BBC
Inspired by Stanley Milgram's iconic experiments
on obedience, and interested in understanding why
people were induced to obey unjust regimes,
psychologist Philip Zimbardo paid college students
to participate in a mock prison, as prisoners and
guards.
One of the central findings of the study is that
One of the central findings of the study is that
individuals only move towards tyranny once they
have come to identify with a group and its leadership
(in a way that Zimbardo's briefing of his guards
encouraged) and once an authoritarian agenda has
come to define that group's identity and to be seen
as a solution to its problems.
