Sometimes returning to the past and asking how something we seemingly forgot about is relevant today and will throw light on murky and disturbing events.
Recently, I was reminded by my granddaughter, Sarah, about a landmark study in social psychology conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971. I am a psychologist who has studied personality and was familiar with his work. In the Stanford Prison Experiment college students were randomly assigned as “guards” or “prisoners” in a mock prison. The students adapted to their roles very quickly. The guards became more abusive and the prisoners more distressed and terrorized. Things got so bad that the experiment was terminated after less than a week because of the massive psychological distress reported by the prisoners.
Mistreatment of prisoners escalated at a rate never predicted by Dr. Zimbardo. The guards were sadistic, vengeful, and found amusement in dumping indignities on the prisoners. The prisoners were shaking with terror and humiliation. The social roles of prisoner and guard were so powerful that they extinguished the individual personalities of the students.
Perhaps the egregious behavior of the ICE agents had less to do with their personalities and more to do with the group culture of the Department of Homeland Security. From this vantage point we would not label the agents as innately sadistic people but people who absorbed the social roles of ICE readily — they were too obedient. The masks they wore provided anonymity and added to diminishing individual moral perspectives.
Let’s end with a quote from Zimbardo: “Most people go about their daily life assuming that they have more control over their behavior than they actually do … We are often unaware of the tremendous power which social situations exert upon us to shape, guide, and manipulate our behavior.”
Lillian Cartwright
Easthampton