If this is just a game that lets you be a prison guard for 14 days, but you have real police uniforms, real batons, and real power, will you also become another person who may be cruel or evil?
Maybe they will swear and say: It's just a game, but fourteen days, what will happen. I used to feel the same way, but the truth made me unable to calm down for a long time, my heart was heavy, and I felt a little helpless.
This is the hypothesis and plot of the movie "Death Experiment", and it is also the real Stanford Prison Experiment.
The Stanford Prison Experiment, in short, recruited 18 mentally healthy college students, pay attention to mental health and mental health, then 9 were prison guards, 9 were prisoners, and then they were placed in a simulated prison. 14 days.
This is only an ideal state. In fact, the whole experiment was forced to stop after only six days, because an unexpected accident happened in these short days:
at first, both prisoners and prison guards were just playing games. , I deeply know that as long as 14 days have passed, it will be fine. With a light-hearted and playful game mentality, prisoners also challenge the authority of the guards: tearing off the numbers sewn on their clothes, ignoring the guards' orders, and even making fun of the guards.
Then, for their own authority, the prison guards started their own repression: stripping prisoners of their clothes, confinement in dark rooms, confiscating prisoners’ clothes and bedding, canceling meals, forcing prisoners to wash toilets by hand, insulting prisoners, and even conducting psychological Differentiation strategy: Prisoners subject to management provide privileges, better meals and cells.
After that, the prison guards began to satisfy their own power and strengthen punishment; while the prisoners also began to enter the play, began to identify with their own identity, and began to compromise and unconditionally obey.
After that, many people requested to withdraw within six days. In fact, some people applied in about three days. However, Zimbardo, who was responsible for the experiment, had completely entered the role of the prison director and did not agree with it. Later, Zimbardo chose to compromise and stop in his girlfriend's argument.
The Stanford Prison Experiment that was forced to stop, the movie "Death Experiment" gave a setting and hypothesis for the ending.
In the movie, there is an authoritative person among the prison guards - Boris. The prison guards represented by him began to unrestrainedly suppress the prisoners who were dissatisfied with their rule. They agreed not to use violence, but in the end, two died and three were injured. In the beginning, Boles also cared about the monitoring, the director of the experiment, Professor Duen and the female doctor Juta, but later dragged the male protagonist Tarek to a place where the monitoring place could not start to humiliate, and finally even the monitor All kidnapped, turned female doctors into prisoners and even sexually assaulted them, and began to act recklessly. Finally, the prisoners they escaped from the prison.
Very shocking change, sometimes I wonder, what caused such an earth-shaking change? Some people say that after watching the movie, they commented: Only then do we know that human nature is inherently evil, but is it really that simple?
Human nature is inherently evil. Xunzi in ancient China insisted on it, and Christianity in the West also insisted on it. Christianity believes in the theory of original sin, what is the theory of original sin, that is, people are born sinful. The root of original sin is not caused by human physical desires or the evil of the body. It is rooted in the human soul, which lies in the fact that the human soul does not accept its created status and tries to be the master of its own life. Since the fall of Adam, it has meant that man has fallen into inextricable sin. Sinners, in Christianity, have no right or possibility to redeem themselves. People can only obtain redemption and salvation by believing in God, praying devoutly, and relying on God.
Italian criminologist and psychiatrist Lombroso even put forward the concept of "born criminal". As a prison doctor, he made an anthropological survey of thousands of prisoners and conducted a large number of autopsies, and then came up with his own concept of a born criminal. He gave some physiological characteristics of a born criminal: Flat forehead, prominent head, raised brow bone, deep-set eye sockets, large jaws, and cheekbones; uneven dentition, very large or very small ears, uneven skull and face, slanted eyes, polydactyly , lack of body hair, etc. Gall's phrenology also supports man's natural tendency to sin.
How to say it, I always find it a little far-fetched and incomprehensible to attribute evil to heredity and human nature. A passage from John Watson comes to mind when he said:
"Give me a dozen healthy and defect-free babies to raise in my special world, and I can guarantee that, out of these dozen or so, I can take any one of them and train him to be Any kind of specialist - whatever his abilities, hobbies, tendencies, talents, occupation, and race, I can train him to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or an artist, or a business chief, or even Train him to be a beggar or a thief.
Watson is a staunch situationist, he agrees with the influence of the acquired environment on people. Maybe I feel that Watson is a bit exaggerated, but the core of his expression, I I still agree. Regarding the Stanford Prison Experiment and the "Death Experiment", I also think it is the result of the influence of the situation.
Actually, I think it has nothing to do with the inherent evil or goodness of human nature. On the contrary, I think this experiment shows human nature itself. It is because of its neutrality that some external forces can make him deviate so easily, such as the role of prison guards and prisoners and the shaping of the values behind the roles.
About prison guards or prisoners In addition to the hints of external forces (power, punishment), the prison guards gradually recognized their role, and even satisfied with the pride brought by their power, they began to use violence more frantically. From the beginning of the teasing to the later unconditional obedience, he began to compromise his prisoner status and began to be insensitive. But the scary thing is the alienation of the actual cognition of the character. It is
undeniable that the environment, the character's shaping and influence on a person, but also It cannot be exaggerated. After all, this experiment and the characters shown in the film have certain particularities. Prisoners do not have many human rights protections in a certain way, and prison guards should be like this in the perception of some people, full of violence. Power, cruelty.
How should I put it, after reading it, I suddenly feel that our life is also such a game, a game that we clearly know is a game, but we will carry the model of "people die for wealth, birds die for food" Enter, slowly begin to enter, begin to adapt, we naturally integrate into the system, we also have our own "uniform", and also in a closed space, the devil in our hearts is breeding and spreading, but we seek our own kind of "Power", a kind of satisfaction.
Moreau once said: We are all prisoners of our own experience. Perhaps, when immersed in an identity, an experience, one cannot escape, begins to become numb, and begins to compromise lifelessly.
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