Shocking as it may seem, it takes very little to push young, liberal, humanistic, educated American college students toward behavior approaching that which was photographed in Abu Graib.  Such malleability of the average person has been demonstrated by numerous studies in the behavioral sciences since the Nuremberg trials.  Two towering studies in particular, Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Study and the Milgram Experiment at Yale reveal that the capacity for cruelty borne out of obedience are more universal than merely within the context of the Holocaust, that it could and does happen at any place and any time given the right setting, and that it is not at all unique to Nazi Germany.  Indeed, although most references to Nuremberg are to the legal precedent that its ruling establishes, that of totally dismissing obedience as an absolution for atrocities, perhaps the most shocking discovery gleaned by the court is that perfectly normal and otherwise moral people would do monstruous things to others if ordered to do so by figures of authority.

The Milgram Experiment was, literally and figuratively speaking, shocking.  Under the guise of a memory and learning experiment, subjects who were paid to participate, under the direction of an authoritative lab-coated actor, were persuaded to administer what they were told were incrementing electric shocks to a stooge based on the correctness or incorrectness of the stooge's answers to questions.  Subjects heard progressively distressed pre-recorded screams and complaints from the unseen stooge, which even after awhile included protests over his heart condition, all these triggered in accordance with the voltage level the subject believed then to be administering.  With the prodding of the lab-coated administrator, sixty percent of participants, although hesitantly and occasionally frantically, reached the 450 volt level, long after the stooge screams had troublingly gone silent.  This experiment was repeated around the world under different settings with insignificant differences in its results, and it clearly showed how easily randomly selected people could be convinced by a figure perceived to be authoritative to inflict cruelty and possibly even kill or seriously hurt a stranger.

Zimbardo's experiment recreated a mock prison populated with students who for a couple of weeks were to be paid to play the roles of prisoners and guards.  These were healthy, psychologically evaluated Stanford students during the early seventies who embraced much of the hippie culture of their era.  The results were so unexpected that the experiment was terminated on its sixth day.  Participants assimilated the roles they played to an extent that transformed the site into a veritable prison with its entailing harsh authoritarian environment.

Read more »