Philip Zimbardo

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“How Could We Have Been So Stupid?”

April 7, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Philip Zimbardo, the head warden of the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, a dress rehearsal of sorts for Abu Ghraib, has misgivings about his most infamous research, which featured 18 college-aged male students playing jailers and inmates in a scene that rapidly deteriorated, acknowledging mistakes were made. He still would do it all over again, however.

While the cruel exercise reminded us that humans, under just the right (or, more accurately, wrong) circumstances, can forget their decency, a species that needed to receive that memo just 26 years after the fall of Nazi Germany may be too plagued by a short-term memory to survive its worst instincts. 

In his more recent incarnation, Zimbardo has argued that technology is diminishing males, making guys receptacles for “porn, video games and Ritalin.” Sounds dubious. I don’t know that the geeks at Comic-Con are really what mainly ails us.

I suppose two examples, even such outsize ones, don’t equal a trend, but it would seem Zimbardo is very distrustful of young males, consistently believing them ready foot soldiers for one sort of evil or another. There’s some truth there, but it’s usually their elders who truly drive large-scale violence, conjuring up the sordid scenarios. 

In a Salon Q&A conducted by Chauncey DeVega, Zimbardo considers the danger of America’s resting bitch face, Donald Trump, a Simon Cowell-ish strongman who would undo democracy itself if permitted. The psychologist makes a lot of good points, though his rationale for maintaining that he would still go forward with the SPE if he had it to do all over again is positively Trump-ish: “It’s the most widely known experiment in psychological history,” he points out in defense.

An excerpt:

Question:

You are perhaps most well known for the Stanford Prison Experiment. In hindsight, how do you feel about it?  

Philip Zimbardo:

It’s the most widely known experiment in psychological history. I would do it again. Only I would not play the role of superintendent because in that role you get sucked into it. It was me and two students working around the clock. The prison is breaking down every day. There are parents visiting, parole board hearings, police and prison chaplains coming. There’s escape rumors. It was overwhelming. I know I could not have gone another week.    

Question:

What lessons do you think the Stanford Prison Experiment holds for American society at present?

Philip Zimbardo:

What was dramatic about the study was the rapidity and ease with which intelligent college students who were otherwise normal and healthy followed their roles as prisoners and guards. We gave them no clue of what it means to be a guard. You know, in our culture prison guards are people who have power over prisoners who have less power — except that prisoners have the power of numbers. Guards have to convince prisoners that even though there are fewer of them, they have the weapons; they have other means of power to suppress them. You make them feel helpless and ineffectual.

Question:

What scares you right now? What gives you hope? 

Philip Zimbardo:

Despite all the Trumpism, I’m optimistic about human nature that right will prevail over wrong. Heroism will prevail over evil. For me, again as an educator, it’s really important that teachers have to be anti-Trump in their own political mentality, their own morality. Whether or not they can present those political views in class, they can certainly prevent the Trump political views from being espoused. When kids act Trump-like, they can stop it cold. They can stop Trump-like bullying. They could call it for what it is.

I’m optimistic that Trump and his ideals will go away and people will laugh about it in the near future while saying, How could we have been so stupid?•

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“Boys Are Retreating Into Cyberspace”

May 12, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Following up on the recent Ask Me Anything conducted by Philip Zimbardo, an alumnus of the Stanford Prison Experiment, the psychologist is interviewed by Stuart Jeffries of the Guardian about the new book he’s coauthored, Man (Dis)connected: How Technology Has Sabotaged What It Means To Be Male, a treatment of the boys-in-peril thesis he’s been pushing in recent years.

I’m really circumspect of Zimbardo’s generalizations, his idea that a scary amount of guys are essentially receptacles for “porn, video games and Ritalin.” In the article, he proffers the dubious idea that mothers love unconditionally and fathers provisionally, a stereotype that runs afoul of reality. Zimbardo also believes young men are retreating from work and responsibilities for reasons which have nothing to do with the paucity of jobs, which seems dubious. I really don’t recognize any male people I know in his stereotypes.

There are certain aspects of American unhappiness that can be analyzed along gender or race or class lines, but I think our biggest collective psychological problem is that we’re sold on consumer-culture idealizations that are bound to leave us disappointed. That, too, is a generalization, though I think a far more believable one than Zimbardo’s.

From Jeffries:

The book, by Zimbardo and his co-author Nikita D Coulombe, is about why boys don’t man up as previous generations of males ostensibly did.

They argue that, while girls are increasingly succeeding in the real world, boys are retreating into cyberspace, seeking online the security and validation they can’t get anywhere else. They are bored at school, increasingly have no father figures to motivate them, don’t have the skills to form real romantic relationships, feel entitled to have things done for them (usually by their parents) and seek to avoid a looming adulthood of debt, unfulfilling work and other irksome responsibilities. As a result, they disappear into their bedrooms where, he argues, they risk becoming addicted to porn, video games and Ritalin.

No wonder, Zimbardo argues, popular culture teems with moodles (“man poodles”) or infantilised jerks (think: Jackass, Failure to Launch, Step Brothers, Hall Pass and The Hangover series), devoid of economic purpose, emotional intelligence, temperamentally unable to commit or take responsibility.

Zimbardo claims that a majority of African-American boys have been brought up in female-dominated households for generations. “Sixty, 70% grow up in a female world. I would trace a lot of that poor performance of black kids to not having a father present to make demands and not setting limits. This is now spilling out of the black community to the white community.”•

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“They Knew That There Would Likely Be Some Levels Of Stress”

May 8, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

One revelation from the Reddit AMA conducted by Philip Zimbardo, still best known for the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, a dress rehearsal more or less for Abu Ghraib, was that the psychologist was high school classmates with Stanley Milgram, author of the equally controversial “Obedience to Authority” study. That must have been some high school! Zimbardo was joined by writer Nikita Coulombe, to discuss their new book Man (Dis)connected. A few exchanges follow about the notorious test at Stanford.

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Question:

If you had a chance to do the Stanford Prison Experiment again, what would you do differently?

Philip Zimbardo:

Yes I would, I would have only played the role of researcher and there would be someone above me, who would be the superintendent of the prison and when things got out of hand I would have been in a better position to terminate the study earlier and more appropriately.

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Question:

In context of the famous prison experiment, when you were first organizing it, what were some of the specific dangers you tried to avoid?

Philip Zimbardo:

We selected young men who were physically healthy and psychologically normal, we had prior arrangements with student health if that was necessary. Each student was given informed consent, so they knew that there would likely be some levels of stress, so they had some sense of what was to come. Physical violence by the guards, especially if there was a revolt, solitary confinement beyond the established one hour limit, but primarily trying to minimise acts of sexual degradation.

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Question:

Being particularly interested in social psychology, I’m a big fan of what you have accomplished through your research. I was wondering what really got you interested in social psychology, and your research is connected to that of Stanley Milgram, another favourite psychologist of mine – so what I’m asking is what initially got you into this field of psychology, and what did you think of Milgram’s research when you first came across it?
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Philip Zimbardo:

Thank you. I was interested in psychology from a young age: I grew up in the Bronx in the 1930s and started wondering why some people would go down certain paths, like joining a gang, while others didn’t. I was also high school classmates with Stanley Milgram; we were both asking the same questions.

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Question:

If there was a film adaptation dramatizing the events of the Stanford Prison Experiment, who would you want to play you?

Philip Zimbardo:

Glad you asked the question, amazingly there is a new Hollywood movie that just premiered at the Sundance film festival to great reviews winning lots of prizes titled The Stanford Prison Experiment. It will have national showings in America starting in July and hopefully in Europe in the Fall. I was hoping that the actor who would play me would be either Johnny Depp or Andy Garcia but they were not available so instead a wonderful young actor, Billy Crudup is Dr Z. You may be aware of his great acting in Almost Famous and Dr Manhattan in Watchmen.•

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“Jesus Christ, I’m burning up inside–don’t you know?”:

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“They Now Prefer The Asynchronistic Internet World”

August 8, 2012 in Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Philip Zimbardo is a fascinating, perplexing person, still most famous for the controversial 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment. He recently presented a lecture for TED in which he argued that the American male is headed downhill fast. It’s true that women in the U.S. have surpassed men in higher education and will assume greater business and political leadership positions in the coming decades, but the idea that guys are dangerously addicted to Internet porn and video games and will fall by the wayside seems like an alarmist generalization. Men like women are, on average, more informed today than ever before even if it can’t be measured by traditional methods.

See also:

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“Not Everyone Has The Capacity To Do Anything Regardless Of The Circumstances”

June 7, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo, mastermind of the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment, which provided a chilling look at how quickly and thoroughly jailers can become dehumanized–a dress rehearsal, if you will, for Abu Ghraib–just did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. He discusses the SPE and his new e-book about the effect Internet porn and video games have on boys. A few exchanges about Stanford.

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Question:

For those unaware, modern-day psychological studies (or anything even remotely involving testing humans) have to go through fairly rigorous scrutiny from ethics committees to ensure that no harm lasting damage is done. Up until relatively recent times these committees weren’t necessary and researchers had much more freedom – often at the expense of their subjects.

I remember seeing a video of one of John Watson’s experiments, on operant conditioning, where he would purposely scare a baby every time it showed interest in animals. Eventually the baby was conditioned to fear the animals.

In short: You learn a lot without ethics, but you often harm the people involved.

Dr. Philip Zimbardo:

In the olden days researchers had total power to do anything to their “subjects” whether human or animal, children or prisoners– in the name of science. Some abused this privilege and Human Research committees were developed in order to create a better balance of power between researchers and their participant,and are now essential for the conduct of all research. A problem is created however, when they become excessively conservative and reject almost all research that could conceivably “stress” participants even by having them think about a stressful situation. Thus nothing like the Milgram study or my Stanford Prison study could ever be done again. Is that good? Is that bad? Open issue for debate.

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Question: 

I think we need to be careful when using expectations in describing how people act in these situations though. For example with Milgram I think obedience to authority was more of a factor than expectations. Thus the higher success rate(shock rate)with the teacher wearing a lab coat. There are other problems with Milgram too, he used the same teacher each time who got efficient at producing a specific result, which is interesting I think when we use him in talking about perpetrators of genocide. But it’s worth noting that the individual encouraging the shocks was also learning. With the SPE, Zimbardo got results from ‘irst timers’ which is surprising, or not depending on your view.

Dr. Philip Zimbardo:

In the Milgram study, SPE, and many other similar studies on the power of social situations to transform the behavior of good people in evil directions, the conclusion is the majority can easily be led to do so, but there is always a minority who resist, who refuse to obey or comply. In one sense, we can think of them as heroic because they challenge the power of negative influence agents (gangs, drugs dealers, sex traffickers; in the prison study it’s me, in the Milgram experiment it’s Milgram). The good news is there’s always a minority who resist, so no, not everyone has the capacity to do anything regardless of the circumstances. I recently started a non-profit, the Heroic Imagination Project in an attempt to increase the amount of resistors who will do the right thing when the vast majority are doing the wrong thing. There needs to be more research though, and we are in the process of studying heroism and the psychology of whistleblowing; curiously, there is very little so far compared to the extensive body of research on aggression, violence, and evil.

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Question: 

Based on your results, how would you suggest American imprisonment be altered, if at all?

Dr. Philip Zimbardo:

Shortly after the time we first published the results of SPE, the head graduate student of the research, Craig Haney, and I became very much involved in prison reform in California, working with the department of corrections, teaching courses on the psychology of imprisonment, organizing courses for prisoners in Soledad prison, being expert witnesses in trials about solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment, and also working to highlight the psychologically and physically devastating effects of “supermax” prisons.

However, in 1973, there were about 350,000 Americans in prison. This year there are more than 2 million Americans caged in the prison system at local, state, and federal levels. More than twice as much as any other country in the world. It is a national disgrace as far as I’m concerned, and with those big numbers goes reduced programs for rehabilitation, recreation, therapy, and really any concern about prisoners ever being able to live a normal life outside the prison. And this is because 3 factors: economic, political, and racial. Prisons have become a big business for many communities; many prisons are becoming privatized, which means they are for profit only. They have become political in so far as politicians all want to be seen as tough on crime, encouraging prosecutors and judges to give prisoners maximum sentences, including 25 years to life, for non-violent offenses. Racially, prisons have become dumping grounds for black and hispanic young men, so that there are now more of these young men in prisons than in college.

The whole system is designed not to help prisoners. At this point, my optimism about improving the American prison system has been severely tested and it will really take a major change in public opinion and also in basic attitudes from the top down. It’s a systemic problem; it’s not like some warden in a particular prison is a bad guy, everyone’s attitudes needs to change to become more humane. This needs to start with the President, governors, and mayors taking a strong compassionate stance. Pragmatically, citizens have to realize that it costs them through their taxes $1 million to keep one prisoner locked up for 25 years.”

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“Jesus Christ, I’m burning up inside–don’t you know?”:

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