It would seem that lots of people are suddenly remembering the Stanford Prison Experiment (I brought it up here). There's an interesting piece by William Saletan comparing Abu Ghraib with the SPE on Slate today. He points out some crucial differences, but I'm not convinced that they really undermine the comparison. An interesting point he makes, that I was unaware of: "The soldiers implicated at Abu Ghraib, however, were led by two veteran prison guards, one of whom had received three court orders to stay away from his ex-wife, who said he had thrown her against a wall and had threatened her with guns." How on earth could this person have been given such responsibility? The whole thing leads to a chicken or the egg question regarding environment and the propensity for violence. It seems reasonable to think that working in the violent atmosphere of a prison could make someone violent, or draw out some latent violence in his/her character. Or perhaps not. Thoughts?
And if anyone's interested, here's the original research article that resulted from the SPE and here's the website.
