on the situational and systemic factors that facilitated the torture and abuse. He drew parallels between the SPE and Abu Ghraib.