
Can We Reverse The Stanford Prison Experiment? - sgfc
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/06/can_we_reverse_the_stanford_pr.html
======
jgfoot
The Stanford Prison Experiment still gets a lot of ink, but unfortunately the
criticisms of it do not. I recommend this article:
<http://www.swans.com/library/art17/barker82.html>

"""over the past forty-plus years, the Stanford Prison Experiment has had a
strong, and arguably detrimental impact upon both scholarly and popular
conceptions of social psychology. Contrary to Zimbardo's misleading
conclusions, ordinary people do not mindlessly and helplessly succumb to
brutality; instead the evidence (even from his own experiment) seems to
suggest that individuals tend to engage in brutality only when they truly
believe that such actions are warranted -- acting upon ideas that are condoned
by equally brutal group ideologies. The guards in Zimbardo's experiment were
thus coerced by Zimbardo and his researchers to brutalize the prisoners; while
the prisoners did not simply submit to the guards' brutality, but instead,
actively resisted their oppression, both collectively and individually. This
resistance was considered intolerable to Zimbardo, and as this article has
shown, he utilized his system power to intervene to increase guard brutality
and undermine the prisoners' collective will to resist their abusers."""

~~~
kitsune_
I've spent over 400 days in a closed environment with "special" group dynamics
- the armed forces of Switzerland. Service is mandatory. I was made a NCO
against my will.

I've made some valuable unscientific, personal observations during this time.
One is, that most people (I'd say 80%) do not speak up for themselves or
others when it matters in groups with strict hierarchies.

Not only that, I think that most people don't have any basic moral
convictions. Group punishment is highly effective.

I've learnt that sadistic, manipulative and narcissistic people thrive in such
environments and if left uncontrolled, alike to a malign tumor that spreads
rapidly to other parts of the body, they can impact the entire organization
quickly.

~~~
masklinn
> I've learnt that sadistic, manipulative and narcissistic people thrive in
> such environments and if left uncontrolled, alike to a malign tumor that
> spreads rapidly to other parts of the body, they can impact the entire
> organization quickly.

Aye. The phrase "One bad apple (spoils the bunch)" is often misunderstood but
applies dreadfully well to human organizations.

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saraid216
It's hard to encapsulate the entirety of a TV show season in a comment, so I'm
going to use a quotation instead. This is from _The Wire_ , Season 4, Major
Bunny Colvin:

"This drug thing, this ain't police work. No, it ain't. I mean, I can send any
fool with a badge and a gun up on them corners and jack a crew and grab vials.
But policing? I mean, you call something a war and pretty soon everybody gonna
be running around acting like warriors. They gonna be running around on a damn
crusade, storming corners, slapping on cuffs, racking up body counts. And when
you at war, you need a fucking enemy. And pretty soon, damn near everybody on
every corner is your fucking enemy. And soon the neighborhood that you're
supposed to be policing, that's just occupied territory."

 _The Wire_ has been acclaimed specifically for its close representation
(still obviously dramatized) with the reality of Baltimore. If you haven't
watched all five seasons, you should do so.

~~~
sharkweek
I was always fascinated with the idea that "the game" has a certain way of
being played -- I think Bodie says something of the sort when they're trying
to set up Hamsterdam --

I walk by a pretty busy drug corner on my way to work and it always fascinates
me how organized it all is. One of the most interesting things I ever saw was
two homeless guys fighting over some money when several of the drug dealers
came over and broke it up. Self-policing to keep the police away.

------
stretchwithme
I tried to get one company I worked with to give people a small token of
appreciation when they did something of significant value to the company. I
recall more valuable time spent on the process of deciding who got them than
the tokens were worth.

People can forget that people who care about what they are doing innovate a
lot more than people who just follow processes. If management cares most about
following processes, so will everybody else.

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gruseom
_Zimbardo, who by an almost unimaginable coincidence went to high school with
Stanley Milgram_

Wow. Like Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand.

~~~
Cushman
Not totally on topic, but how is that an "almost unimaginable coincidence"?
Given the number of people who are involved in similar things, and the number
of people at your average high school, it pretty much goes without saying that
some people who go to high school together will later do similar things.

Journalists have weird ideas about probability.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Also clustering around time, opportunity are common. "Outliers" talks about
this.

------
johnchristopher
It contradicts the story of that old and wise guy who decided to give money to
the children who were harassing him. Each time they spotted him and cursed him
they would earn one dollar. In the end they stopped because it became "work".

My experience in the education system is that bad behaviour is punished in
very public way and good behaviour is never publicised and rarely get any
recognition except when to cast a light on bad behaviour.

Edit: the article makes a poor job of explaining that _losada line_ and so
does wikipedia.

~~~
wazoox
* > It contradicts the story of that old and wise guy who decided to give money to the children who were harassing him.*

Source? I never heard of that.

~~~
Avenger42
The version I heard went something like this:

A man was tired of the local youths <doing negative behavior>, so he offered
them a small amount of money ($2-3) when they'd <do negative behavior>.

The next week he came to them and told them "sorry, business was slow, all I
can give you this week is $1/time." They weren't happy, but agreed.

The next week he went back and said "sorry, even slower, I can only afford
$0.25/time now." The youths said "we're not doing this for $0.25!" and stopped
<negative behavior> altogether.

------
Ralith
What would it take to see this class of approach applied to policing
elsewhere?

~~~
ktizo
A complete re-evaluation of police hiring practices would be a good start.

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planetguy
_Their approach was to try to catch youth doing the right things and give them
a Positive Ticket. The ticket granted the recipient free entry to the movies
or to a local youth center. ... According to Clapham, youth recidivism was
reduced from 60% to 8%. Overall crime was reduced by 40%. Youth crime was cut
in half._

Really? I mean, _really_? I'm gonna have to see some extraordinary evidence
for this extraordinary claim before I believe that having police go round
giving out free movie tickets for _not_ -littering is sufficient to reduce
recidivism by an astonishing factor of seven. And I've never heard of it
before.

~~~
sliverstorm
I was quite skeptical, but I just realized- you know what they are _not_ doing
when they are at the movies with friends? Committing crimes.

~~~
planetguy
They're probably talking during the movie though. Frankly I think I'd rather
have 'em out stealing cars.

~~~
smallblacksun
They're going to burn in a very special level of hell.
<http://youtu.be/wNs21BiFA4Y?t=34s>

