Same study, different conclusions

Dear Editor,

I would like to offer the following oped in response to Mike O”Dell’s piece of June 5.

Mike O’Dell brought forward the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) in his OPED June 5th. He said that his conclusions are those of a” fifty-something, white, midwestern guy”. He is missing the point of the Stanford Prison Experiment and his conclusions are different from my own. The SPE was halted when the study director’s girlfriend, later wife and gifted social psychologist, Christina Maslach, observed what was happening and in total horror told Dr. Zimbardo that the study must be stopped. What Dr. Zimbardo had created in his study “prison” was a system that was corrupt and out of control, that dehumanized both the guards and the prisoners. Dr. Zimbardo realized that rather than having a “few bad apples” in his study, he had created a rotten barrel that was his simulated “prison”. Dr. Zimbardo went on to be an expert witness and consultant for the military police involved in the abuses documented in the Abu Ghraib prison photos that are burned into our collective memory. Dr. Zimbardo’s SPE showed how a corrupt system can destroy healthy, psychologically strong individuals and turn them into what we saw in Abu Ghraib. The lessons learned from the SPE certainly can be applied to a police force that abuses.

In The Lucifer Effect, the book, that grew from the SPE. Zimbardo presents lessons learned that can be applied to stop abuse that is sustained by a “rotten barrel” system, such as a corrupt police force, a prison or a military detention facility. The SPE raises a fundamental question about human nature: How is it possible for ordinary, average, even good people to become perpetrators of evil? In trying to understand unusual, or aberrant behavior, the focus is exclusively on the inner determinants of genes, personality, and character, the “rotten apples” the “lone wolf”. This focus ignores what may be the critical catalyst for behavior change in the external system, the “barrel” that creates and maintains such situations.

The first part of the Lucifer Effect book revolves around the negatives of human behavior, but the final chapter celebrates what is best in humanity, and that is what Mr. O’Dell misses in his observations. There are those among us who move from passive observers to take heroic action. Not all of us sit on the sofa. Many volunteer to work in overwhelmed hospitals, stock food pantries, tutor children on line, wear and make masks and call isolated friends. Let’s celebrate the heroism, these ordinary folks who are moved to a heroic deed in a specific situation at this time of COVID and Black Lives Matter. That is what Dr. Zimbardo discovered in his SPE when a brave hero, Dr. Maslach, saw the abusive “barrel” and the “rotten animals” who were acting as guards, She called out the abuse and the experiment was stopped,

Heroic deeds are always special yet heroes are just plain folks, ordinary citizens, who “do what they had to do” when moved to action. Many say, “It was nothing special;” “I did what anyone would do in that situation.” And some add, “and what everyone should do.” That is where our focus needs to be now, as COVID and racism remain with us, what “should” we do?

Jayne Lyons,

McCook, Neb.