ABU GHRAIB: A SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY PERSPECTIVE

Currently several military trails are going on following the revelation of abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. For example, in late August of 2004 Reserve Sgt. Gary Pittman went on trial for his involvement in the assault of an Iraqi POW who later died (see: Flaccus, 2004: 1). This paper examines the facts that led to this and other abuses at Abu Ghraib from the perspective of social psychology in order to ask the question: Could social psychology have predicted the events that took place at Abu Ghraib prison?

In particular, the paper examines the pertinent social psychology research looking for factors that may explain the abuse that took place. The paper begins with a brief delineation of the facts of the case. This is followed by an examination of pertinent social psychology research that may explain how this abuse occurred. The final section of the paper presents a series of conclusions formulated on the basis of the reviewed literature.

The basic facts of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal have been documented by Hersh (2004: 1-5). In June of 2003, Janis Karpinski, an Army reserve brigadier general, was named commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade and put in charge of military prisons in Iraq. According to Hersh (2004), she was now officially in charge of a prison system consisting of three large jails, eight battalion of soldiers, and 3,400 Army reservists. Like Karpinsk

. . .
ing an experimental rat-maze into being a prison. Some prisoners became passive while others became rebellious, and the guards that wanted to put in their time on a shift and go home did nothing to stop the guards that reveled in exercising their power over the prisoners. One guard was nicknamed "John Wayne" by the prisoners because he was so sadistic. Yet he was the "nicest" guard on the street, and he only made his transformation from the gentle Dr. Jekyll to the monstrous Mr. Hyde when he put on his guard's uniform. In other words, Zimbardo began to see behavior that was very much like the behavior seen in many real prisons. More importantly, as the days went by, it was found that the guards became increasingly aggressive, engaging in humiliating and dehumanizing tactics against the prisoners. The worse guards were those who worked "the grave yard shift." To some extent, the prisoners attempted to fight back using tactics such as a hunger strike but such attempts appeared to make the guards even more aggressive. Sherrer (2003:2) states that the prisoners said that they felt they were in a real prison, one that was run by psychologists instead of run by the state. Sherrer (2003: 2-3) makes the point that the study partic
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Abu Ghraib, Yale University, Janis Karpinski, Dr Jekyll, According Cassel, Company American, Prison Experiment, According Donn, Prisoners Cassel, Ghraib Cassel, abu ghraib, social psychology, prison guards, abu ghraib prison, abuse prisoners, document available, ghraib prison, blass 1999, military police, psychology research, obedience authority, social psychology research, abuses abu ghraib, stanford prison experiment, prisoners abu ghraib,
Approximate Word count = 3972
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)