Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

acting in ways that showed a lack of respect for the guards’
authority. The guards soon decided that they needed to
constantly reinforce their authority with demeaning and
dehumanizing activities designed to ensure that the prisoners
remained subservient. Their treatment of the prisoners became
increasingly brutal.
The experiment was originally supposed to take two weeks,
but it was cut short, ending after six days because the effects
were so shocking and potentially harmful.
In the wake of Zimbardo’s study, the usual claims that prison
mistreatment was a function of a few sadistic guards seemed
false. It was not that bad things happened when a few sadists
ended up in positions of authority. Rather, it seemed to be the
structure itself—the establishment of a system where some
had authority over others—that created the conditions for
inhumane treatment.
Taken together, these three experiments formed an empirical
approach to a question that had been around since at least the 17 th
century: Are human beings inherently good or inherently evil?
Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher, had argued that we need
a strong central government to keep us in check from our naturally
dark selves.
Before there was any social structure, Hobbes asserted that
humans lived in a “state of nature.” Here, there were no
rules and the aim was simply to survive. In these conditions,
we would seek that which would help us survive and try to
eliminate that which threatened survival.
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