How Power Relations Structure the Human Psyche

Ever heard of something called the Stanford Prison Experiment?

There's plenty of research out there on this, so I won't bore everyone with the details, but, basically, a psychologist called Philip Zimbardo decided to experiment on the mental effects of prison on prisoners and guards using a stimulated prison situation in which paid participants joined freely. They were all tested for mental and emotional stability and were all bright college students.

At random, twelve were chosen to be guards and twelve were chosen to be prisoners. The shocking thing was how quickly the guards became genuinely sadistic, an estimated third of them displayed highly pathological behaviors, and things got, to say the least, really, really out of control. What is most striking is the fact that even Zimbardo himself, who was role playing the prison warden, became so absorbed in the reality of the game that he admitted to losing all sense of perspective at times.

These studies have been copied in many different ways. One example involved taking a bunch of blue-eyed children and pitting them against brown-eyed kids, telling them the genetic results proved blue-eyed people were more intelligent etc., and believe it or not, the results were quite similar. The blue-eyed students turned on the brown-eyed students violently (they also tried it in reverse and the same thing happened). I have also heard, but not had a chance to research myself, that an experiment in April 2007 among Texas high school students claims to reinforce the Stanford Experiment.

Incidentally the Stanford Experiment ended after six days when a graduate student, who was also Zimbardo's girlfriend, showed up and was immediately horrified and insisted Zimbardo call it off. Zimbardo's girlfriend was the only one out of everyone, including the parents of the students, who objected after vistiting the "prison."

There is also the famous Miligram experiment, which showed that over 65% of people would obey a strong authoritarian figure directing them to shock a participant, even when the said participant was screaming in pain and apparently on the verge of death.

What is my point in bringing all this up? To prove humanity is really doomed? You can decide for yourself (you were going to anyway).