Abu Ghraib

Paper Summary:

This paper compares the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib to that seen in Philip Zimbardo's landmark psychological experiment into group behavior and the effects of differential power. The paper relates that Zimbardo's experiment demonstrated that even ordinary citizens without any previous history or known predisposition toward violence or abusive behavior have the potential to become cruelly abusive under circumstances that combine authority, unsupervised autonomy, and authoritative control over others. The paper then looks at how, in many ways, the real-life abuses at Abu Ghraib paralleled Zimbardo's previous observations of human behavior during his 1971 experiment at Stanford.

From the Paper:

"The degree of abuse at Abu Ghraib was much worse than observed in the 1971 Stanford experiment, even after factoring in the fundamental differences between real life situations and controlled experiment. If anything, the fact that ordinary civilian students proved capable of such conduct on other civilians, even without the psychological stresses of a wartime combat zone and genuinely hostile prisoners, suggests that the risk of similar abuse in genuine wartime situations is much higher. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Schlesinger, J. Independent Panel to review D.O.D. Detention Operations Final Report; U.S. Department of Defense Aug 24/04 Accessed October 13, 2007, at: http://www.prisonexp.org/pdf/SchlesingerReport.pdf
• Zimbardo, P. Power Turns Good Soldiers into "Bad Apples."; The New York Times, May 9/04
• Zimbardo, P. A Pirandellian Prison; The New York Times Magazine, Apr 8/73

More papers on Abu Ghraib:

• Research Paper # 74200 : "Abu Ghraib: A Social Psychology Perspective"
• Article Review # 138342 : "Abu Ghraib: The Women behind the Photos"
• Article Review # 135052 : "Abuse at Abu Ghraib"
• Persuasive Essay # 103305 : "The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal"

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