The Stanford Prison Experiment, one of the most famous and compelling psychological studies of all time, told us a tantalizingly simple story about human nature.

The study took paid participants and assigned them to be “inmates” or “guards” in a mock prison at Stanford University. Soon after the experiment began, the “guards” began mistreating the “prisoners,” implying evil is brought out by circumstance. The authors, in their conclusions, suggested innocent people, thrown into a situation where they have power over others, will begin to abuse that power. And people who are put into a situation where they are powerless will be driven to submission, even madness.

The Stanford Prison Experiment has been included in many, many introductory psychology textbooks and is often cited uncritically. It’s the subject of movies, documentaries, books, television shows, and congressional testimony.

But its findings were wrong. Very wrong. And not just due to its questionable ethics or lack of concrete data — but because of deceit.

  • fireweed@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Bummer. Is it possible to require titles of submissions that are more than X months old include the source date? Especially since Lemmy allows for title editing it wouldn’t even require post resubmission to comply.

    • laverabe@lemmy.worldM
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      11 months ago

      I think since Lemmy is still very low on content, so any restrictions should be light. Right now Lemmy is in the wild west phase, and it’ll probably be like that for awhile until there is more content.

      A long list of rules and requirements worked great on a subreddit with a million people, but right now I think less rules is better for the time being, at least until there are multiple posts a day.