TLS article on torture

clipped from entertainment.timesonline.co.uk Texts for torturers From Stanford to Abu Ghraib – what turns ordinary people into oppressors? Martha Nussbaum Philip Zimbardo THE LUCIFER EFFECT How good people turn evil 288pp. Rider and Co. £18.99. 9781844135776 In August 1971, the Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his team of investigators selected twenty-four young men to participate in their study of the psychology of imprisonment. The men, only a few of whom were students, had answered an ad placed in both the student newspaper and the local town daily that offered subjects fifteen dollars per day for two weeks to participate in a study of “prison life”. The successful applicants were randomly assigned to the roles of prisoner and guard, fifty-fifty. Prisoners were to stay in the prison for the entire two weeks; guards served in eight-hour shifts, three groups per day. Thus began the now famous Stanford Prison Experiment.