Kentucky.com, KY
May 12 2007
Factors engendering cruelty to humans emerging
By Paul Prather
HERALD-LEADER CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST
The question of why people commit barbarous acts has long troubled
theologians, philosophers, lawmakers and the public at large.
Viewed from a certain angle, history is a litany of atrocities: the
Romans’ slaughter of Jews in the first century; the Turkish genocide
of Armenians during World War I; the Hutus’ machete mass-murders of
Tutsis in 1994.
We prefer to believe a tiny minority of people perpetrate such evils,
people who were born bad or became possessed by demons (whether we
understand those devils to be spiritual, emotional or chemical).
We like to think that, in the main, people are good.
There’s Mother Teresa at one end of the spectrum, Stalin at the
other, but we’d argue we and our neighbors have more in common with
the former than the latter. We might not be saints, exactly, but we’d
never hurt anyone.
What if it’s not so simple? What if the capacity for great evil lies
within nearly all of us?
A lot of research indicates that to be the case, says Philip
Zimbardo, a social psychologist and former president of the American
Psychological Association. He’s spent decades studying why people
mistreat their fellow humans. The central finding of his and other
scholars’ work: The majority of us, if stuck in the wrong
environment, will do unspeakable things. Outside influences quickly
corrupt our inner souls.
In his latest book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People
Turn Evil, Zimbardo recounts the lessons of his famous 1971 Stanford
Prison Experiment. Zimbardo and several colleagues constructed a mock
prison and advertised for college students to serve as paid
volunteers. They weeded out applicants who might have psychological
problems, medical disabilities or criminal records. They chose 24
well-adjusted males as their subjects. By coin toss, half were
assigned as "guards," the other half as "prisoners." The researchers
put them together in the fake prison. The experiment was intended to
last two weeks.
Zimbardo stopped it after six days.
By then, the guards were sexually humiliating and physically abusing
their prisoners, five of whom had suffered emotional breakdowns.
Photos and video footage of the Stanford experiment are easy to find
on the Internet. They’re eerie — in that they’re nearly identical to
the pictures that emerged more than 30 years later from a prison
called Abu Ghraib.
(Zimbardo, by the way, served on the defense team of Sgt. Ivan "Chip"
Frederick, one of the U.S. soldiers convicted of mistreating
prisoners at Abu Ghraib.)
But the Stanford project is only one among many related experiments.
And researchers also have studied real-life cretins, from Brazilian
police torturers to men who served in German execution units in World
War II to suicide bombers.
The findings are disconcerting. Mostly, the folks who do awful things
aren’t psychopaths, but average people who pay their taxes and love
their children.
When they are thrust into certain settings, Zimbardo argues, the
circumstances turn them into monsters. The list of corrupting factors
is long and complex.
Generally, though, police officers, prison guards, soldiers and
others who commit abuses have been given a larger sense of purpose.
They’ve been assured by superiors they’re defending a vital religious
ideology or protecting national security.
The victims they abuse have been dehumanized through propaganda and
have been stripped of their clothes, dressed in prison garb or made
to wear Stars of David.
The abusers think they won’t be held responsible for their actions.
They’re left to their own devices. The few rules that do govern their
behavior are changed illogically.
The abusers also feel anonymous. A policy as seemingly insignificant
as allowing them to wear reflector sunglasses markedly increases
their cruelty.
The abusers are under constant stress, but can’t see any way to quit
their jobs.
Research shows that in such a milieu, up to 90 percent of us will
torture or kill defenseless people.
The soldiers at Abu Ghraib, Zimbardo says, weren’t sadists.
Frederick, for example, was an all-American boy with an impeccable
record in civilian and military life.
But the guards worked long, draining shifts with no supervision from
commissioned officers. They were under mortar fire daily. They were
told, vaguely, to "soften up" their prisoners. The prisoners had been
dressed in colored ponchos.
Abuse was inevitable.
More remarkable, Zimbardo says, is that one soldier, Sgt. Joseph
Darby, kept his moral compass. He refused to go along with the
majority and reported the crimes.
That’s the research topic Zimbardo will pursue next, he says. He
wants to understand the one or two heroes in every group who can’t be
swayed, who continue to do the right thing despite all pressures. I
can’t wait to read that report.