Verified by 
Contributors to this website, before today, have had little to say here so far about the protests and riots in Ferguson, Missouri, over the incident in which a police officer in the St. Louis suburb shot and killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown. Maybe the topic's too scary. The White House has tread cautiously on this matter even as the President has urged peace and healing. For all the news and chatter going on about the crisis, most mental health professionals so far seem to have less to say than lay folk, perhaps because it is a delicate subject and one should be wary of rushing to a professional or even professional-sounding judgment when not all facts are known. Caution has value. Greater caution might have kept all this from blowing up in the first place. Caution, however, does not mean inertia. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, but those angels still need to do some treading, do they not?
People have plenty to say in social media, of course. When do people not? Those few who have been tweeting about the psychology of what's going on show some clearly recurring themes.
- @chaunceydevega: There are many real experts on social psychology, crime, and protest behavior etc. who should be given a platform to talk about #ferguson
- @RealHousewifeSL: Understanding Why People Riot | Psychology Today http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hidden-motives/201108/understanding-why-people-riot … #Ferguson
- @urbanreviewstl: Insight into the psychology of looting & rioting #ferguson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/11/the-psychology-of-a-riot_n_924839.html …
- @JaneDueker: Clergy Action Forum discussing free legal help for witnesses and free psychology services. #Ferguson
- @visitordesign: the psychology of a cop telling a kid he's gonna shoot him—and then doing it—seems indicative of departmental proclivities. #Ferguson
- @AdnanRSiddiqui0: @Dena a result of the psychology of #racism exposed by this experiment on stereotypes and #prejudice http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGNAUDwmK5c … #Ferguson@OrwellUpgraded: Re #Ferguson horror: How crowd policing tactics are mistakenly based on pre-scientific myths about crowd psychology https://soundcloud.com/youarenotsosmart/028-crowds-michael-bond …
- @dan_munz: When this is over, Ferguson is going to be in psychology textbooks in the same paragraph as the Stanford Prison Experiment.
- @b17anderson: Ferguson situation reminds me a lot of the psychology behind the Stanford Prison Experiment
- @w0px: For some good #psychology reading related to the #Ferguson Affair: http://www.prisonexp.org/ http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/milgram_perils_authority_1974.html …
- @ProfJeffJarvis: Hopefully the whole #ferguson hashtag is just a Facebook-style A/B test of American psychology.
- @gustojunk: We created #Ferguson: "The Evil Psychology Behind A Cops Uniform And Badge. The Stanford Prison Experiment Revisited" http://beforeitsnews.com/beyond-science/2013/07/the-evil-psychology-behind-a-cops-uniform-and-badge-the-stanford-prison-experiment-revisited-2442736.html …
- @tylorstandley: #Ferguson reminds me of this psychology experiment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment … Tell a cop he's a soldier & he'll pretend he's in a war.
- @FemmeFunk: Spoke with a coworker about Ferguson and he stressed that psychology studies show predators gravitate toward jobs like policeman.
- @firstpersonpol: Police armed like a military will inevitably act like a military. This is basic social psychology. #Ferguson
- @firstpersonpol: Repressive authoritarian psychology is behind police brutality, whether it's in #Ferguson or Tahrir Square.
- @getoffmylawn80: When #ferguson chief of police doesn't think dressing in military uni has effect on behavior, I give you #milgram http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm …
- @STIRJournal: The Unseen Jury: The Ideology And Psychology Of Institutionalized Racism #Ferguson http://bit.ly/1BhXVlC
- @albenesi: It's fascinating how a careful change of authority can alter the whole situation. Someone in charge is skilled at group psychology #
- @LegendaryAsshol: #Ferguson police claim death threats are the reason they refuse to identify the officer who did the killing. psychology isnt their strength
- @jayvanbavel: Assume a dangerous crowd and you get one #Ferguson : Smart police understand the psychology of groups http://t.co/2iut1mSoE2 | @PackerLab
Through tweets, people are sharing links to a few resources, and tweeps keep bringing up Milgram. Is Milgram's obedience experiment really more relevant than Zimbardo's prison simulation, or is it simply better known? Stanley Milgram (1965) conducted the most famous study in the history of psychology, in which he directed participants to deliver painful and potentially lethal electric shocks to another test subject (the researcher's confederate, who did not really get shocked and only pretended to be hurt). Milgram found that about two thirds of all participants would deliver the maximum, most dangerous shocks when directed to do so by an authority figure. That was about obedience. There are most likely officers who are intimidating protestors out of obedience to their own superior officers, but the worst of what's going on often involves the initiative of individual officers, starting with the one who gunned down an unarmed young man.
Philip Zimbardo's 1971 prison simulation study, however, demonstrated how people's roles and uniforms shape their behavior. Zimbardo demonstrated that power corrupts. In the Stanford prison experiment, as it is commonly known, he randomly assigned volunteers to play the roles of either guards or prisoners in what was supposed to be a two-week experiment but ended after 6 days. Guards got carried away with how harshly they often treated prisoners; many prisoners became dehumanized and thought only of escape, survival, and hatred toward the guards; and Zimbardo himself lost sight of the project's cruel reality partly because he made the mistake of casting himself as the prisoner superintendent. Even the smart, analytical, well trained psychologist fell into his role and under the thrall of the power of the situation.
When I was in graduate school, I attended a talk Zimbardo gave at a meeting of the American Psychological Association. After Phil previewed the documentary Quiet Rage about the Stanford prison experiment, a Russian psychologist said (via translator) that seeing the film made him realize that his own country had undergone one massive experiment in which everybody fell into such roles over the course of too many decades.
Mob behavior is a different issue, also one involving the power of the situation. Zimbardo's obedience study was not about group influence, though. Zimbardo's study reveals more about the intricacies of group influence and the dangerous influence of roles. Zimbardo's study shows that power corrupts and the consequences of corruption can escalate.
Studies Cited
Milgram, S. (1965). Some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority. Human Relations, 18, 57-76.
Zimbardo, P. G. (1971). The psychological power and pathology of imprisonment. A statement prepared for the U. S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee No. 3: Hearings on Prison Reform. San Franciso, CA, October 25.
