Philip Zimbardo (1933-1924)

Philip Zimbardo talking with a prisoner during the Stanford Prison Experiment.
 Source: prisonexp.org/gallery 

Two weeks ago, on 14 October, Philip George Zimbardo died, 91 years old. If you are an avid reader of my blogs and when you are reading them already since many years (and I hope that you do), you’ll certainly know his name, for I have dedicated several blogs to him and his theories. Zimbardo was an American psychologist and he has become famous by his “Stanford Prison Experiment”. For this experiment, he had selected 24 test subjects  with the same background characteristics. Zimbardo assigned them at random to two groups: the prisoners and the prison warders. Although there was no initial fundamental difference between the test subjects in both groups, after one-two days both the prisoners and the prison warders acted very differently in a way that went beyond their particular roles. Already after such a short time the warders began to torture the prisoners, psychologically as well as physically (within limits, for outright physical violence was not allowed). Therefore Zimbardo terminated the experiment after six days, although it had been planned to last two weeks. Since the differences between the test subjects were negligible and since all of them were psychologically healthy, Zimbardo concluded after a thorough analysis that it is not their psychological dispositions that make people behave in an evil way but that it is the situation that brings them that far. Only very few people can resist the pressure of the situation that pushes them into a certain direction, and also only very few display evil behaviour because of a disposition.
Zimbardo was heavily criticized for this conclusion. One point of criticism was that he himself acted also in the experiment (he was the prison director). Moreover, so it was said, had the instructions that the students had received for the roles they had to play as prison warders or as prisoners been different, their behaviour would also have been different and more friendly towards each other. But I think that such criticisms just affirm Zimbardo’s conclusion that “situations can have a more powerful influence over our behaviour than most people appreciate, and few people recognize [that].” For had the instructions for the test persons been different, also their situation would have been different, and then probably the prison warders would have behaved in a less cruel way just because they were in a different situation. (By the way, there were also good prison warders among the test persons; not everybody was “evil”.)
For illustrating the practical meaning of his experiment and for substantiating the truth of the results Zimbardo referred to the similarities between his experiment and the prisoner abuse by American soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004. He didn’t accept the claim put forward by General Myers (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) that the events were due to a few rogue soldiers and that they were not typical of the American soldier. Instead, as I want to summarize Zimbardo’s words, the soldiers were placed in an impossible situation. The cruel behaviour of the soldiers was, at least for a part, a consequence of the situation in which they had to act. Basically, the soldiers were okay, and the responsibility lay with the military staff and with the American president in the first place. Zimbardo called the effect that good people can turn into evil people in the “right” – so not so right – situation the “Lucifer Effect”. (Lucifer was an angel who fell into disgrace of God and assumed the role of Satan)
Other experiments support Zimbardo’s conclusions. Take for example the famous experiment by Stanley Milgram who investigated how willing people were to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their ethical views. It appeared that many test persons were willing to do so and even were prepared to hurt people physically when instructed to do so. Also in this case, it is possible to interpret the behaviour of the “evil” test persons as guided by the situation they were in. Anyway, though I agree with Zimbardo and Milgram, the question remains why some people refuse to become evil. Apparently, not all behaviour depends on the situation and not for all people the way they act is dependent on the situation they are in. Humans are not situational dopes and apparently there is still room for a moral compass, albeit so that in modern society its role has increasingly given way to situational behaviour, if David Riesman is right with his idea of the other-directness of modern man (while before the present age people were mainly inner-directed, i.e. guided by their moral compasses).
However, if it is so that the situation people are in can make them evil, as Zimbardo states, then it must also be possible that situations can make them behave well. The right situation can stimulate people to behave in the right way, even when by nature they are not apt to do so; a conclusion also drawn by Zimbardo himself, though. Situations can make people devils, but they can make them also heroes or saints. People are not inherently, genetically, bad or good. Most people can do well and can do bad, and what they’ll do depends on the situations they are in and on the pressure exerted there on them. However, as just said, it is not only the circumstances that make who you are and what you do, and Zimbardo doesn’t say that. Also your personality, your moral compass, your views, etc. play a part in what you do. Nevertheless, circumstances have an important influence on what you do. They can make you both a devil and a hero, or something in between.

Sources: Old blogs; Wikipedia, especially here (about Zimbardo), here (about the Stanford prison experiment), here (about Abu Ghraib), and here (about Stanley Milgram).