[ reading reflection and response part ii ]

The Stanford prison experiment seems like something that just wouldn't happen today. It's so obviously unethical. If you tell someone "Hey, we want to prove that prisons are nasty places, go pretend to be a prison guard," of course they're going to be nasty themselves. Though indirectly, the guards' sadistic and abusive tendencies were encouraged and reinforced by their assigners. The strangest part is that, after the experiment was over, a few experiments were apparently conducted emulating this one despite the obviously disastrous results of the original.
The lying and cheating thing seemed fairly obvious to me: everyone cheats to a certain degree on certain things. It's in human nature. I suppose the extent of it is a lot broader than I'd imagined though, like who cheats on what on a certain test changing simply because of the situation the test was given in. The Good Samaritan experiment I found a little more surprising. It's only natural to conclude that the student studying the Good Samaritan would stop and help the person...though I suppose this shouldn't be surprising, as the story seems to demonstrate that an otherwise "worthy, pious man," as Gladwell calls him, might not stop and help someone in need.