Opinions on the instincts of humanity?

[MJAlex]

I recently watched a movie called The Experiment. This is based on the movie Das Experiment, a German movie that was based on the book Black Box, which was first based on the Stanford Prison Experiment. I know, It's a long chain, but this experiment bothers me.
prisonexp.org
The link above is to the site of the man who ran this experiment, and took part in it himself. Just for a little overview of what this experiment was and what the results were. The experiment brought out animals in people, harming others like eachother, and doing things that they would have at first thought of as sick and inhuman. Now, they encourage it between each othewr. It really opened my eyes, but it makes me frightened for what human beings can be. Hateful, violent people who just want power. Is this really what human instinct tells us to do? In many aspects, we are worse than the lions who kill for food. We kill and shoot each other down for fun. It's disturbing to see what people can do to eachother.

[SWM]

do you think this experiment examined the humans in their natural environment? if not, is the conclusion that we are cruel and violent by nature correct.

by nature we are hunters gatherers and so murder of other species and consumption and protection of resources is a natural instinct that is vital to our survival but we also have compassion for other humans, other species, plants and the earth.

our cultures has divorced us from these instincts to the extent that they seem to be inhuman or unnatural, how many of us would kill a rabbit or a chicken for our evening meal. if we all had to kill our own food every day as we did along the line of our social evolution would we consume the amount of animal meat we do now?

[Zepher08]

Since this was an experiment then the conditions were controlled. Only certain and precise conditions bring up these behaviors and so fourth. That is understandable.

Extreme conditions create extreme reactions/behaviors.

Thinking here of a public television show that revealed when parrots are left alone ... isolated with out interaction/enough physical contact that they pull their feathers out. They literally begin to self mutilate. Point is... this is a result of certain conditions which are not necessarily natural and obviously not healthy.

The experiment is perverse because it is an unnatural setting and people DO change in unhealthy situations/events etc.


Humans have very precise needs as do the birds and when they are not met well, there ya have it.

I would not expect a college aged person to be the most conscious ... meaning they are at a certain age of personal growth and placing that age category in certain situation would definitely rock the boat of a possibly underdeveloped self. Might be different if ya put a bunch of clearly individuated humans in the same conditions. Going off a little here but worth another way of seeing into being human and constantly becoming, growing and individuating.

 

[MJAlex]

That's very true. Better yet, can this be used to say how much can power corrupt a person? Some people don't abuse it, but many others do, and this result can come of it. It is instinct to be the dominant one, but when it is given to us, it is often abused, turning good people into monsters.
That's true it wasn't a natural environment, but nothing can be considered natural to our primal instincts any more. It's unfortunate though that most to revert to violence instead of using reason, something that probably wasn't too important to instinct so long ago.

[Zepher08]

Environments can be considered healthy or not healthy. Environments can be psychically unhealthy ... environments can be physically unhealthy.

It would take a whole lot of emotional intelligence in order to be able to experience the emotional aspects that come up in a set up like the one presented. I did reply about that.

You say reason and I say emotional intelligence which is a mix/connection of understanding emotional response/reaction  + reason = behavior.

Although I find this experiment not terrifically humane it actually does bring up something about how people react in an unhealthy environment given an obviously unhealthy job.

Isn't that what it is all about any way. Exploring what nourishes humans and what exploits vulnerabilities?

I consider the process of making soldiers pretty sick. In fact US male soldiers were raping US female soldiers. Now there is a predicament not really looked at as an experiment.

I am throwing this out there because who knows what people will do when aggression and mental illness are involved. Obviously assuming the people were mostly balanced prior to the experiment will show that with in inhumane conditions people will act inhumanely. That is an important point but funny that it requires the experiment to some how discover that . Isn't that just run o' the mill kind of understanding. I guess not.

I am not real sure of what you are after? Are you trying to say that reason should over ride instincts or emotion? I tend to think that at best they all operate in harmony and are of equal value in terms of a whole human.

the issue comes into play when reason is taken as being the superior aspect of human -ness and the other two are down sized as a part of the whole human experience.

In fact I would go so far as to say that an abundance of reason with out a good strong connection to emotion as in skipping from instinct to reason would obviously lead to certain kinds behavior since one has no way to regulate or tolerate or even deal with emotion. 

I say the experiment put people in a situation where they had little to no coping skills. Something to figure into the picture . Just brain storming here. When people do not have adequate coping strategies then destruction is at hand. Just take war for example.

 

[MJAlex]

Okay, so maybe this wasn't exactly human instincs, but can it say anything of how we get carried away with the roles we may be put into? Also, does the justice system actually give justice or just demoralize people and take away their ability to deal with the average environment in general?

[sakoz]

MJAlex; Let me just add;  search    TRIUNE BRAIN
Consider road rage, lower level of brain seems to override higher level of reasoning; 'balance' is missing in such behavior'.
We may be 'jugglers" ( our skill is not 'perfected' yet. etc.