Yes, when directed leadership, people have the capacity to do bad things- as we have seen historically. However, it is not an individual’s first nature to be evil, violent, bad (whatever synonym resonates) unless influenced. The current understanding of the study is that when given power, all people are bad, which is incorrect and harmful.
What’s the name of the documentary?
You can't conclude that it's not in an individual's nature to be violent.
I think all you should do is throw away the false conclusions and go back to not knowing.
Agree with you on this. The point I was making was that the study doesn’t prove that people are inherently evil when given access to power. Can see how my phrasing sounded absolute and appreciate the clarification.
BBC replicated the experiment in 2002 and found that group dynamics and leadership were major factors in influencing the guard’s treatment toward prisoners, I.e. void of leadership - the guards were not motivated to participate in violence or abuse toward the prisoners. It’s covered in the doc and easily found online. That’s why I used that specific language when responding to what conclusions could still be derived from the study. However, given the obvious flaws in the design of the study - I’m in agreement that we should default to not knowing.
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