The recent scandal over abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib spurred parallel comparison with Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment. What are the lessons learned from that experiment? How does that apply to Iraqi prisoner abuse? Most importantly, I want to address whether the SPE captures the full social psychological underpinnings of the atrocities committed by American prison guards.
Zimbardo's infamous SPE was not only a major cornerstone of Social Psychological study, but also the reason for extensive revisions of ethical treatment of participants in the research field. In 1971, Zimbardo converted the basement of the Stanford psychology building into a makeshift prison, and recruited 24 college students to furnish the roles of guards and prisoners. Guards were told to look after the prisoners, and can use any method that did not involve physical punishment. By the 6th day, the experiment was terminated because guards became abusive to the prisoners, forcing some to wear bags over their head, sleep deprivation, humiliation with forcing them to be naked, and in one case, prolonged solitary confinement in a closet.
One of the major lessons from the experiment was that it doesn't take sadistic people to do sadistic things. Indeed, the participants were randomly assigned their roles of guards and prisoners, thus eliminating the concern that personality or personal history would play a factor in their development. The major factor that led to these sadistic acts were simply the environment and the roles these people are given. Give someone the role of a guard, and they will start behaving like one. Situations and roles overwhelm the individual. Secondly, we see that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The guards were told that they have free reign to develop systems to deal with prisoners, save they cannot use any physical harm. Ultimately, we see the guards became very creative, fusing ideas they've probably seen in TV and movies, with their own new ideas. The last lesson learned is one more obscure - systematic desensitization. Even though professors and other prison professionals were monitoring the development of their prison, they did not stop the experiment. It took one grad student, who saw the prison for the first time to recognize how horrible the students were treated, for the experimenters to recognize the depravity that was occurring. Imagine if the guards immediately used harsh punishments, such as naked solitary confinement, to control the prisoners, the guards would have been stopped immediately. Instead, they started with less harmful acts, and graduated into full blown sadism. Then, none of the experimenters, the guards, and especially the prisoners would feel suddenly abhorred. The prisoners were conditioned to accept fate, and probably did not find the escalating level of violence as abnormal. The prisoner's did not object earlier, so they wouldn't object now. Because of this, guards were able to carry on with the punishment, and begin to accept them as perfunctory.
When we see the tapes and pictures of American guards torturing and abusing prisoners, we are immediately nauseated. What can bring American soldiers to act like Nazis? Indeed, Rumsfeld warned the nation that the worse is yet to come, preparing us for videotaped incidents of rape and murder. While I think the parallels to the SPE are obvious, we should keep in mind differences in situations. In the SPE, the prisoners did not really commit any crime, and there was no reason for the guards to be antagonized by them. In Iraq, I imagine guards are scapegoating prisoners and using them as targets their rage and frustration, from 9/11 and also the prolonged debacle that is the the Iraqi War. We also see dehumanization of the Iraqi prisoners. Indeed if one is in a situation where one is fighting Iraqi insurgents, one way to rationalize the war is to perceive the enemy as subhuman scum. This is the psychological affect of war, as we cannot hold the two ideas that our enemies are innocent humans and that we must kill our enemies in the same mind-frame. Stereotyping and demonizing the enemy as depraved animals has been a core part of army training in order to produce enthusiastic and obedient soldiers. Lastly, it is the systematic desensitization that leads to what we see on TV. Not only are the soldiers torturing prisoners, but it seems they think it is entertaining and innocent enough to be captured on video and photos. Not only did their superiors not reprimand them, but neither did fellow soldiers. Surely, they were not committing these acts because they thought they would get away with it (as they were captured on tape, and even witnessed by humanitarian workers), but they really believed it was not serious at all. They probably started from simple rock-throwing and graduated to rape. While the Iraqi situations sadly mirror those of the SPE, the questions the press is asking are 1) whom to blame and 2) what can be done to change the situation.
I'm not defending the fact that the soldiers are not to blame, but the system at large is. I think both are to blame. First, the army system allowed untrained soldiers to carry out the consuming task of monitoring prisoners. Without sufficient training and resources for such a stressful job, I am not surprised that soldiers used only what they know to control prisoners - militant force. Secondly, the system probably subtly enforced and condoned this treatment, because it facilitated interrogations, and made the prisoners easier to handle by breaking their spirits down. Positive reinforcements were present to encourage the soldiers. All this let the superiors to create an environment where the subordinates wielded extraordinary power to control life, death, hurt and pain. The soldiers lost sight of the humans they are entrusted to keep safe, and slowly degraded into torturers. It takes a lot of people a lot of oversight to let this kind of environment fester, and I don't believe these are individual acts by some maverick soldiers, but really a largely ignored problem throughout Iraq, and other related prison facilities such as Guantanamo Bay. To stop this, most importantly, we cannot justify the abuse of other human beings. Even thinking of justifying these acts would let it continue. The US is taking the first step to curtailing the problem with accountability. Deindividuation would lead a soldier to feel anonymous enough to become a rapist, and by telling them they are responsible for their acts, and they will be punished. Accountability must also be used to keep the superiors, including Rumsfeld, at check. Moreover, how can fellow soldiers witness this kind of abuse, and not react? Is it simply a bystander effect? Did they justify the abuse, maybe desensitized? Even those who did not administer the abuse, but did nothing to stop them, should be accountable for the atrocities. I would suggest remembering that we are all human beings; soldiers, guards, prisoners and bystanders, and we are all responsible to make sure we all behave like human beings.
