Zimbardo: Blame the leaders who created the torture scene

[Joanne98]

April 25th, 2009

Phil Zimbardo,former President of the American Psychological Association and author of The Lucifer Effect, sends this article comparing his argument in that book to recent news:

“Guilty” verdicts against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Tenet for creating conditions leading to abuse and torture of prisoners in the U.S. war on terrorism

By Philip Zimbardo

More than 10,000 people cast their votes during the last year and a half in a virtual voting booth at www.LuciferEffect.com. The vast majority of online voters found all four Bush officials (George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet) guilty of having created the legal frameworks, laws and motivational conditions that provided the foundation for the abuses and torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons. These findings were true regardless of political preference, across all age groups, and whether or not respondents had read The Lucifer Effect book prior to voting.

These informal public judgments accord with the recent Senate Armed Services bipartisan report that blames Bush officials for detainee abuse. It also finds that the prison guards and interrogators were not the “true culprits.” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28180540/

Remarkably, the Democrats were only slightly more likely to vote guilty than were those identified as Republicans. Furthermore, the majority of Republicans found each of the four officials guilty: Bush 95 % (Democrat) to 57% (Republican); Cheney 88% to 72%; Rumsfeld 89% to 72%; Tenet 83% to 70%. Those identified as “Other” political preference overwhelmingly gave guilty verdicts to all four: 93% Bush; 96% Cheney; 95 % Rumsfeld and 89% Tenet.

The percentage of guilty votes increased substantially with the age of voters, thus it appears that the more conservative individuals took a harsher view, with 97% and 99% of those over the age of 60 finding Bush and Cheney guilty.

In 2004 I agreed to help the defense team organized by Gary Myers, legal council for one of the Army Reserve Military Police, Staff Sergeant Chip Frederick, which started my quest to understand the causes of abuses and torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. I had an opportunity to read all of the many investigative reports by the various generals, including the one by James Schlesinger, former Secretary of Defense. I also studied the relevant Human Rights Watch reports, International Red Cross reports, and had a chance to interview the interrogators, military criminal investigators and senior military officers who were involved at Abu Ghraib. After in-depth evaluation of Chip Frederick, I felt competent in rendering a judgment that he was the “good apple,” while it were the conditions he and the other MPs were forced to work and live in that constituted the “bad barrel” that corrupted him and the other prison guards on Abu Graib’s Tier 1A night shift, where all the abuses occurred.

My findings were summarized in two chapters (14 & 15) of The Lucifer Effect published by Random House in 2007. While the military justice system put Frederick and many of the other MPs on trial for abuses they had perpetrated on individuals they were supposed to protect while in their custody, none of the officers who should have been in charge were ever tried. The wide range of abuses took place over more than three months in the fall of 2003 before being exposed. Command complicity involves responsibility for illegal or immoral behavior of subordinates that officers should have known about, had they cared enough to be watching their store - the torture dungeon.

continued>>>
http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/2009/04/25/zimbardo-blame-the-leaders-whjo-created-the-torture-scene/

[MrsBrady]

1. he is a co-author of my psychology text for the class I'm taking now n/t

[Joanne98]

2. Cool!

[MrsBrady]

3. your op made me realize that they were the same person

I had heard about his book Lucifer Effect, but I'm not really into psychology....but it is an interesting topic.
I've learned quite a bit in the class.
Makes me want to read his book now. It's funny how we miss those connections sometimes.

[riverdeep]

4. I love Phillip Zimbardo.

This guy has been on the inside track of this kind of thing for so long. He was the one who conducted the Prison Experiments. He divided up student volunteers into guards and prisoners and put them into a mock prison setting. The abuse and debasement started incredibly quickly, both the guards and prisoners became consumed by their roles. So much so, he wound up ending the experiment by the fifth day, I think. It was supposed to be a two week experiment. He was also a good friend of Stanley Milgram, who conducted the famous experiment of having people administering fake shocks they didn't know were fake under the command of an authority figure. Even though they could hear people screaming, they continued to administer them all the way to what was considered lethal if the shocks would have been real.

This formed the idea that human nature is quite malleable dependent on the situation that the individual finds themselves in. It helps to explain the 'banality of evil' effect quite nicely. Tell people that a heinous act is 'normal', and the vast majority will do it. The key, therefore, is structuring human organizations for maximum benefit. His organization has an excellent website as well:

http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/

[islandgirl808]

5. i feel the same way

i'm still mad at myself for not seeing him during his visit to Hawaii :P.

[Senator]

6. K&R