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Why would a woman obey phone commands from a stranger to strip search an innocent employee?

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She pretty much got this victim trapped in the office, totally naked.

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But unless you're put in that situation, how do you know what you would do?

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You don't.

5
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Guilty.

6
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Guilty, sir.

7
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Guilty.

8
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Guilty.

9
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Why would four young men watch their friend die when they could have intervened to save him?

10
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Matt, stop breathing.

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This guy is in real trouble.

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You call 911.

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I had it typed into my phone.

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All I had to do was press the green button.

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I hit the red button and canceled it out.

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When good people do nothing, evil prevails.

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How could soldiers with good service records suddenly descend into barbaric behavior?

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Sometimes you cross a line, and it's a thin line.

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At any time, that can be crossed by any body if placed in certain conditions.

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The answer to these questions can be found in the human behavior experiments.

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Hands off the door.

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Hey, I don't want anybody left.

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You want to take your bed and your clothes and present?

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You want to take your bed and your clothes and present?

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In a unique period from the early 60s to the early 70s, a group of social scientists conducted

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a series of experiments examining the nature of human behavior and its relationship to social

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conventions and situations.

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In this setting, I allow things to be done to me that I wouldn't allow in any other context.

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A dentist is about to put an electric drill into my mouth.

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Stanley Milgram, one of the most influential social psychologists of the time, was particularly fascinated with the dangers of group behavior and blind obedience to authority.

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What is there in human nature that allows an individual to act without any restraints whatsoever so that he can act inhumanely, harshly, severely, and in no way limited by feelings of compassion or conscience?

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These are questions that concern me.

33
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But he might be dead in there.

34
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But he might be dead in there.

35
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The experiment requires that you continue teaching.

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330 volts.

37
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The experiments that Milgram and others conducted were controversial, and for ethical reasons

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may never be conducted again.

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Yet, the results of those experiments remain groundbreaking, profoundly revealing about the tensions between the individual and society, and increasingly relevant to contemporary life.

40
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In 1962, Stanley Milgram shocked the world with his study on obedience.

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To test his theories, he invented an electronic box that would become a window into human cruelty.

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In ascending order, a row of buttons marked the amount of voltage one person would inflict upon another.

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Milgram's original motive for the experiment was to understand the unthinkable.

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How the German people could permit the extermination of the Jews.

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When I learn of incidents such as the massacre of millions of men, women, and children perpetrated by the Nazis in World War II,

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how is it possible, I ask myself, that ordinary people, who are courteous and decent in everyday life,

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can act callously, inhumanely, without any limitations of conscience?

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Now, there are some studies in my discipline, social psychology, that seem to provide a clue to this question.

49
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The problem I wanted to study was a little different, it went a little bit further.

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It was the issue of authority.

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Under what conditions would a person obey authority, who commanded actions that went against conscience?

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These are exactly the questions that I wanted to investigate at Yale University.

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It is May 1962.

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An experiment is being conducted in the Elegant Interaction Laboratory at Yale University.

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The subjects are 40 males between the ages of 20 and 50 residing in the greater New Haven area.

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Psychologists have developed several theories to explain how people learn.

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One theory is that people learn things correctly whenever they get punished for making a mistake.

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Forty years later, Milgram's infamous experiment, Obedience, is still taught in classrooms around the world.

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Would you open those and tell me which of you is which, please?

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All right, now the next thing we'll have to do is set the learner up so that he can get some sort of punishment.

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When inspired Milgram, I would say there were a number of factors.

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One of them is he was very ambitious.

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He wanted to make a mark in social psychology.

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And he wanted, as he wrote to one friend, he wanted to come up with the most,

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the boldest experiment that he could think of.

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Would you roll up your right sleeve, please?

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This electrode is connected to the shock generator in the next room.

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And this electrode paste is to provide a good contact to avoid any blister or burn.

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Do you have any questions now before we go into the next room?

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About two years ago, I was in the Veterans Hospital in West Haven.

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And while there, they detected a heart condition.

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There's nothing serious, but as long as I'm having these shocks,

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how strong are they? How dangerous are they?

74
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Well, no, although they may be painful, they're not dangerous.

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Anything else?

76
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No, that's all.

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All right, teacher, would you take the test and be seated in front of the shock generator, please, in the next room?

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But the experiment was rigged.

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The victim was an accomplice of the experimenter.

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The victim, according to plan, provided many wrong answers.

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His verbal responses were standardized on tape, and each protest was coordinated to a particular voltage level on the shock generator.

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Now, as teacher, you were seated in front of this impressive-looking instrument, the shock generator.

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Its essential feature is a line of switches that goes from 15 volts to 450 volts, and a set of verbal designations that goes from slight shock to moderate shock.

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Strong shock, very strong shock, intense shock, extreme intensity shock, and finally, XXX, danger-severe shock.

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Your job, the experimenter explains to you, is to teach the learner a simple word pair test.

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If he gets each answer correctly, fine, you move on to the next pair.

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But if he makes a mistake, you were instructed to give him an electric shock, starting with 15 volts, and you increase the shock one step on each error.

88
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Incorrect. You'll now get a shock of 105 volts.

89
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Hard head.

90
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Just how far can you go on this thing?

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As far as it's necessary.

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What do you mean, as far as it's necessary?

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Complete the test.

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Milgram was very much aware that obedience is a necessary ingredient for society to function.

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But he focused on the darker side of obedience.

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Incorrect. 150 volts.

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Ah!

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Sad face.

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That's all. Get me out of here.

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I told you I had heart trouble. My heart's starting to bother me now.

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It's absolutely essential that you continue.

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You had no other choice, teacher.

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Oh, I had a lot of choices.

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My number one choice is that I wouldn't go on if I thought he was being harmed.

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Now, this man makes disobedience seem a very rational and simple deed.

106
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Now, other subjects respond quite differently to the experimenter's authority.

107
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Wrong. It's hair.

108
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75 volts, Jim.

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Oh!

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Please continue.

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Some psychologists were troubled by the ethics of it.

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Many, if not most, subjects found it a highly stressful, conflicted experience.

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People are stammering, stuttering, laughing hysterically, inappropriately.

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150 volts.

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Oh!

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Experimenter. That's all. Get me out of here.

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Please quit.

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Oh, my heart's starting to bother me now.

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Get me out of here, please.

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Let me out of here. You have no right to keep me here. Let me out.

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Let me out of here. Let me out.

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Continue, please.

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Clearly, you know, when we say people went to the top of the shock board, it wasn't like they were going blithely, sadistically.

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People went, stop and go, stop and go.

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They were in a state of conflict, which created a tremendous amount of stress.

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So that was the main critique.

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This will be at 3.30.

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Wow!

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As his voice began to show increasing frustration, so did I.

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And I was really in a state of real conflict and agitation.

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One of Stanley Milgram's basic contributions was that you don't ask people what they would do given this hypothetical situation.

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You put them in the situation.

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Wrong.

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I want the 180 volts.

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Please continue, teacher.

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180 volts.

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I can't stand the pain. Let me out of here.

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I can't stand it. I'm not going to kill that man today.

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Concord to Milgram, one of the things that's a prerequisite for carrying out acts that are evil is to shed responsibility from your shoulders and hand it over to the person in charge.

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I mean, who's going to take the responsibility if anything happens to that gentleman?

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I'm responsible for anything that happens here.

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Continue, please.

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All right, next one. Slow.

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I didn't hold any gun to anybody's head.

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Just the fact that he conveyed a sense of authority.

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Roughly 60, 65% of the people went all the way to the top of the shock board.

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450 volts.

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That's it.

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Now continue using the last switch on the board, please. The 450 switch for each wrong answer. Continue, please.

150
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I'm not getting no answer. Don't the man's health mean anything?

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Whether the learner likes it or not, we must...

152
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But he might be dead in there.

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Milgram made the point, I think very effectively, that the Nazis weren't all a bunch of psychopaths at Belsen and Dachau, that you could staff a death camp from the middle class in New Haven.

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Who was actually pushing the switch?

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I was, but he kept insisting. I told him no, but he said, you've got to keep going.

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What kind of obedience would Milgram get today, if he were to do the experiment today?

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Probably about the same.

158
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Probably about the same. Why?

159
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I don't know. I think people are just inherently obedient.

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It just really shows how far human beings will go to appease what they perceive to be an authority figure.

161
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Milgram has identified one of the constants, one of the universals of social behavior.

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The readiness to obey authority cuts across time. It's a constant.

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The other outstanding and distinctive thing about the obedience experiment is how much it has and keeps on permeating contemporary culture and thought.

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It's still with us in very, very important ways.

165
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A series of strange events recently confirmed Milgram's theories about obedience.

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Targeting fast food restaurants across the country, a con man telephoned restaurant managers and convinced them to strip search and sometimes sexually abuse their employees.

167
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The mystery is not in the con man, but in the victims. Why would they obey?

168
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This person was so convincing. People saw him as a legitimate authority. I think we have a, um, probably the closest thing that we have to Milgram experiment today in the, uh, in these strip searches.

169
00:12:10,040 --> 00:12:16,040
The most famous of these incidents took place at a McDonald's in Mount Washington, Kentucky.

170
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There was a videotape security camera it had filmed.

171
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We didn't hear what the instructions were, but due to the actions that were, uh, had taken place, what the victim was doing in the video and stuff, it was pretty evident what each instruction was.

172
00:12:33,040 --> 00:12:42,040
An anonymous caller pretending to be a police officer told the assistant manager that an employee had stolen some money.

173
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He said, I'm Officer Scott. And he said, I'm with the police department. I'm investigating a complaint.

174
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It went directly from a theft into a drug thing. So I was asked to search her clothing.

175
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You know, he would tell me, take her shoes, click them, take her shirt, shake it out.

176
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I know how it seems to people, but you weren't on the phone with him. The man has convinced 70 to 100 other places, the very same thing. He's very good at what he does. Very good.

177
00:13:23,040 --> 00:13:37,040
He sounded like a police officer. And, um, I'm thinking, okay, you know, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do.

178
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He was getting some kind of satisfaction by being an authoritative figure and telling people what to do and then realizing by the phone conversation that they were actually doing what he said.

179
00:13:48,040 --> 00:13:55,040
He's telling me that I needed to get someone to sit with her while he goes and gets somebody to come in to pick her up.

180
00:13:56,040 --> 00:14:09,040
The caller then asked the manager if she was married or had a boyfriend. She said that she had a fiancé. Then the caller asked if she could have her fiancé come to the restaurant and assist her with the strip search of the victim.

181
00:14:09,040 --> 00:14:18,040
He says, well, why don't you have him come up and sit there? I mean, you can trust him. So, um, I called Wes, my fiancé. We were going to get married and asked him if he would come up.

182
00:14:18,040 --> 00:14:39,040
The manager goes about doing her duties of running the restaurant and leaves the fiancé there in the office and then the caller starts giving instructions over the phone of things that he wants the victim to do and what he wants the fiancé to tell her to do.

183
00:14:39,040 --> 00:14:50,040
Have her remove her apron and instruct her to do jumping jacks and jog in place and several more things.

184
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She was still in high school. The kind of person she was, she was actually graduating the top ten in her class. And she was scared of being in trouble with the police. So she sort of just went along and did whatever the fiancé told her to do because she didn't want to be in trouble for anything.

185
00:15:15,040 --> 00:15:32,040
During all this time, I'm working. I'm running the floor. I'm getting change. And then when I would walk into the office to get the change or whatever I had to get, Wes would be sitting where he was when I left. And she was sitting where she was. And no one said anything.

186
00:15:32,040 --> 00:15:48,040
After over two and a half hours, Summer's fiancé Walter Nix did something that was unthinkable. Complying with the instructions of the caller, he ordered the employee to perform a sexual act.

187
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There's no way that I could take away from what happened to her. A lot of people, you know, look at you and go, well, you're, you know, you're a nut. You should be strung up. I've had it even said to me. But it's really hard because you weren't there.

188
00:16:06,040 --> 00:16:23,040
The Milgram study showed us that most people would do that. If you structure the environment such that, you know, you provide all the authority and, you know, the commands, just anybody might do this.

189
00:16:23,040 --> 00:16:27,040
But I do think this sounds worse. You think this is worse than with Milgram did?

190
00:16:27,040 --> 00:16:40,040
With Milgram, there was somebody, like, right, sitting right there and instructing them. If they hesitated, they could turn and then somebody could encourage them and, and they could sort of maybe psychologically leave that responsibility on that other person.

191
00:16:40,040 --> 00:16:44,040
But in this case, the police officer's on the phone. He's not standing there.

192
00:16:44,040 --> 00:16:47,040
Exactly. It's a very good point.

193
00:16:47,040 --> 00:16:58,040
You know, you look back on it and you say, I wouldn't have done it. But unless you're put in that situation at that time, how do you know what you would do? You don't. You don't.

194
00:16:58,040 --> 00:17:08,040
Over 60 other people did exactly as Donna Summers did. Why is it so easy for us to obey orders even when we know they are wrong?

195
00:17:08,040 --> 00:17:13,040
Why are we willing to inflict pain on others if someone else takes responsibility?

196
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There's nothing more difficult for people to violate a social structure which all participants have initially accepted.

197
00:17:20,040 --> 00:17:24,040
It reminds me of a situation that once occurred in South America. I was in an airplane.

198
00:17:24,040 --> 00:17:28,040
The pilot came into the plane. He was drunk. He was reeling toward the cockpit.

199
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The passengers looked at each other, but no one got up. No one said to the pilot, you're drunk, we can't fly in this plane.

200
00:17:34,040 --> 00:17:39,040
There are a set of pressures that keep you in the role that you've initially accepted.

201
00:17:39,040 --> 00:17:49,040
What pressures would keep a friend from calling for help even when it was a matter of life and death?

202
00:17:49,040 --> 00:17:58,040
In 2005, four fraternity brothers watched and did nothing to help as their close friend, 21-year-old Matthew Carrington, died in front of them.

203
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I will live with consequences for the rest of my life. My actions killed a good person.

204
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Nothing I can say here today will bring back Matthew Carrington or lessen the grief that his family feels.

205
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His death was preventable. And I will live with the guilt for the rest of my life.

206
00:18:17,040 --> 00:18:20,040
Why did these four boys do nothing?

207
00:18:20,040 --> 00:18:30,040
Every time I think about it, the feelings rush back and the idea of what if just stands in the corner, just not leaving.

208
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It's always there.

209
00:18:33,040 --> 00:18:38,040
I had no doubt that if I would have known what I know now that I could have stopped it.

210
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This story is not unique, but it raises a question. Is there something in human nature that can keep us from helping?

211
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In 1964, 38 New Yorkers watched through their windows as one of their neighbors was brutally murdered.

212
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Her name was Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old woman.

213
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The Genovese incident where a young woman coming home late at night from her work was assaulted by somebody who was one of those random, crazy people.

214
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Kitty was running up the block and Winston Mosley ran after her until she reached the midpoint of the block, almost directly under this streetlight.

215
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Mosley caught up with her and stabbed her four times in the back.

216
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Her screams were loud, unmistakable, and reverberated throughout the entire area.

217
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The lights went on in the windows around the courtyard so we know that people were seeing this.

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Nobody called the police.

219
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Somebody who lived on the seventh floor opened his window and yelled out, what's going on down there?

220
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When Mosley heard somebody yelling out, he ran back to his car. Kitty was still alive.

221
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She managed to get up. She staggers around the corner here, still screaming.

222
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People in that building heard her as well. And she collapses inside this hallway.

223
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There's one apartment above there. It was occupied by Carl Ross.

224
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Carl opened his door at the time that Mosley returns and he saw the second attack taking place.

225
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And he did nothing.

226
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After stabbing Kitty another eight times in this very hallway, the killer ran away, leaving Kitty to bleed to death.

227
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Eventually, a neighbor called the police, but it was too late.

228
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Kitty died before the ambulance could get her to the hospital.

229
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That shocked the city.

230
00:21:00,040 --> 00:21:05,040
Now, it's not that a person got murdered that shocked the city.

231
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That happens, sadly. It's that a person got murdered and her neighbors watched and nobody did anything.

232
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Bib Latney and I, we read about the murder as did everybody else.

233
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Here we were two young social psychologists starting our research careers.

234
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We know about Stanley Milgram's set of experiments on obedience to authority.

235
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And we started to think about, in an offhand way, what could have produced the Genovese effect.

236
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Perhaps Kitty Genovese might have been alive today if fewer people had seen her.

237
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There were perhaps 38 people who could have responded, but each were looking to see what these other people were doing.

238
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We decided to try to create a relatively ambiguous situation to which we could see how people responded.

239
00:22:07,040 --> 00:22:13,040
We thought that one kind of thing that comes up that's often hard to tell whether it's a real emergency or not has to do with fire.

240
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You see smoke coming through the vent, and it is ambiguous. What do you do?

241
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Hey, there's smoke coming out from under the door in that room where I was filling out the questionnaire.

242
00:22:36,040 --> 00:22:40,040
Almost everybody does that if they face the smoke alone.

243
00:22:40,040 --> 00:22:44,040
Now let's have you face the smoke with two strangers.

244
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One person can be seen glancing at the other. The other is continuing to fill out the questionnaire.

245
00:23:00,040 --> 00:23:04,040
It's getting a little more smoky in their room, but nonetheless you stay in their room.

246
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By and large, people surrounded by people who react as if there's nothing wrong, don't respond.

247
00:23:13,040 --> 00:23:22,040
Everybody sees the other people not reacting, so they create a definition of the situation. No emergency.

248
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To test their theories about how groups and individuals respond differently to a crisis, Darley and Latene conducted a second experiment.

249
00:23:33,040 --> 00:23:35,040
This time, the emergency was clearly defined.

250
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First of all, I would like to thank the two of you for being here today to help out in the study.

251
00:23:40,040 --> 00:23:45,040
In this experiment, one student was asked to communicate via intercon with another student down the hall.

252
00:23:45,040 --> 00:24:01,040
What sounded like a real seizure in the subject's headphones was just a tape recording of an actor playing a role for the experiment.

253
00:24:01,040 --> 00:24:20,040
If you knew there was nobody else but you to help, you got up, you opened the door of your room, and you headed off to find the person.

254
00:24:20,040 --> 00:24:32,040
On the other hand, if there were three or four other people present who you heard,

255
00:24:33,040 --> 00:24:36,040
I would like to thank the three of you for being here today to help us with the study.

256
00:24:37,040 --> 00:24:41,040
You are much less likely to respond yourself.

257
00:24:41,040 --> 00:24:49,040
Somebody is getting a little help here because I'm having a real problem right now. Help me out.

258
00:24:50,040 --> 00:25:01,040
The responsibility any individual feels for helping is diffused when there are other people who could also help.

259
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:09,040
So what can we say back to the bystanders in the Genovese situation?

260
00:25:09,040 --> 00:25:13,040
The first thing we can say, I think, is they got a bum rap.

261
00:25:14,040 --> 00:25:18,040
They were reacting the way that you or me might react in those situations.

262
00:25:19,040 --> 00:25:24,040
There have been many incidents, like the Genovese incident since then,

263
00:25:25,040 --> 00:25:30,040
and there have been many incidents in which people who could help, don't help.

264
00:25:31,040 --> 00:25:35,040
The children are not professional actors. They agreed to participate in an unusual study.

265
00:25:35,040 --> 00:25:40,040
Wired with microphones and film from an observation point high across New York 6th Avenue.

266
00:25:41,040 --> 00:25:43,040
They will be set out to ask a simple question.

267
00:25:44,040 --> 00:25:45,040
Will you help me?

268
00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:48,040
Excuse me, I'm lost. Can you help me, please?

269
00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:51,040
Excuse me, I'm lost. Can you help me, please?

270
00:25:52,040 --> 00:25:54,040
Excuse me, I'm lost. Can you help me, please?

271
00:25:55,040 --> 00:25:57,040
Excuse me, I want to call my mother, please.

272
00:25:58,040 --> 00:26:00,040
What? Only call my mother, can you help me?

273
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:14,040
We are all creatures of socialization, and socialization is what teaches us to pay attention to what other people do when they're responding to a situation.

274
00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:27,040
I can remember when I first heard about the study, Psych 1.

275
00:26:28,040 --> 00:26:30,040
I was like, wow, that is ridiculous.

276
00:26:30,040 --> 00:26:43,040
How can someone see something happening that they know is wrong, that they know the person standing next to them know is wrong, but not taking action?

277
00:26:44,040 --> 00:26:49,040
It's sickening to know that I took part in it, that I could have just been the one that stood up.

278
00:26:49,040 --> 00:27:00,040
A makeshift memorial of flowers and candles is placed outside the Kai Tao fraternity house for Matthew Carrington.

279
00:27:01,040 --> 00:27:10,040
Police say the 21-year-old Chico State student was in the basement of this house, taking part in a fraternity event at 5 a.m. Wednesday morning, when his body gave out.

280
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:14,040
Matt didn't have to die that night.

281
00:27:14,040 --> 00:27:18,040
It could have all been so different.

282
00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:24,040
It could have all been from the very beginning when they were all down there, when there was a room full of guys.

283
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:27,040
It went wrong before they all left.

284
00:27:28,040 --> 00:27:35,040
Matthew Carrington joined a fraternity and was undergoing hazing during the spring semester of his junior year.

285
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:56,040
He wanted to join because he would get to meet people. He's kind of shy, you know, networking and such when you're older. I mean, you've got brothers and houses in every college all over the country, so.

286
00:27:56,040 --> 00:28:11,040
They did some pretty silly things. More embarrassing than causing anybody any harm. Like wearing a miniskirt out in the intersection or switching your t-shirt with a homeless guy and putting his shirt on.

287
00:28:12,040 --> 00:28:15,040
But it was nothing that was going to get anybody hurt.

288
00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:25,040
How did these seemingly harmless pranks escalate to the point where Matthew died?

289
00:28:25,040 --> 00:28:34,040
Basically, it was the third night of what the fraternity called Inspiration Week, what the pledges call Hell Week.

290
00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:45,040
The pledges of Mike and Matt were brought into the basement and the first thing they did was undergo some grueling physical calisthenics.

291
00:28:45,040 --> 00:29:02,040
The young men were then given a five-gallon water jug, which in itself weighed about 42 pounds, and were told to stand up on a narrow bench, stand on one foot, and to drink as much as they possibly could.

292
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:13,040
Matthew at some point became nauseated, vomited, became increasingly confused. The kidneys can only handle so much water and indeed you can't poison yourself.

293
00:29:13,040 --> 00:29:25,040
When you're drinking water and you're acting drunk, okay, something's not right. You know? When you're slurring your words, when you're, you know, you can't manipulate things like you normally, something's wrong.

294
00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:40,040
Gabriel Mostretti and J.P. Fickas came in at some point and they were both intoxicated. Mostretti was excessively intoxicated and they basically took over.

295
00:29:40,040 --> 00:29:51,040
Actually, to tell you the truth, I don't remember most of it. Unfortunately, I was pretty intoxicated when it happened. I remember making him do push-ups. I don't remember why.

296
00:29:51,040 --> 00:30:01,040
Matt was at a point where he couldn't do any more push-ups. He just all of a sudden dropped and his, it just seemed like his whole body just tensed up.

297
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:15,040
You've got, well, at this point, four boys down there. It just makes me sick that they didn't think. They didn't think something's wrong. So why can't someone say stop?

298
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:31,040
What could happen is if one person says, this guy is in real trouble. You call 911. You do this. You do that. Everybody will, by that definition, will start to react, will be helpful.

299
00:30:31,040 --> 00:30:38,040
The thing is balanced on a knife edge, but sometimes it falls and nothing happens.

300
00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:51,040
His hips moved a little bit and he just seized up. And Mike said, oh my God, I think he bit his tongue. And then he said, somebody needs to call an ambulance.

301
00:30:51,040 --> 00:31:01,040
I was turning on my cell phone when I was walking down the stairs and was typing in 911 when I saw Mike at the bottom of the stairs. I had it typed into my phone.

302
00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:08,040
All I had to do was press the green button. And he said, it's okay. You don't need to call 911. Matt's just sleeping.

303
00:31:08,040 --> 00:31:14,040
You know, I hit, I hit the red button and canceled it out. And he was snoring. It just sounded like he was snoring.

304
00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:20,040
I remember that thoroughly. I remember the sound of him snoring. I remember thinking, no, he's sleeping.

305
00:31:21,040 --> 00:31:34,040
The snoring was certainly not sleeping. It would have been a result of water intoxication and a pulmonary edema, which is basically the lungs filling with fluid.

306
00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:40,040
Approximately an hour after he had been left to sleep at all, he was not breathing.

307
00:31:40,040 --> 00:31:46,040
You do nothing for an hour while they have him lay there. Then they realize he's not breathing.

308
00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:55,040
Then all of a sudden it's like, call 911. Well, God, at this point they do. But at this point now, it's too late.

309
00:31:55,040 --> 00:32:01,040
Matthew was pronounced dead approximately 27 minutes after arrival in the emergency department.

310
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:14,040
When we got there, they took me and Debbie in the back and we were still hoping that when they pulled that sheet over his head, it was going to be another kid, not yours.

311
00:32:14,040 --> 00:32:24,040
Just as bad as that sounds, there was just a chance it wasn't our son. And as soon as they pulled the sheet up and you seen his hairdo, you knew it was him.

312
00:32:24,040 --> 00:32:47,040
The four ringleaders in the fraternity hazing and torture death of 21 year old Chico State student Matthew Carrington accepted responsibility.

313
00:32:47,040 --> 00:32:56,040
All four, some through tears, pleading guilty. Guilty. Guilty, sir. Guilty. Guilty.

314
00:32:56,040 --> 00:33:03,040
All four were given jail time. Most culpable, 22 year old Gabriel Maestretti sentenced to a year in jail for involuntary manslaughter.

315
00:33:03,040 --> 00:33:10,040
25 year old Jerry Lim and 19 year old John Fickus sentenced to six months as accessories to manslaughter.

316
00:33:10,040 --> 00:33:16,040
Matt trusted him to help him out if he was going to get in trouble because he wasn't worried about getting into trouble.

317
00:33:16,040 --> 00:33:25,040
with just drinking water. When it was time for help, they didn't step up and he didn't get any help.

318
00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:38,040
Nearly a year after Matthew's death, Debbie visits three of the four fraternity brothers who remain in jail, serving time for involuntary manslaughter.

319
00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:51,040
I don't think they're bad kids. I think they just made bad choices and have been a terrible, terrible mistake, you know, that we're all going to live with for the rest of our lives.

320
00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:56,040
It's just so hard.

321
00:33:56,040 --> 00:34:06,040
I start all my days crying for Grandma because I just miss him so much.

322
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:21,040
And I think of all of you guys, I think of the pain that you must be feeling, having to live with them.

323
00:34:21,040 --> 00:34:35,040
For like the whole year, it was just one day being played over and over that night, being played over and over again in my head.

324
00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:42,040
I find it hard to forgive myself. I don't know. It's like the only thing that makes me feel better is to like hate myself.

325
00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:52,040
It's sad in itself that you want, you want retribution just so that it can be over with.

326
00:34:55,040 --> 00:35:04,040
What it's hard for us to realize is the power that situations have over us to cause us to act in certain ways.

327
00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:10,040
It was not the case that they had been horrible, moral failures.

328
00:35:11,040 --> 00:35:18,040
It's the case that they're like the rest of us, caught up in situations, influenced by the situations, reacting.

329
00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:31,040
I believe that there's all different kinds of people and that a certain kind of people take charge in situations.

330
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:37,040
Unfortunately for Matt, none of us were the type of person who took charge and told people what to do.

331
00:35:38,040 --> 00:35:44,040
We just found ourselves looking at each other, waiting for someone to step up, and nobody did.

332
00:35:51,040 --> 00:35:55,040
One of the illusions about human behavior is that it stems entirely from personality or character.

333
00:35:55,040 --> 00:36:01,040
But social psychology shows us that often behavior is dominated by the social roles we're asked to play.

334
00:36:02,040 --> 00:36:07,040
This point is driven home with particular force by a study carried out by Professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University.

335
00:36:08,040 --> 00:36:16,040
Professor Zimbardo created a prison situation in which ordinary people were asked to play the role either of prisoner or of warden.

336
00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:18,040
Then he observed what happened.

337
00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:26,040
In 1971, in the basement of the psychology department of Stanford University, a mock prison was created.

338
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:30,040
It rivaled all social psychology experiments in controversy.

339
00:36:31,040 --> 00:36:34,040
Shortly after I finished this Stanford prison study, Milgram embraced me and said,

340
00:36:35,040 --> 00:36:36,040
I'm so happy that you did this.

341
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:44,040
He said, because now you can take off some of the heat that he's had to bear alone of having done the most unethical study.

342
00:36:44,040 --> 00:36:52,040
Although this experiment is over 30 years old, its enduring power has been underscored by the events at Abu Ghraib.

343
00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:57,040
When we got to Abu Ghraib, it was eerie.

344
00:36:58,040 --> 00:37:02,040
People were being told to rough up Iraqis that wouldn't cooperate.

345
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:07,040
I mean, they're torturing, they're abusing detainees.

346
00:37:08,040 --> 00:37:13,040
You're looking at the situation thinking, they've condoned this, but why?

347
00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:21,040
And if it wouldn't have been for those photos, no one would have ever believed what was going on over there.

348
00:37:21,040 --> 00:37:32,040
When I first saw the pictures, immediately a sense of familiarity struck me because I knew that I had been there before.

349
00:37:33,040 --> 00:37:36,040
I'd been in this type of situation. I knew what was going on in my mind.

350
00:37:39,040 --> 00:37:45,040
The photographs were strikingly familiar to the photographs that we had taken, many of the photographs I had taken in the prison study.

351
00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:51,040
We didn't do any of the stuff that you see in Abu Ghraib where they, you know, get into a big pile or something like that.

352
00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:55,040
But I certainly subjected them to all kinds of humiliations.

353
00:37:56,040 --> 00:38:01,040
I don't know where I would have stopped myself. Given enough time, we could have got there.

354
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:12,040
When the images of the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib were revealed, immediately the military went on the defensive saying, it's a few bad apples.

355
00:38:13,040 --> 00:38:17,040
When we see somebody doing bad things, we assume they were bad people to begin with.

356
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:27,040
But what we know in our study is there are a set of social psychological variables that can make ordinary people do things they never could imagine doing.

357
00:38:27,040 --> 00:38:33,040
At Abu Ghraib, ordinary people perpetrated extraordinary abuses.

358
00:38:34,040 --> 00:38:38,040
To understand why, it helps to reach back to the lessons of Zimbardo's experiment.

359
00:38:39,040 --> 00:38:42,040
How people respond to a cruel environment without clear rules.

360
00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:54,040
I think he and everybody else who came down into that situation got caught up into that situation.

361
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:58,040
And the sense that this was an experiment, that began to fade away.

362
00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:02,040
It became just life.

363
00:39:03,040 --> 00:39:08,040
We frankly didn't anticipate what was going to happen.

364
00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:14,040
We tried to really test the power of the environment to change and transform otherwise normal people.

365
00:39:15,040 --> 00:39:22,040
Much as Milgram had changed or transformed otherwise normal people in an obedient situation, we wanted to do it in a prison-like situation.

366
00:39:23,040 --> 00:39:26,040
Over 70 men volunteered for Zimbardo's experiment.

367
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:31,040
And they completed a battery of psychological tests.

368
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:35,040
We picked two dozen, 24 who were the most normal and most healthy.

369
00:39:36,040 --> 00:39:38,040
Half are going to be guards, half are going to be prisoners.

370
00:39:39,040 --> 00:39:40,040
And it's like flipping a coin.

371
00:39:40,040 --> 00:39:41,040
And heads, this one's a guard, this one's a prisoner.

372
00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:47,040
So at the beginning, there's no difference in the kinds of people who are in your two groups.

373
00:39:47,040 --> 00:39:56,040
When we were given our jobs as guards, we were issued a uniform, which was a plain, sort of khaki or lighter-colored uniform.

374
00:39:57,040 --> 00:40:02,040
And then we gave them the symbols of power, handcuffs, a whistle, a big billy club.

375
00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:07,040
And then the other thing we gave them were silver-reflecting sunglasses.

376
00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:11,040
When you have mirror sunglasses on, then nobody can see your eyeballs.

377
00:40:12,040 --> 00:40:16,040
I think that any time you put on what essentially is a mask and you mask your identity,

378
00:40:17,040 --> 00:40:22,040
then it allows you to behave in ways that you would not behave if you didn't have the mask on.

379
00:40:23,040 --> 00:40:28,040
To make it more realistic, I had arranged with this Palo Alto Police Department to make mock arrests.

380
00:40:33,040 --> 00:40:35,040
When I was arrested, it was a surprise to me.

381
00:40:35,040 --> 00:40:38,040
I didn't think I was going to be brought to an actual police station.

382
00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:41,040
I didn't think I was going to go through a booking process.

383
00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:45,040
The guards then put a blindfold on them, stripped them naked,

384
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:49,040
and then they put them in dresses, smocks with no underpants.

385
00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:53,040
Each had a number that replaced their name.

386
00:40:54,040 --> 00:40:56,040
They had to know the number. They could only be referred to by that number.

387
00:40:57,040 --> 00:41:02,040
And they had a chain on one foot, which was put there to remind them at all times of their loss of freedom.

388
00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:06,040
So all of these things produces a sense of being dehumanized.

389
00:41:09,040 --> 00:41:13,040
On the first day, I said, this is not going to work.

390
00:41:14,040 --> 00:41:16,040
I mean, the guards felt awkward giving orders.

391
00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:20,040
And they'd say, okay, line up, repeat your numbers, and the prisoners start giggling.

392
00:41:20,040 --> 00:41:23,040
Hey, I don't want anybody laughing. Three, two, one.

393
00:41:24,040 --> 00:41:25,040
And then a very interesting thing happened.

394
00:41:25,040 --> 00:41:29,040
Dave Eshelman, who the prisoners named John Wayne, like he's a Wild West cowboy,

395
00:41:30,040 --> 00:41:31,040
he begins to be more extreme.

396
00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:42,040
I decided that I would become the worst, most intimidating, cruel prison guard that I could possibly be.

397
00:41:43,040 --> 00:41:45,040
Have I seen the picture that you work where you told?

398
00:41:46,040 --> 00:41:47,040
Thanks, sir. Say it again.

399
00:41:48,040 --> 00:41:49,040
Bless you, sir.

400
00:41:49,040 --> 00:41:50,040
Say bless you.

401
00:41:51,040 --> 00:41:52,040
Bless you, sir.

402
00:41:53,040 --> 00:41:57,040
I was sort of fascinated myself that people were believing the act.

403
00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:04,040
And I was trying to see how far I could take it before somebody would say, okay, that's enough. Stop.

404
00:42:05,040 --> 00:42:06,040
We did have to do things like push-ups.

405
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:08,040
We would have to sing things.

406
00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:11,040
At the beginning, we protested some of the actions.

407
00:42:12,040 --> 00:42:14,040
We did things to irritate the guards.

408
00:42:14,040 --> 00:42:20,040
So the guards' authority was challenged right off the bat.

409
00:42:21,040 --> 00:42:22,040
And the guards had to decide how they were going to handle that.

410
00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:24,040
And they had to decide it without our input.

411
00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:28,040
I mean, again, this was not a Milgram study in which we were standing over them telling them what to do.

412
00:42:29,040 --> 00:42:33,040
And they began to see the prisoners' behavior as a kind of an affront to their authority.

413
00:42:34,040 --> 00:42:35,040
And they began to push back.

414
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:39,040
We would ramp up the general harassment, just sort of crank it up a bit.

415
00:42:40,040 --> 00:42:42,040
Nobody was telling me I shouldn't be doing this.

416
00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:44,040
The professor is the authority here.

417
00:42:44,040 --> 00:42:45,040
You know, he's the prison warden.

418
00:42:46,040 --> 00:42:47,040
He's not stopping me.

419
00:42:48,040 --> 00:42:49,040
This is unbelievable.

420
00:42:50,040 --> 00:42:51,040
They took our clothes.

421
00:42:52,040 --> 00:42:53,040
Hands off the door.

422
00:42:54,040 --> 00:42:58,040
There was the first evening, a kind of rebellion that took place.

423
00:42:59,040 --> 00:43:00,040
The prisoners rebelled.

424
00:43:01,040 --> 00:43:04,040
They barricaded themselves in their cells and said, we refused to come out.

425
00:43:05,040 --> 00:43:06,040
They took off their numbers.

426
00:43:06,040 --> 00:43:08,040
They didn't want to be de-individuated.

427
00:43:09,040 --> 00:43:10,040
They started cursing the guards to their face.

428
00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:16,040
And the key, the key turning point was the guards began to think of them as dangerous prisoners.

429
00:43:17,040 --> 00:43:22,040
And so the guards formulated a plan to use fire extinguishers.

430
00:43:23,040 --> 00:43:30,040
Took the doors down, dragged the prisoners out, stripped them naked, and essentially broke the rebellion in a purely physical way.

431
00:43:30,040 --> 00:43:39,040
From that point on, the study was as remarkable a series of events as I have ever seen.

432
00:43:40,040 --> 00:43:52,040
It was a real laboratory for Zimbardo and I to watch human nature transformed in a very rapid way in the face of a very powerful situation.

433
00:43:52,040 --> 00:43:56,040
People really suffered. I mean, guards did terrible things to the prisoners.

434
00:43:57,040 --> 00:44:00,040
They punished them by putting them in solitary confinement, which was a small closet.

435
00:44:01,040 --> 00:44:06,040
You could squat or stand, but, you know, you couldn't sit. And it was dark and dank, actually.

436
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:12,040
Every hour, every day, there's a teeny little bit more of an increment.

437
00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:19,040
And they're stepping up, taunting the prisoners. They're stepping up, the Count's not letting them sleep. They're stepping up.

438
00:44:19,040 --> 00:44:24,040
I don't think from one minute to the next, the people who are in it see the change and see the difference.

439
00:44:24,040 --> 00:44:36,040
And then the next key thing happened, beside the rebellion, Prison 8612. He was the first one to have an emotional breakdown.

440
00:44:37,040 --> 00:44:42,040
I feel really fucked up inside. You don't know. I gotta go. To a doctor, anything.

441
00:44:43,040 --> 00:44:50,040
I mean, Jesus Christ, I'm burning up inside. Don't you know? I'm fucked up. I don't know how to explain it. I'm all fucked up inside.

442
00:44:50,040 --> 00:44:53,040
I want out! I want out now!

443
00:44:55,040 --> 00:44:59,040
At the time, if you had questioned me about the effect I was having, I would say,

444
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:04,040
Well, you know, they must be a wimp. They're weak or they're faking.

445
00:45:05,040 --> 00:45:09,040
Because I wouldn't have believed that what I was doing could actually cause somebody to have a nervous breakdown.

446
00:45:10,040 --> 00:45:13,040
It was just us sort of getting our jollies with it.

447
00:45:14,040 --> 00:45:17,040
You know, let's be like puppeteers here. Let's make these people do things.

448
00:45:17,040 --> 00:45:21,040
What if I told you to get down to that pool and fuck the pool? What would you do then?

449
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:25,040
The guards now began to escalate their use of power.

450
00:45:26,040 --> 00:45:28,040
Some of them had prisoners clean out toilet bowls with their bare hands.

451
00:45:29,040 --> 00:45:36,040
They now taunt, humiliate, degrade the prisoners in front of each other, and they exert arbitrary control over the prisoners.

452
00:45:36,040 --> 00:45:45,040
They keep thinking of more and more unusual things to do. And very soon after the fourth day, things begin to turn sexual.

453
00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:53,040
You be the bride of Frankenstein, and you be Frankenstein. I want you to walk over here like Frankenstein and say that you love the pool man.

454
00:45:53,040 --> 00:46:01,040
If you want to fully sort of humiliate somebody, then you want to get them in those things where their biggest fears are.

455
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:07,040
And a lot of us have a lot of sexual hang-ups, and so that was part of that effort to humiliate them even further.

456
00:46:07,040 --> 00:46:24,040
The guards knew that had the coin come up heads rather than tails, they would have had the dress on rather than the uniform on. They knew that.

457
00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:30,040
So they certainly knew that the prisoners who were being mistreated had done nothing wrong to deserve the mistreatment.

458
00:46:31,040 --> 00:46:41,040
And yet, the roles themselves were so powerful, and the environment itself was so powerful, that they ended up punishing those prisoners as though they had done something wrong.

459
00:46:42,040 --> 00:46:44,040
Prisoner 819 did a bad thing!

460
00:46:45,040 --> 00:46:47,040
We were told to chant something about how he was a bad prisoner.

461
00:46:47,040 --> 00:46:53,040
And at the time I went along with it, I'm thinking, what does this matter? We don't believe this, but we can go along and chant it.

462
00:46:54,040 --> 00:46:58,040
Because of what a prisoner 819 did, my cell is the best!

463
00:46:59,040 --> 00:47:03,040
Because of what a prisoner 819 did, my cell is the best!

464
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:08,040
That night, he had a breakdown. Every day after that, another prisoner broke down in a similar way.

465
00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:14,040
I mean, extreme stress reaction. We released another one on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

466
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:19,040
Nobody who was in that study could deny that the prisoner breakdowns were genuine.

467
00:47:20,040 --> 00:47:27,040
They were scary to see. They were upsetting to us. They were unexpected, but they were very clearly the real thing.

468
00:47:28,040 --> 00:47:32,040
At some level, we understood that something was happening that we were no longer in control of.

469
00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:36,040
It was damaging people. We didn't quite have a grasp on what to do about it.

470
00:47:36,040 --> 00:47:49,040
One of the mistakes we made was that we hadn't built in time to step back and to look at what was happening and call it what it was, which was mistreatment.

471
00:47:49,040 --> 00:47:52,040
We were caught up in the events that were taking place.

472
00:47:53,040 --> 00:47:58,040
Well, you can keep your blankets and 416 will stay in another day.

473
00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:05,040
We got three, guess one. Keep your blankets, 416, you're going to be in there for a while.

474
00:48:06,040 --> 00:48:07,040
So just get used to it.

475
00:48:07,040 --> 00:48:15,040
On the fifth day of the study, Zimbardo invited his girlfriend, recent psychology graduate, Christina Maslak, to visit the mock prison.

476
00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:21,040
I had heard bits and pieces from Phil about what was going on.

477
00:48:22,040 --> 00:48:26,040
And then when I was down there that evening, it really was kind of a, wow.

478
00:48:27,040 --> 00:48:32,040
The thing that really got to me was when some of the guards took the prisoners down the hall to the men's room.

479
00:48:32,040 --> 00:48:42,040
She looks out and sees a line of prisoners with paper bags over their heads, each one holding the other one's shoulder.

480
00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:44,040
And they're leading them down the hall.

481
00:48:45,040 --> 00:48:47,040
And Phil comes over and I, look, look, you know, my God, look at that.

482
00:48:48,040 --> 00:48:52,040
And I looked up and something about it just, you know, again, it was the dehumanizing, demeaning kind of treatment.

483
00:48:53,040 --> 00:48:54,040
I just, I couldn't watch it.

484
00:48:55,040 --> 00:48:57,040
And she said, it's terrible what you're doing to those boys.

485
00:48:58,040 --> 00:48:59,040
And she got tears in her eyes. I said, what?

486
00:48:59,040 --> 00:49:06,040
And she runs out. And I'm furious. I'm saying, you know, I'm saying, look, this is, you know, run outside, we have this big argument.

487
00:49:06,040 --> 00:49:11,040
I'm saying, look, this is, this is dynamics of human behavior. Look, it's fascinating, the power of the situation, all.

488
00:49:12,040 --> 00:49:16,040
So I'm giving her all the psychological basis and what kind of psychologist are you? You don't appreciate this.

489
00:49:17,040 --> 00:49:25,040
And she said, I don't understand. You're a stranger to me. I don't understand this. How could you not see what I see?

490
00:49:25,040 --> 00:49:29,040
I mean, you know, you're a caring, compassionate person. I know you from all these other things. Something's gone wrong here.

491
00:49:30,040 --> 00:49:39,040
And then the next thing she said, which had an equally big impact is, you know, I'm not sure I want to, you know, have anything to do with you if this is the real you.

492
00:49:39,040 --> 00:49:51,040
And that was like a slap in the face because what she was saying is, you've changed. You know, the power of the situation has transformed you from, from the person I thought I knew to this person that I don't know.

493
00:49:52,040 --> 00:49:54,040
And at that moment, I said, wow, you're right. We got to end it.

494
00:49:55,040 --> 00:49:59,040
After only six days, Dr. Zimbardo shut down his experiment.

495
00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:06,040
What makes this study interesting and what makes the Milgram study interesting, it's really about the transformation of human character.

496
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:10,040
People can be seduced into doing things they never thought they could.

497
00:50:11,040 --> 00:50:14,040
There are interesting parallels that are coming up now with Abu Ghraib.

498
00:50:14,040 --> 00:50:29,040
At Abu Ghraib, standard operating procedures were changed. Normally, military guards are supposed to protect prisoners. Suddenly, they were asked to soften them up for interrogators.

499
00:50:32,040 --> 00:50:41,040
We were never trained to be prison goers. The higher ups said, use your imagination. Break them. We want them broke by the time we get back.

500
00:50:41,040 --> 00:50:47,040
As soon as we'd have prisoners come in, sandbags instantly over their head.

501
00:50:48,040 --> 00:50:51,040
They would flexi cuff them, throw them down to the ground. Some would be stripped.

502
00:50:52,040 --> 00:50:57,040
It was told to all of us, they're nothing but dogs. So you start breeding that picture to people.

503
00:50:58,040 --> 00:51:01,040
Then all of a sudden, you start looking at these people as less than human.

504
00:51:02,040 --> 00:51:06,040
And you start doing things to them you would never dream of. And that's where it got scary.

505
00:51:06,040 --> 00:51:14,040
Tier 1A was where a lot of the stuff started happening. And that's what Tier Specialist Grainer was in charge of.

506
00:51:15,040 --> 00:51:20,040
One evening, after he got off of his shift, he was hoarse. I said, Grainer, are you getting sick?

507
00:51:21,040 --> 00:51:23,040
And he goes, no. And I said, well, what's going on?

508
00:51:23,040 --> 00:51:29,040
And he says, well, I'm having to yell and do things to detainees that I feel are morally and ethically wrong.

509
00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:32,040
What do you think I should do? I said, then don't do them.

510
00:51:33,040 --> 00:51:35,040
And he goes, I don't have a choice. And I said, what do you mean?

511
00:51:36,040 --> 00:51:43,040
He says, well, every time a bomb goes off outside the wire or outside the fence, they come in and they tell me that's another American losing their life.

512
00:51:43,040 --> 00:51:47,040
And unless you help us, their blood's on your hands as well.

513
00:51:56,040 --> 00:52:02,040
So early on in October, what I saw whenever I walked up to the tier was two soldiers that I had no idea who they were.

514
00:52:02,040 --> 00:52:13,040
They had two naked detainees handcuffed to prison cells. They were telling him to confess, confess, confess. He would swat him on the behind with a water bottle.

515
00:52:14,040 --> 00:52:20,040
So then after they did that, they handcuffed him together in what appeared to be sexual position.

516
00:52:21,040 --> 00:52:27,040
I've never been trained in an interrogation, but I definitely didn't think that this is the way interrogation should be.

517
00:52:27,040 --> 00:52:36,040
And so I reported it to my lieutenant, basically, you know, telling him military intelligence is doing some pretty weird things with naked detainees.

518
00:52:37,040 --> 00:52:38,040
And he seemed not to care.

519
00:52:40,040 --> 00:52:43,040
Whenever there's a system, there are perpetrators of evil.

520
00:52:44,040 --> 00:52:47,040
There's people who do bad things, like in Abu Ghraib, the guards.

521
00:52:48,040 --> 00:52:52,040
But the top administration gives permission, either implicitly or explicitly.

522
00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:59,040
They didn't say put him in a pyramid, but they gave them general permission to do whatever they had to do to get confessions.

523
00:53:02,040 --> 00:53:07,040
They may well be given missions in connection with this overall task, strategy.

524
00:53:08,040 --> 00:53:12,040
We also have to work those sort of the dark side, if you will. We're going to spend time in the shadows.

525
00:53:12,040 --> 00:53:26,040
I can't think of a worse thing for somebody who is in charge of an environment like that or in charge of people who work in an environment like that to say it's time to take the gloves off and go to the dark side.

526
00:53:27,040 --> 00:53:32,040
Those kinds of institutional environments create pressures on people to head to the dark side anyway.

527
00:53:32,040 --> 00:53:37,040
I mean, we learned this in the prison study. Those environments elicit the worst from good people.

528
00:53:42,040 --> 00:53:50,040
My guess is that 99.999% of our armed forces behave admirably at all times, but it's like the rest of society.

529
00:53:51,040 --> 00:53:55,040
There will be a few bad apples that will conduct themselves in ways that we're not proud of.

530
00:53:55,040 --> 00:54:05,040
Were there a few bad apples? No. What was bad was the barrel. Who made the barrel, this whole chain of command?

531
00:54:06,040 --> 00:54:10,040
I feel terrible about what happened to these Iraqi detainees. They were in U.S. custody.

532
00:54:11,040 --> 00:54:16,040
Our country had an obligation to treat them right, to treat them as human beings.

533
00:54:17,040 --> 00:54:20,040
We didn't do that. That was wrong.

534
00:54:20,040 --> 00:54:33,040
Prior to the Abu Ghraib scandal, Donald Rumsfeld had personally approved a menu of interrogation techniques, including dogs, stress positions, and nudity, that violated long-standing military rules.

535
00:54:34,040 --> 00:54:37,040
When you follow an order, you've got to be held accountable as well.

536
00:54:38,040 --> 00:54:45,040
But the ones that hold the key to that door, the ones that ask you to walk through that door, hold a higher accountability because they know better.

537
00:54:45,040 --> 00:54:52,040
I know the situation very closely now because I was an expert witness for one of those guards, Chip Frederick.

538
00:54:53,040 --> 00:55:02,040
Exemplary soldier, nine medals, model father, husband, patriotic, normal, healthy, no sadistic tendencies.

539
00:55:03,040 --> 00:55:08,040
Nothing that would indicate he was anything other than an ordinary good guy.

540
00:55:08,040 --> 00:55:12,040
And he gets into this place, and he is totally corrupted.

541
00:55:15,040 --> 00:55:22,040
Sometimes you cross a line, and it's a thin line, at any time that can be crossed by anybody if placed in certain conditions.

542
00:55:22,040 --> 00:55:34,040
I think it's a hard conclusion from all of the research evidence to sort of say, there's nothing inherent in who you are that would necessarily say, I'm safe, I will never cross the line.

543
00:55:35,040 --> 00:55:45,040
That research was done 30-something years ago. This is not news, you know. The lessons that were learned, it's been in textbooks, it's been taught in psychology courses.

544
00:55:45,040 --> 00:55:50,040
Other research, Milgram, all of these other studies are pointing to those same conclusions.

545
00:55:51,040 --> 00:55:55,040
It is the rare person who is able to be in that situation and resist.

546
00:55:56,040 --> 00:56:02,040
It's the majority who conform, who comply, who obey authority, who do these things.

547
00:56:03,040 --> 00:56:07,040
And that's what nobody wants to hear. We want to all think we're heroes. If we were in that situation, we'd be different.

548
00:56:07,040 --> 00:56:20,040
Maybe that's true. But heroes are rare in any society. They are the exception. The rule is the majority. The rule is the base rate, is what the average person would do.

549
00:56:21,040 --> 00:56:28,040
And so the big message from the Stanford Prison Experiment, the big message from the Milgram Obedience Study, from many of these other studies,

550
00:56:28,040 --> 00:56:38,040
is that if you imagine yourself being a participant in the studies, you have to say, it's likely I would do what the majority did.

551
00:56:39,040 --> 00:56:43,040
And I'm not that special. I'm an ordinary person. They were ordinary people.

552
00:56:43,040 --> 00:56:46,040
And whom you are staying here, you are a loyal on level of study.

553
00:56:46,040 --> 00:56:50,040
And beyond theubertraniloquist Lucy, it's likely to be an average person like a cual era and становится very often.

554
00:56:50,040 --> 00:56:56,040
And I am not alone that anyone? No, I don't really want to do it.

555
00:56:56,040 --> 00:57:01,040
The Jewels are family 5 gigpeople!

556
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:07,040
And so if you imagine yourself being able to focus on the experience of the doubt's time, too.

557
00:57:07,040 --> 00:57:11,040
And so you can become one of these people you have.

558
00:57:11,040 --> 00:57:41,020
Transcription by CastingWords

559
00:57:41,040 --> 00:58:11,020
Transcription by CastingWords