Theory & Psychology - University of Calgary

Theory & Psychology http://tap.sagepub.com

Review: The Defense of Situationalism in the Age of Abu Ghraib: PHILIP ZIMBARDO, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. New York: Random House, 2007. ISBN 9781588365873 (e-book). 2008. ISBN 9780812974447 (pbk) Augustine Brannigan Theory Psychology 2009; 19; 698 DOI: 10.1177/0959354309341924 The online version of this article can be found at: http://tap.sagepub.com

Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Theory & Psychology can be found at: Email Alerts: http://tap.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://tap.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav Citations http://tap.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/19/5/698

Downloaded from http://tap.sagepub.com at UNIV CALGARY LIBRARY on May 4, 2010

Reviews The Defense of Situationalism in the Age of Abu Ghraib PHILIP ZIMBARDO, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. New York: Random House, 2007. ISBN 9781588365873 (e-book). 2008. ISBN 9780812974447 (pbk). DOI: 10.1177/0959354309341924

The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) was Zimbardo’s singular, memorable contribution to the annals of social psychology. Ironically, the experiment was cancelled prematurely, its details were never fully reported until now, and even when initially reported, it never appeared in an APA social psychology journal. Like Milgram’s obedience studies, the SPE attracted enormous attention in the popular media. Its specific theoretical contribution was largely gainsaid, namely, that social situations play an enormous role in explaining extreme or aberrant behavior. According to Zimbardo, the participants were randomly assigned to the roles of either guard or inmate. Further, according to the received view, over the course of the experiment, the guards became abusive and domineering, and the inmates became humiliated and depressed, supposedly as in real prisons. The lesson was re-visited in recent studies of genocide (Browning, 1992/1998; Hatzfeld, 2006): ordinary people become barbarous perpetrators because of the role assigned to them. In the current volume, Zimbardo draws parallels between his findings at Stanford and the atrocities committed by rank-and-file army personnel in Iraq. Indeed, Zimbardo acted as an expert witness in the prosecution of Sergeant Ivan Frederick on charges of maltreatment of inmates, assault and battery, dereliction of duty, and indecent acts (pp. 370–371), arguing for a reduction in sentence in view of the circumstantial pressures to which “Chip” Frederick was exposed as a guard. The Lucifer Effect represents the epiphany of the Stanford Prison Experiment in the age of Abu Ghraib by linking social psychology labs and contemporary human rights crimes. How valid is this extrapolation? In previous reports of the SPE, I do not recall reading in detail how the “experiment” was initiated (I put experiment in quotation marks because the procedure did not test any hypotheses, identify specific variables, or employ control groups or statistical tests to identify differences in treatment outcomes). Although the participants were advised to be ready to start the study on a Sunday morning, they were not advised that they would be arrested by a Palo Alto police officer at their homes, handcuffed, and charged with theft or robbery—and filmed for an evening news story. By contrast, the

THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY VOL. 19 (5): 698–704 © The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav http://tap.sagepub.com


699

REVIEWS

guards were given a briefing on the Saturday beforehand. Zimbardo reports that he communicated to these participants that … we wanted to create a psychological atmosphere that would capture some of the essential features characteristic of many prisons. …We can create a sense of frustration. We can create fear in them, to some degree. We can create the notion of the arbitrariness that governs their lives. …They’ll have no privacy at all, there will be constant surveillance. …They will have no freedom of action. (pp. 54–55) Zimbardo then says that “it took time for the new roles and the situational forces to operate upon them in ways that would gradually transform them into perpetrators of abuse against the prisoners” (p. 56). The SPE is sometimes referred to as a “mock” or a simulated prison. Presumably, the SPE would simulate humiliation the way that Milgram simulated aggression by pretending to administer shocks. In reality, the SPE prisoners were stripped naked when they arrived at the “prison” to be “de-loused.” They were then dressed in gowns that often revealed their genitals, and were subjected to arbitrary role calls and capricious physical exercises as punishments for the infringement of meaningless rules. On the afternoon of the first shift, confrontations orchestrated by the guards were marked by assault: “Hellman is getting angry for the first time. He gets right up in the prisoner’s face, leans on him, and pushes him back with his billy club” (p. 49). This assault is one of many reported in the subsequent pages. When the new shift arrived at 2:00 a.m. for their first tour of duty, they awoke the sleeping prisoners with shrieking whistles and subjected them to meaningless repetition of the rules calculated to produce defiance and punishment. On the first full day, Monday, the guards stripped the prisoners naked (p. 60) and sprayed them with a fire extinguisher. The prisoners were physically seized and thrown manually into the hole. None of this was simulated, nor was the shackling of prisoners for transport to the washroom. Nor was the smell of feces or urine simulated when the guards prevented the inmates from using the washrooms at night, and the prisoners were required to keep night buckets in their cells. What I want to emphasize is that none of this humiliation was simulated, and that the abusive guard behavior appeared from the very first contact between the two groups. The first prisoner to be released from the experiment left after barely 36 hours. This does not suggest evidence of a gradual change in guard perspective, but an acting-out of stipulations expressly communicated by the experimenter to the guard-participants. As Zimbardo notes in the de-briefing, he had given them “implicit permission to go to the extremes they did” (p. 186). So much for the forces of situationalism. When Zimbardo generalizes from his study to Abu Ghraib, he introduces the concept of The System —“the complex of powerful forces that create the Situation” (p. x). In the discussion of the role of military leaders in setting up the interrogation of Iraqi suspects, Zimbardo reports as follows: The independent investigation of abuses at Abu Ghraib by U.S. Generals Fay and Jones concluded that, “CIA detention and interrogation practices led to a loss of accountability, abuse, reduced interagency cooperation and an unhealthy mystique that further poisoned the atmosphere at Abu Ghraib.” The CIA, under George Tenet’s direction operated under its own rules and beyond the rule of U.S. law. (Zimbardo, 2006–08)


700

THEORY

& PSYCHOLOGY 19(5)

If Tenet’s System gave Frederick the authorization to abuse, why should we infer that his misconduct arose spontaneously from his role assignment, particularly when it appears that the allegedly spontaneous turn for the worse in the original SPE can be traced to the System that Zimbardo created by his briefing of the guards? There may be parallels here but not the ones Zimbardo advocates. Notably, Zimbardo’s evidence in the Frederick trial was ignored by the court. Public opinion may be another matter. The Lucifer Effect has been promoted by its author on The Daily Show (March 29, 2007) and The Coberg Report (February 11, 2008), and a Hollywood dramatization is under consideration. A good moral tale trumps the facts any day of the week—in social psychology. References Browning, C. (1998). Ordinary men: The role of Police Battalion 101 in the final solution in Poland. New York: HarperPerennial. (Original work published 1992) Hatzfeld, J. (2006). Machete season. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Zimbardo, P.G. (2006–2008). Voting booth: George Tenet. In The lucifer effect. Understanding how good people turn evil. Retrieved from http://www.lucifereffect.com/trial.htm.

Augustine Brannigan UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

What Would Freud Think? JEROME A. WINER & JAMES WILLIAM ANDERSON, Spirituality and Religion: Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Catskill, NY: Mental Health Resources, 2007. 300 pp. ISBN: 9780979434112 (hbk). DOI: 10.1177/0959354309341922

As good a read as much of Winer and Anderson’s edited volume was, I initially found it difficult to figure out what to write about in this review. This is mainly because it is an eclectic volume, comprised of an extraordinarily wide range of inquiries. There are chapters on the “God representation” (Ana-María Rizzuto); narcissistic illusions as a potential source of creativity (James W. Jones); psychoanalytic spirituality (William B. Parsons); life-course metamorphosis, featuring Freud and Siddhartha (Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi); anxiety, featuring Kierkegaard and Lacan (Slavoj Žižek); the commandment to love (W.W. Meissner); magic rings (Wendy Doniger); the impasse between Islamists and the West (Ahmed Fayek); and much more. Given the vast range of issues explored, readers will likely proceed selectively through the chapters, gravitating toward some more readily than others. But for just about any given chapter, there will equally likely be a devoted audience, pleased to have made the discovery. The fact is, there are notable authors writing notable chapters. For this reason alone, those interested in matters of religious and spiritual life are encouraged to explore the table of contents and see what’s there. It is a rich selection that should attract many readers from many different walks of intellectual life.
