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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (42834)	5/8/2004 3:43:06 AM
From: Sam	Respond to of 793718

On the "power corrupts" point--clearly the people who believe that these prison humiliations were just "pranks" haven't a clue about human nature. The point about power corrupting works no matter what position one is in--even a "lowly" prison guard--if the position gives a position of total control over other people. See the following site--http://www.prisonexp.org/ and also see the next post--an account from 1997 of the same Stanford experiments, so no one can think that it was done for current "political" reasons. One of the huge errors that was made by the Pentagon was that the belief--stated more than once by Rumsfeld especially--that this would be a "war like no other"--it would be a "clean" war with smart bombs and missiles and minimal civilian casualties. They overlooked human nature, and what that means for both occupied and occupier. I know you don't watch TV, but Nightline did a piece on the Stanford experiments last week. The politics of occupation isn't changed by smart bombs. Yeah, I know, poor misunderstood Americans. prisonexp.org A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment Conducted at Stanford University Welcome to the Stanford Prison Experiment web site, which features an extensive slide show and information about this classic psychology experiment. What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? These are some of the questions we posed in this dramatic simulation of prison life conducted in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University. How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress. Please join me on a slide tour of describing this experiment and uncovering what it tells us about the nature of Human Nature.