Zimbardo on Abu Ghraib Prison

The prison study in which Philip Zimbardo conducted tested to see if social roles override our own identities to the extent that we truly manifest into the role that we play. It showed how under the right circumstances, good people can do terrible things.

Thirty years after Zimbardo's prison experiment, prison abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq gained media attention in 2004. In Abu Ghraib, their were claims of U.S. soldiers abusing the prisoners. Many might remember the picture of the soldiers smiling in front of a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners. Zimbardo believes that this incident goes back to his prison experiment. Many of these guards were under stress, little supervision and training, and nearly the freedom to conduct their own methods of interrogation.

Here are a few articles on how Zimbardo's prison study connects to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse and perhaps explanations on why soldiers acted the way they did.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/05/08/MNGN76IG761.DTL

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/05/09/power_turns_good_soldiers_into_bad_apples/

(this one is an editorial by Philip Zimbardo in the Boston Globe)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/06/international/middleeast/06PSYC.html?ex=1399262400&en=91f8144cdf7dd44a&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND

Jason

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