ABSTRACT
We saw in the previous chapter that behaviorism is far from the only perspective that emphasizes the role of situational determinants in shaping political behavior. We now turn to another situationist perspective which is in some ways even more radical in its conclusions than Milgram’s perspective. The latter, as we have noted, contains dispositionist elements, but the research we’ll examine in this chapter is more purely situationist in its implications. Working in 1971, Philip Zimbardo—then a young professor of psychology at Stanford University in California—was interested in studying the effects of prison roles on behavior. From a situationist perspective, it ought to be possible to place individuals randomly in well-understood roles, and then watch how the expectations associated with these roles affect behavior. This is, in essence, what Zimbardo did. And as we shall see, his findings have possible implications for the explanation of prison scandals such as those that erupted at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib in 2003 and 2004 respectively, an argument that Zimbardo himself has made in numerous media interviews and which he also made as an expert witness in the trial of Chip Frederick, one of those involved in the abuses at Abu Ghraib.
