Prison Experiment and Authority Article Review

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Lucifer Effect," which describes the circumstances in which good people are capable of performing evil actions. Through mounting pressure and situations that push them into levels of stress that they are unused to experiencing (and therefore dealing with), otherwise normal individuals can commit some of the most horrific crimes. This paper will discuss how this change occurs in the human personality, what can be learned from Zimbardo's prison experiment, what correlations can be drawn from conditions in Abu Ghraib, and whether I personally could follow commands received by an authority figure.

Hong's (2012) article begins with a description of a twenty-year, seemingly ordinary Army veteran (Sergeant Russell) suddenly experiencing severe mental stress, going to the mental health clinic on four occasions before finally shooting five of his colleagues in Bagdad. From this introduction into a concrete example of a normal individual acting evilly, Hong segues into Zimbardo's book via a discussion of Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971, in which normal college students posed as prisoners or guards and gradually assumed these identities to such an extreme that Zimbardo had to shut the experiment down out of fear for what it was doing to the subjects' psychology. What Zimbardo learned was that through authoritative systems, individuals could assume alter-egos that were essentially ordered upon them by an authority, to which they were willing to submit.

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Analysis

Zimbardo and Hong's argument is well-made and highlights the importance of authority and submission in the behaviors of ordinary individuals who commit horrific acts. In their ordinary lives they are not subjected to an evil authority -- but if they do become subjected to one, they can find it difficult to resist and thus will execute evil commands because of the orders they are given. This applies to the Abu Ghraib prison, where horrific acts were committed against prisoners by guards. As Hong (2012) notes, "the abuse at Abu Ghraib was sanctioned at the highest levels" (p. 58) and therefore was not really seen as abuse but rather as the proper order within the system. What participants failed to acknowledge and/or assert was that the "systemic failures" were evil in and of themselves and should have been reported to an external authority. This finding is meaningful in the field of psychology because it points to the importance of an external authority being made available to individuals so that they feel they have….....

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