I think it is situational to a degree, but also contextual. The situation doesn't exist in a vacume. Things come before and after that color it and give it context. For instance, you cannot examine Abu Gharib without first looking at the events that came before it - both from a world-view and an individual view.
Just watched a film last night that did a marvelous job of demonstrating this. The film wasn't fantastic and had some serious flaws, but it did prove my point that depending on the context and the situation - marvelous people can be capable of and will do heinous things and horrible people can be capable of and will do marvelous things. The film was Crash by Paul Haggis. It concerns the crash of people in a myriad of inter-locking situations, starting with a minor car bump, in LA after 9/11. While the film may make sense if we remove the 9/11 context - that event does color some of the dynamics, so subletly, that you may be tempted to state it could have taken place at any time, but look closer and at least one situation would disprove that. In the film - we have a racist cop do a horrible thing and a marvelous thing to the same woman. The reasons he does what he does are later explained - we see the events that lead up to it, the context. Which makes it clear that you can not judge people's actions in isolation, you can't take them out of context, or forget what came before - then the actions make no sense. You have to look at the whole painting, not just a segment of it. I think Haslam and Zimbardo's studies provide texture to what happened in Abu Gharib, but by no means can describe it alone.
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branchandroot
Re: I use Zimbardo's video in one of my classes
Date: 2005-11-08 01:16 pm (UTC)I think it is situational to a degree, but also contextual. The situation doesn't exist in a vacume. Things come before and after that color it and give it context. For instance, you cannot examine Abu Gharib without first looking at the events that came before it - both from a world-view and an individual view.
Just watched a film last night that did a marvelous job of demonstrating this. The film wasn't fantastic and had some serious flaws, but it did prove my point that depending on the context and the situation - marvelous people can be capable of and will do heinous things and horrible people can be capable of and will do marvelous things. The film was Crash by Paul Haggis. It concerns the crash of people in a myriad of inter-locking situations, starting with a minor car bump, in LA after 9/11. While the film may make sense if we remove the 9/11 context - that event does color some of the dynamics, so subletly, that you may be tempted to state it could have taken place at any time, but look closer and at least one situation would disprove that. In the film - we have a racist cop do a horrible thing and a marvelous thing to the same woman. The reasons he does what he does are later explained - we see the events that lead up to it, the context.
Which makes it clear that you can not judge people's actions in isolation, you can't take them out of context, or forget what came before - then the actions make no sense. You have to look at the whole painting, not just a segment of it. I think Haslam and Zimbardo's studies provide texture to what happened in Abu Gharib, but by no means can describe it alone.