Latest news with #StanfordPrisonExperiment
Yahoo
7 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
The (Relative) Ease of Dehumanization
Getty Images A recent Michigan Advance article, 'Michigan leaders call attention to the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people,' painted a poignant picture of the lack of attention scores of missing indigenous people have been given by the criminal justice system and society in general (nearly 4,200 missing persons cases have gone unsolved, nationwide). Obviously, this isn't a purely Michigan problem. Disregarding people, specifically women of native origin, that have gone missing is a worldwide issue, from the reservations of Arizona to the Outback in Australia, including Michigan, the majority tends to turn a blind eye to classes of people that the society, writ large, does not view as worthy of concern. We see this over and over again, but not only in the world of law enforcement. It is a general practice to put time and effort into finding missing women, regardless of race or gender or profession, but the importance that the voting public puts on those victims is directly related to the amount of budget applied to those cases. There is a stark contrast when a member of the majority, say a Gabby Petito, goes missing. Large scale investigations are well-funded and equipped with manpower and there is an endless stream of media coverage. What if Gabby Petito was a Navajo woman? Would there be the same urgency? Or what if Gabby Petito were a sex worker? Homeless? This is an extreme example, of course, but the relative ease of dehumanization (the act of relegating a group of people socially as 'less than human' by a majority of society) is something that isn't solely in the world of extreme examples. Every day we dehumanize groups of people for any number of reasons. When we do that, it is easy to disregard them. It is also easy to harm them because, in a social appraisal, they aren't really people, right? The phenomenon is not limited to the world of crime and investigation. We can simply look to the Michigan House GOP's attempt to legislate trans athlete participation as a way of providing safety for (italics are my emphasis) real girl athletes. This means that the existence of real girls is threatened by the existence of unreal girls in an obvious act of dehumanization. It is like using the term 'illegal alien' as opposed to undocumented person. In both of these instances, the danger to the 'non-human' subjects of this type of rhetoric is apparent. State Rep. Matt Koleszar (D-Plymouth), in opposition to the bill, noted 'Make no mistake, this legislation and the rhetoric that surrounds it could get somebody killed.' The words of the bill matter. It is immaterial that the Governor is unlikely to sign such a bill if it even made it to her desk, the damage is done in the nomenclature. The speed at which this can happen is stunning. We learned a great deal from Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971. The ethical concerns of the experiment helped lead to the creation of institutional review boards to police psychological ethics. In the experiment, Zimbardo collected twenty-four male college students with some assigned to be prisoner and some assigned to be guards. The prisoners were subjected to real arrest procedures and placed in cells while the guards were given uniforms and authority over the prisoners. The experiment was scheduled to last two weeks but was terminated after six days. The prisoners became increasingly sadistic towards the prisoners while the prisoners effectively became submissive and bought into their own dehumanization. At its core, the experiment showed the power of situational forces on behavior and just how quick and easy we can react to the label a person wears. In this case, it was guard (power) or prisoner (less than human). The real shock is at the speed this can happen. Now, as we expand this, think of what one hundred years of systemic dehumanization can do to a society? How do you feel about prisoners, for example. Not individuals, but that group. How do you feel about police officers? Again, not individuals, but the group. As Zimbardo showed us, sometimes all it takes is a uniform for us to label a group as 'pigs' or 'animals' and treat them accordingly. We don't escape this in our faith systems, either. The dangers of using dehumanizing language in terms of antisemitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Christian, or any other faith of choice does nothing more than put either metaphorical, or in the case of most world conflicts at this point, literal crosshairs on the subject of the dehumanizing language. The innocent human beings being killed in both Palestine and Israel at this point in history, depending on which side your political rhetoric lands on, are either victims or 'deserved it.' This is the same process we use to pay little attention to missing sex workers or indigenous women and the same process a group of college students used to treat their classmates like animals in 1971. Beverly Eileen Mitchell takes a deep, and disturbing look, at the process in terms of dehumanizing language being components of White supremacy and antisemitism in her 2009 book Plantations and Death Camps: Religion, Ideology, and Human Dignity from Minneapolis Fortress Press. She writes, 'The absence of empathetic imagination—the inability to see members of the 'pariah' group as being like oneself—is the psychological foundation for participation in dehumanizing a fellow human being'. This is where we have to assess our own participation in dehumanization. Those tiny, innocuous moments in our daily discussions can be harmful and carry with it the danger of relegating a group of human beings as pariah. The same way many of us bristle at the thought of being called 'Libtards,' for example, as we are categorized into a fundamentally flawed person unworthy of consideration and potential violence is equally as dangerous as considering a group of people 'MAGAts,' equitably categorizing the obverse of a political rhetoric as also fundamentally flawed and unworthy of consideration and potential violence. It is that ease that we must be aware of. How we discuss other groups of people have direct consequences on how those people are treated. Be careful, because words matter. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sherri Papini Breaks Silence About Her ‘Abduction' in New Docuseries Trailer
Sherri Papini recounts her 'abduction' in her own words — truthful or not — in the new trailer for a four-part ID docuseries premiering next month. Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie, out May 26 and May 27 on ID and Max, features the California mother of two talking on camera about her headline-grabbing disappearance in 2016 for the first time since the incident occurred nearly nine years ago. More from Rolling Stone 'Gone Girls': See New Trailer for Netflix's Long Island Serial Killer Docuseries New Docuseries Examines the Infamous 'Stanford Prison Experiment' Feuding Co-Workers Get Medieval on Each Other in 'Ren Faire' 'Haven't you ever lied? And then has that lie blown up?' Papini says in the trailer, while reiterating her version of events that authorities have deemed were fabricated: 'I went missing in 2016. I was gone for 22 days. I was tortured, I was branded, I was chained to a wall. All of that is true. I did keep some secrets from you, though.' In order to prove her innocence — 'I'm Sherri Papini. I was abducted and I was tortured and the FBI said I made it all up,' she reiterates in the trailer — Papini undergoes a lie detector test, the results of which will likely be revealed over the course of the four-part series (though the docuseries' title seems to hint at the answer). Boasting 'unprecedented access to Papini,' ID said of the docuseries in a synopsis, 'Over the course of four-parts, Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie retraces Papini's case from the days leading up to her disappearance into her alleged abduction, her shocking return to her family, and the subsequent aftermath that led to her 2022 arrest by federal authorities. For the first time, Papini will share her account of events as she recalls them, offering rare insights into her mindset during her disappearance and the subsequent investigation into her abduction claims upon her return home. Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie will also chronicle the aftermath of her 2022 guilty plea that Papini continues to navigate, including her present custody battle with her ex-husband, Keith Papini, as she seeks joint custody of their children.' ID added that the docuseries 'will delve deeper into Papini's case to include insight from her parents and sister-in-law, the federal authorities who investigated her disappearance and prosecuted her for lying to the FBI, her former lawyer, her psychologist, as well as the podcaster who followed her story closely, among others. Through these interviews and extensive access to archival footage, legal documents, and court filings, a new picture of her case emerges – illuminating an entirely different side of the story.' Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Best 'Saturday Night Live' Characters of All Time Denzel Washington's Movies Ranked, From Worst to Best 70 Greatest Comedies of the 21st Century
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Yahoo
Review: Rethinking the Stanford Prison Experiment (opinion)
If you took psychology courses in college, you probably remember the "Stanford prison experiment," which monitored the behavior of 18 students assigned to play the roles of guards or inmates in a pretend penitentiary for a week. Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo's 1971 study supposedly demonstrated that decent, ordinary individuals are apt to cruelly mistreat people when given authority over them, even when that authority is imaginary. The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth, a three-part National Geographic documentary, casts doubt on that gloss by interviewing academics and former subjects who say Zimbardo misrepresented his methodology and the implications of his results. Although Zimbardo claimed he gave very little direction to the "guards," for example, recordings show that he and his colleagues encouraged harsh treatment of the "prisoners." The documentary suggests the so-called experiment is better understood as an improv game in which the subjects acted in ways they thought Zimbardo expected. Yet after torture at the Abu Ghraib military prison in Iraq came to light decades later, Zimbardo, a relentless self-promoter, glibly argued in media appearances and in his book The Lucifer Effect that his research anticipated such abuses by showing "how good people turn evil." Director Juliette Eisner gives Zimbardo (who died last October, after the documentary was completed) ample opportunity for rebuttal. To some extent, his answers reinforce the impression of slipperiness. But his defenses also highlight an ambiguity at the heart of his experiment: Were the subjects just play-acting, as some now claim, or is that description a self-deceiving rationalization for mortifying behavior? In the end, Zimbardo loses patience with Eisner's inquiry, declining to answer follow-up questions on the grounds that he has already thoroughly refuted his critics' arguments. Viewers can judge for themselves whether that is true. The post Review: Rethinking the Stanford Prison Experiment appeared first on
