PHILIP G. ZIMBARDO ON HIS CAREER AND THESTANFORD PRISON EXPE.docx

PHILIP G. ZIMBARDO ON HIS CAREER AND THE
STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT’S 40TH ANNIVERSARY
Scott Drury, Scott A. Hutchens, Duane E. Shuttlesworth, and
Carole L. White
Delta State University
We interviewed Philip G. Zimbardo on April 19, 2011, in
anticipation of the 40th
anniversary of the Stanford Prison Experiment in August 2011.
While Zimbardo’s
name is mentioned often in tandem with the experiment, he has
distinguished himself
in many other areas within psychology before and after the
experiment, beginning with
an accomplished early career at New York University in which
he took interest in social
psychology research on deindividuation. We discussed the
Stanford Prison Experiment
in the greater context of his varied and illustrious career,
including recent pioneering
work on heroism, the establishment of The Shyness Clinic at
Stanford University, and
the iconic Discovering Psychology series. We also addressed his
adroit and candid
approach to the experiment itself over the years.
Keywords: Philip G. Zimbardo, Stanford Prison Experiment,
heroism, shyness, Discovering
Psychology
Scott Drury: The purpose of our project is

to create an interview that is assuming a learned
audience that already knows the particulars of
the Stanford Prison Experiment, placing this in
the context of your larger career, including your
recent heroism research. When did the moniker
“Stanford Prison Experiment” gain footing as a
coined term? It appears as a coined term as early
as 1973 in the Cognition article [(Zimbardo,
1973)]. Is that something that you coined your-
self, or did it sort of just emerge?
Philip Zimbardo: No, I think I actively
coined the term “Stanford Prison Experiment,”
in part because I didn’t want it to be the “Zim-
bardo Prison Experiment,” like the Milgram
obedience experiment [(Milgram, 1963)], and
in part, because it was in deference to the grad-
uate students who worked with me: Craig
Haney and Curt Banks. I felt that if it was the
“Zimbardo Prison Experiment,” then they
would not be given adequate credit. In fact in
the first articles we published, I made them
senior authors [(Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo,
1973)], and it really wasn’t until subsequently
that I assumed the senior authorship, although I
wrote most of the material.
Scott Drury: Was there a swell in notori-
ety for you that followed your 1973 New York
Times Magazine article [on the experiment;
(Zimbardo, Haney, Banks, & Jaffe, 1973)]? Did
that represent the onset of the most media at-
tention, or was it prior to that?
Philip Zimbardo: It’s hard to break down

the point at which that experiment went from
being a little social psychology demonstration,
which I always simply saw as the bookend to
the Milgram study of the power of the situation.
Milgram’s work focused on one-on-one social
power and the prison study focused on institu-
tional power over individuals in groups.
What I say in my book, The Lucifer Effect
[(Zimbardo, 2007)], is that really the study got
to be what it is now, virtually an urban legend,
because of serendipity. That is, we ended the
study August 20, 1971, on a Friday, and on
Saturday [August 21, 1971], there was an es-
cape attempt and murder of George Jackson, a
Black prisoner activist at San Quentin, half an
hour from here. A reporter called me to ask for
a comment about that event. I said, “It’s reflec-
tive of the kinds of demonization that takes
place in all prisons,” as in what we saw in our
This article was published Online First December 12, 2011.
Scott Drury, Scott A. Hutchens, and Duane E. Shuttles-
worth, Department of Psychology, Delta State University;
Carole L. White, Thad Cochran Center for Rural School
Leadership and Research, Delta State University.
Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-
dressed to Scott Drury, Department of Psychology, Delta
State University, Cleveland, MS 38732. E-mail:
[email protected]
deltastate.edu
History of Psychology © 2011 American Psychological
Association

2012, Vol. 15, No. 2, 161–170 1093-4510/11/$12.00 DOI:
10.1037/a0025884
161
T
hi
s
do
cu
m
en
t i
s
co
py
ri
gh
te
d
by
th
e
A
m
er

ic
an
P
sy
ch
ol
og
ic
al
A
ss
oc
ia
tio
n
or
o
ne
o
f i
ts
a
lli
ed

p
ub
lis
he
rs
.
T
hi
s
ar
tic
le
is
in
te
nd
ed
s
ol
el
y
fo
r t
he

p
er
so
na
l u
se
o
f t
he
in
di
vi
du
al
u
se
r a
nd
is
n
ot
to
b
e

di
ss
em
in
at
ed
b
ro
ad
ly
.
little prison. And then, they arranged for a local
TV debate between me and the associate war-
den, Warden Park, in which, and this is like
within a week of the study, I described our
study and said ours was kind of a minimally
adequate representation of what I knew was
kind of the demonization that went on in pris-
ons.
Now to prepare myself as background for the
prison study, I actually taught a new course the
prior summer, June and July, and the beginning
of August, with an ex-convict, Carlo Prescott,
who had just gotten out of prison after 17 years.
Together, we brought in other former prisoners
and prison guards and other people. So, I be-
came acquainted with “prisoner psychology”

for the first time on some of the topics that I
taught myself. And since then, I have become a
prison activist. And because of that local tele-
vised account, a correspondent for Chronolog,
which was the forerunner of 60 Minutes, got in
touch with me, saying, “Hey I’d like to talk to
you about doing a Chronolog piece on your
study.” The reporter was [Larry] Goldstein. We
worked together, and the next month Chronolog
produced a very powerful documentary called
[Prisoner] 819 Did a Bad Thing [(Zimbardo &
Goldstein, 1971)]. So, it was really that that got
us out into the world.
Around the same time, the Attica uprising [in
New York] was in response to what they said
was the murder of George Jackson. So then,
prisons became hot. And again I knew really
nothing about prisons, but I was then invited to
a Congressional judiciary hearing in San Fran-
cisco and one in Washington, D.C. [(Zimbardo,
1971, 1974)]. And so, suddenly, by serendipity,
I became an expert on prisons. A cute little story
where I used my psychology: I’m in these meet-
ings with the superintendent of Attica, [Vin-
cent] Mancusi, the warden at San Quentin,
heads of correctional unions, heads of prisoners
associations. And what do I have? I have noth-
ing except a bunch of slides from the Stanford
Prison Experiment. So I asked if I could go first.
And I’d like to just give an idea, because people
know a little bit about San Quentin and Attica.
So, by going first, I set the tone, and everybody
in the room now knew the visuals of the Stan-
ford prison study. And from then on, the people
on the panel would say, these congressmen

would say, “as we saw in Zimbardo’s prison,”
or “as we saw the demonization that took place
in Zimbardo’s jail.” Essentially, because of the
shared visual material, it became a kind of
touchstone for the rest of the conversation. And
again, it’s a fake prison in a basement at Stan-
ford, where at San Quentin here are these mur-
ders and at Attica here’s a dramatic demonstra-
tion. So, I think it was that combination of
things, the two real prison riots and the
Chronolog piece. So, the article I wrote in The
New York Times, The Pirandellian Prison
[(Zimbardo et al., 1973)], I think was the icing
on the cake.
Scott Drury: You have been criticized for
what went on in the experiment. Nevertheless,
over the fullness of time, you have enjoyed
tremendous status as an ambassador for psy-
chology and as a bona fide authority on how
people act in groups. Could it be said that your
consistent candor and complete openness in-
volving the experiment has engendered good-
will toward yourself and the experiment in gen-
eral?
Philip Zimbardo: Thank you. I would
hope so. From the beginning, the issue of ethics
arose. In fact, we ended our study August 20,
1971, and I think a week later, there was the
American Psychological Association [APA]
convention that used to be at the end of August
around Labor Day. And I was giving a talk on
some other topic. At the end of the talk I said,
“Look I am bursting with something I have to

share with you.” I put up a few of these slides.
“I just did this study a week ago and it is so
exciting.” Here is what we found. It is kind of
the recent bookend of the Milgram study
[(1963)]. And Stanley Milgram was there in the
audience. He came up afterward and hugged me
and said, “Thank you, thank you for taking the
heat off my back for having the most unethical
study, because yours is even more unethical!”
The Milgram study is typical of all psycho-
logical studies. They go 50 minutes. It’s a class
hour. We work our research in and around stu-
dents’ schedules. In the Milgram study, people
did get stressed, but in the end the learner came
out and said, “Hey, you really didn’t shock me.
I’m a confederate.” There was still the stress of
believing you had shocked while you were go-
ing through the experience.
In the Stanford prison study, people were
stressed, day and night, for 5 days, 24 hours a
day. There’s no question that it was a high level
of stress because five of the boys had emotional
162 DRURY, HUTCHENS, SHUTTLESWORTH, AND WHITE
T
hi
s
do
cu
m

en
t i
s
co
py
ri
gh
te
d
by
th
e
A
m
er
ic
an
P
sy
ch
ol
og
ic
al

A
ss
oc
ia
tio
n
or
o
ne
o
f i
ts
a
lli
ed
p
ub
lis
he
rs
.
T
hi
s

ar
tic
le
is
in
te
nd
ed
s
ol
el
y
fo
r t
he
p
er
so
na
l u
se
o
f t
he

in
di
vi
du
al
u
se
r a
nd
is
n
ot
to
b
e
di
ss
em
in
at
ed
b
ro
ad

ly
.
breakdowns, the first within 36 hours. Other
boys that didn’t have emotional breakdowns
were blindly obedient to corrupt authority by
the guards and did terrible things to each other.
And so it is no question that that was unethical.
You can’t do research where you allow people
to suffer at that level. Again, I make clear in
everything I have said, I should have ended the
study after the second prisoner broke down.
After the first one broke down, we didn’t be-
lieve it. We thought he was faking. There was
actually a rumor he was faking to get out. He
was going to bring his friends in to liberate the
prison. And/or we believed our screening pro-
cedure was inadequate, [we believed] that he
had some mental defect that we did not pick up.
But when the second prisoner broke down, we
said point proved, here is the power of the
situation. At that point, by the third day, when
the second prisoner broke down, I had already
slipped into or been transformed into the role of
“Stanford Prison Superintendent.” And in that
role, I was no longer the principal investigator,
worried about ethics. When a prisoner broke
down, what was my job? It was to replace him
with somebody on our standby list. And that’s
what I did. There was a weakness in the study in
not separating those two roles. I should only
have been the principal investigator, in charge
of two graduate students and one undergradu-
ate. So the whole study was just four people,

working 24/7 around the clock, which, again,
was a big problem. And there should have been
a separate person who was going to be the
superintendent of the prison. To make it realis-
tic, I was the superintendent, undergraduate Da-
vid Jaffe played the role of the warden, my two
graduate students [Banks and Haney] played the
role of prison lieutenants/consultants, and so
forth, because we wanted to have a sense that
there was prison staff, prison guards, and so
forth. But I slipped into that role, as I described
in The Lucifer Effect [(2007)], and began to
think as if I were superintendent of the prison,
in which the main issue is my concern for the
integrity of my institution and the guards. Now
again, most superintendents, if you don’t main-
tain a full balance, are almost always more
concerned about the institution and the perma-
nent staff. Mental patients come and go, pris-
oners come and go, students come and go, and
so forth. So, you really care more about doctors
and nurses and guards and teachers than you do
about the people you were meant to serve. That
is the effect that I experienced. I slipped into
that. But at the end of the study, I apologized for
the suffering that I allowed to go on too long,
and documented what I have done since then to
make amends.
Scott Drury: We have noted your work on
behalf of Chip Frederick [Staff Sergeant Ivan
“Chip” Frederick, sentenced to 8 years in 2004
for Abu Ghraib-related offenses], a person who
has suffered from extreme loss, maybe at the
hands of the “situation.” Do you see yourself as

an activist of sorts? You are not just an aca-
demic but a genuinely applied psychologist.
Philip Zimbardo: In a funny way, I am an
apolitical person, meaning I have never had
time for politics. I never knew who was in
Congress. I never cared. I just worked so hard in
establishing my career as an undergraduate, as a
graduate, as a beginning professor at New York
University. When I started at New York Uni-
versity, my formal teaching load was five nor-
mal teaching classes per term. That’s 10 [per
year]. My annual salary was $6,000. To make
another $1,000, I taught summer school, two
courses; that’s 12 per year. Living in New York,
I couldn’t even afford it, so I taught a 13th
course, I taught a course at Yale, in the evening,
I taught psychology of learning. I moonlighted
at Barnard College. I taught a social psychology
course. So there were some years I taught 13
lecture courses per year. That’s overwhelming.
And I didn’t like NYU. Back then it was not a
very good school. Now it’s a great school. And
I knew I didn’t want to end my career at NYU.
The only way you can get out is that you had to
publish or perish. I knew I had to publish a lot,
but I am teaching 13 courses per year, so I am
working full time. I have several big research
projects going on and I am trying to publish and
I am trying to give lectures all over the country
to get known, and it worked. I went from being
assistant professor without tenure at NYU to
becoming a full professor at Stanford in one
direct step [see Slavich (2009) for an interesting
anecdote from Dr. Zimbardo on his transition to
Stanford from NYU].

But in 1965, when the Vietnam War started
escalating, my secretary Anne Zeidberg, who
had been very active in Sane Nuclear Policy and
Women against the War, started putting pres-
sure on me, saying, “You have to use your
status here at NYU to help stop the war.” I said,
163SPECIAL SECTION: ZIMBARDO ON STANFORD PRISON
EXPERIMENT
T
hi
s
do
cu
m
en
t i
s
co
py
ri
gh
te
d
by
th

e
A
m
er
ic
an
P
sy
ch
ol
og
ic
al
A
ss
oc
ia
tio
n
or
o
ne
o
f i

ts
a
lli
ed
p
ub
lis
he
rs
.
T
hi
s
ar
tic
le
is
in
te
nd
ed
s
ol
el

y
fo
r t
he
p
er
so
na
l u
se
o
f t
he
in
di
vi
du
al
u
se
r a
nd
is
n

ot
to
b
e
di
ss
em
in
at
ed
b
ro
ad
ly
.
“I don’t have time. I had nothing to do with the
war. The war is there, I’m here, I have to teach,
I have to do research, I just had a child, I have
to take care of my child.” She said, “I don’t
care, you have to get involved.” I said, “All
right, what do you want me to do?” She talked
me into having one of the first anti-Vietnam
teach-ins. This I think was in 1965. And I think
it was the second one in the country. I don’t
know if it was at Michigan [the teach-in was
held at the University of Michigan, March 24 –

25, 1965], where a teach-in started at 10:00 at
night and went throughout the night. The idea
was to bring in people who had something to
say about the war. We had a Buddhist monk,
and we had some veterans and some people
from religious ministries, so it was a wide range
of people to educate the students. It went from
10:00 at night until 7:00 in the morning, so it
didn’t interfere with students’ schedules. That
made the press, and that was my first footprint
into political activism. And once you do that,
people come to you and say, “And what about
this and what about this?”
Then the next year [1966], NYU was giving
an honorary degree to Robert McNamara,
which I thought was a disgrace. He was one of
the main architects of the war. As he said later,
in his memoirs, we knew the war was unwin-
nable, but we had no exit strategy. So I orga-
nized a walkout, a respectful walkout. When
they mentioned his name, 200 faculty, students,
and parents got up and walked out. And that
actually made the front page of The New York
Times the next day. So again, I kept getting
sidetracked into more and more political activ-
ism.
My problem is that it is all a sidelight to what
I am trying to do, which is research and teach
and educate. But I now realize that I can’t be on
the sideline. I have too much to say, and I now
have a reputation that I can use for certain
causes like being against war, being a peace
activist, and now, trying to create everyday he-
roes.

Scott Hutchens: Did you envision the ex-
periment to be an extension of your deindividu-
ation research?
Philip Zimbardo: The deindividuation
experiment which I did at NYU really came
directly out of Lord of the Flies [(Golding,
1954)]. I was teaching a course, I guess it was
social research, and I had my students read Lord
of the Flies. This was Golding’s Nobel Prize–
winning novel. My students wanted to know:
How valid was it that simply changing your
external appearance was enough to change your
morality? So kids who got naked and painted
themselves were able to kill the pig that they
were unable to before. And once they did that,
it lowered the constraints against killing. Then
they killed “Piggy,” the intellectual boy. At that
moment, fascism takes over democracy and
then, quote, “All hell breaks loose.” So, the
study was done mostly to [test] the validity of
that novelist’s conception. Is it enough to
change how somebody looks in order to change
how they will behave? Our general sense of
human nature is that good and evil come from
within us. Golding seemed to imply that good
people can do bad things simply by making
themselves anonymous in a situation that gives
them permission to do so and where they can act
on that.
So what we did is a study at NYU where I
stacked the cards against me [see Zimbardo
(1970) for early perspectives and descriptions

on deindividuation]. I said let’s have women
shocking another woman for some reason that
we concoct. And let’s make half of them anon-
ymous, give them hoods, take away their
names, give them numbers, “you’re 1, you’re 2,
you’re 4,” and we are going to compare them to
women we make individuated who had to wear
name tags with their names, and they would be
called by their names. What we found, simply,
is that the women who were made to feel anon-
ymous, in a group setting, given permission to
inflict pain on someone else, exerted twice as
much pain—the measure was duration—as did
the women who were identifiable. So here was
proof of the reality of Lord of the Flies princi-
ple. At that point, there had only been two
studies on deindividuation, one by Festinger
[(Festinger, Pepitone, & Newcomb, 1952)] an-
other one by Jerry Singer [(Singer, Brush, &
Lublin, 1965)]. Their studies had no impact at
all, in part because the Festinger study used as
its dependent measure memory [and its correla-
tion with subjective ratings]. They said that if
you are in a high-intensity situation in which
you are anonymous, it will reduce your memory
for events that took place. The study was not
picked up by cognitive psychologists and mem-
ory wasn’t a social dependent variable for social
psychologists. So the Festinger deindividuation
T
hi
s

do
cu
m
en
t i
s
co
py
ri
gh
te
d
by
th
e
A
m
er
ic
an
P
sy
ch
ol

og
ic
al
A
ss
oc
ia
tio
n
or
o
ne
o
f i
ts
a
lli
ed
p
ub
lis
he
rs
.

T
hi
s
ar
tic
le
is
in
te
nd
ed
s
ol
el
y
fo
r t
he
p
er
so
na
l u
se

o
f t
he
in
di
vi
du
al
u
se
r a
nd
is
n
ot
to
b
e
di
ss
em
in
at
ed

b
ro
ad
ly
.
theory went nowhere. Because our study used
aggression as its dependent measure, it was
immediately picked up, and it actually spawned
a whole bunch of other research on deindividu-
ation and aggression. So, it was not the pioneer-
ing study, but it was the study which triggered
other related research. Ultimately, deindividua-
tion is the basic process in prison-like environ-
ments, putting people in uniform, taking their
name away, giving them a number. But it’s also
part of becoming a “GI,” a Government Issue,
taking away the identity of people that are going
to become soldiers and making them Govern-
ment Issue.
There was a very interesting study done right
after the prison study by the anthropologist
Watson [(1973)], and what he did is a very
simple thing. He said, based on the prison study
and based on my deindividuation study, it ought
to follow that when warriors go to war, having
changed their appearance before going to battle,
they should behave much more violently
against their prisoners than those that go to war
without changing their appearance. I wrote him
and I said, “Yeah, I agree” [Dr. Zimbardo’s

work is cited prominently as the impetus for the
research]. He goes to cross-cultural files, all the
information we know about every culture, gath-
ered by anthropologists, psychologists, mission-
aries, and so forth, and he looked for two pieces
of data. One involved the nations in which
warriors change their appearance versus those
that don’t, and in what nations do they kill,
torture, and mutilate their victims versus nations
that don’t. So that’s the most extreme dependent
variable you could imagine. That is real vio-
lence. What he found were 23 cultures where
they had those two bits of data. The results were
amazing. Where warriors go to battle and do not
change their appearance, only 10% of the time
do they kill, torture, and mutilate. When they
change their appearance, meaning put on
masks, hoods, paint themselves, put on uni-
forms, then 90% of the time they kill, torture,
and mutilate. That’s a dramatic demonstration,
not at the level of individual students. This is at
the level of nations. So it’s a very profound
impact of the external environment shaping our
internal environment, if you will.
Scott Hutchens: When I was in graduate
school at Texas Tech University, I heard you
talk at a conference in Texas. You mentioned a
Halloween party where masked children were
more aggressive.
Philip Zimbardo: Scott Fraser, who was
one of my students at NYU when I did the
deindividuation study, did a whole follow-up
study with Ed Diener [(Diener, Fraser, Beaman,

& Kelem, 1976)]. With kids at Halloween, the
researchers either said, “Wow, you are really
disguised and I cannot tell who you are,” or
“Lift up the mask, who is under the mask, what
is your name?” In one condition they main-
tained anonymity and in another condition they
undid it. They used a bowl of either candy or
money and said, “Take one.” What they showed
was that the deindividuated kids violated the
rule and took significantly more money, they
took more candy. When they had been in a
costume and had been exposed, they simply
took one. Again, it’s a very nice natural field
demonstration.
Scott Hutchens: Martin Seligman has said
that positive psychology is not merely human-
ism but a genuine research endeavor that was
neglected for decades in favor of mental illness.
Is it a goal of your heroism research to predict
“heroes-in-waiting,” as you describe them?
Philip Zimbardo: I gave a talk 2 years ago
at an international meeting of the Positive Psy-
chology Association, which attracted 1,700
people from 20 or 30 different countries. There
is a book Character Strength and Virtues that
Marty Seligman wrote with his coauthor, Chris
Peterson [(Peterson & Seligman, 2004)]. In this
book with all these strengths and virtues, there
is something missing. It doesn’t mention hero-
ism in the whole book. There’s altruism, com-
passion, empathy, you name it. So, when I gave
my talk, I said, “I really feel awkward, I’m
invited to give a talk on my journey from evil to
heroism, but heroism doesn’t seem to exist in

the positive psychology movement. How could
that be?” And the reason is that heroism is a
behavior; it is not an internal virtue. So, heroism
is really the transformation of compassion into
social action. And so they simply have over-
looked it. What that raises for me is: “How can
you have a positive psychology that doesn’t
impact behavior?” Because that is what we psy-
chologists are all about. The way psychology
differs from philosophy is that we focus on the
behavior. We believe that behavior is linked to
attitudes and values and decision making, and
EXPERIMENT
T
hi
s
do
cu
m
en
t i
s
co
py
ri
gh
te

d
by
th
e
A
m
er
ic
an
P
sy
ch
ol
og
ic
al
A
ss
oc
ia
tio
n
or
o

ne
o
f i
ts
a
lli
ed
p
ub
lis
he
rs
.
T
hi
s
ar
tic
le
is
in
te
nd
ed

s
ol
el
y
fo
r t
he
p
er
so
na
l u
se
o
f t
he
in
di
vi
du
al
u
se
r a

nd
is
n
ot
to
b
e
di
ss
em
in
at
ed
b
ro
ad
ly
.
so forth, but if there is no behavioral outcome,
for me it is really not psychology.
In fact, I am on the board of directors of the
Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism
Research and Education, which invited the Da-

lai Lama to give several lectures and engage in
a public dialogue [March 2011]. I was privi-
leged to be the first on a list of scientists to share
this dialogue with the Dalai Lama. I began, “I
apologize for a very provocative question, but
in a world filled with evil, your Holiness, is
compassion alone enough?” I said, “I’d like to
suggest that it’s not.” Compassion makes peo-
ple feel good. Compassion is perhaps the high-
est personal virtue, but unless compassion is
socially engaged, it doesn’t do anything except
make the compassionate person feel like a better
person. So, I am arguing that heroism is the
highest civic virtue, which is the transformation
of private virtues into action. And of course, in
the end, he agreed. The Dalai Lama’s orienta-
tion, really like Marty Seligman’s, is that if
everybody in the world is compassionate, evil
would cease to exist. That’s not going to happen
operationally, we know that. There are perpe-
trators who are influential professionals, whose
job it is to seduce people to the dark side. There
are drug dealers; there are gang recruiters; there
are cigarette ad agencies; there are sex traffick-
ers; there are pornography makers. There’s a
huge list of influence professionals who have
resources, who are organized, whose job it is to
recruit. And on the other side of the bell curve
of humanity are heroes. So villains and perpe-
trators of evil are outliers on one end of the bell
curve of humanity and at the other end are
heroes, who are unorganized, who are humble,
who have no resources. So, in a way the battle
is over the hearts and minds of the general
population. And heroes can’t win, because they
are unorganized and modest and they are not

professionals. The other guys and gals are pro-
fessionals. So that’s where the Heroic Imagina-
tion Project comes in. We are trying to create an
active, organized, influential, resourceful pro-
gram to fortify the general public against the
lore of the dark side and inspire them to the
bright side and will teach people how to be
effective heroes. So, that’s our big, big mission.
A little overwhelming and daunting, but it is
going to happen.
Scott Hutchens: How did the Discovering
Psychology (Yourgrau, Friedman, & Brennan,
1990) series come to fruition? Were you se-
lected on the strength of your personality? Over
what time period was the filming accom-
plished?
Philip Zimbardo: Good question.
[Among my] proudest achievements in psychol-
ogy is the Discovering Psychology series, which
is this year having its 20th anniversary. In fact I
am speaking in Washington on December 2nd
to the National Council of Social Science
Teachers about that. Annenberg is actually
sending me. So, it’s 20 years since we did that.
And I think it has been 5 years since I updated
it and since we went from the old video to
DVDs.
The idea came from WGBH in Boston. They
are the ones who do the NOVA series. They said
that they wanted a series on psychology which
is not just on the brain and Freud, [but] prefer-
ably all of psychology. They were looking for

people who were actively doing research, had
some media experience, ideally had a textbook,
and met a few other criteria. And then we au-
ditioned. I had to go to Swarthmore and audi-
tion. Barry Schwartz had been a student of mine
at NYU. I taught in his class. And people from
WGBH came and did an evaluation. I think I
was actually up against Marty Seligman and
several other people. They chose me because
they thought I had the best stage presence. And
it was three of the most difficult years of my
life. So, the first thing after they chose me, they
said, “Okay, now write a grant to get us the
money!” I had to write a grant to get a pilot
program done. So, I wrote the grant and we got
money for one program, and I said let’s make it
about social psychology, since I know that. And
so the first program, which became “Pro-
gram 19,” was the “Power of the Situation.”
That program had to be evaluated by 100 teach-
ers and students watching it and that program
had to get a certain average interest rating,
which it did. Then, they gave us money for three
more or five more. Now, originally what they
wanted was 12 one-hour programs like in the
NOVA series. I said, “No this has to be for
college students.” Originally, their focus was on
adult education. And my focus was on the class-
room. I said it would be better to have 24
programs of a half hour each. It would be good
for TV and teachers could fit it into their sched-
ule. What it meant was that, in that format, it
could not be in the big NOVA format. Their

T
hi
s
do
cu
m
en
t i
s
co
py
ri
gh
te
d
by
th
e
A
m
er
ic
an
P

sy
ch
ol
og
ic
al
A
ss
oc
ia
tio
n
or
o
ne
o
f i
ts
a
lli
ed
p
ub
lis

he
rs
.
T
hi
s
ar
tic
le
is
in
te
nd
ed
s
ol
el
y
fo
r t
he
p
er
so

na
l u
se
o
f t
he
in
di
vi
du
al
u
se
r a
nd
is
n
ot
to
b
e
di
ss
em

in
at
ed
b
ro
ad
ly
.
format has to be an hour long. But I was willing
to sacrifice that because I knew ultimately it was
going to be a valuable classroom tool. And then
they said, in order to give course credit, it has to
be 26 programs. So we threw in two more.
It took 3 years to do. It was really, really,
really intense, because nobody at WGBH knew
anything about psychology. So I had to set up a
task force of teachers from all levels, commu-
nity colleges, 4-year colleges, 2-year colleges,
people with an ethnic mix, a gender mix, all of
the possible parameters, and for every program,
I would prepare 25- to 50-page backgrounds,
and say, here are the basic themes, here are the
people we should include, here are the historical
figures. And then I would block it out and say
we could start here and so forth. And then our
team would go over it and give us feedback.
And then it would go over to a scriptwriter at
WGBH, who would fashion it down to 18
pages. And I would perform. Essentially, I ar-

ranged for all the interviews and the demonstra-
tions. And the idea is that each program would
be broken into four to five separable modules.
That was the conception. At the time, we didn’t
have a way to do it, which we do now with
DVDs, so that teachers could just show a 5-min-
ute piece. That is, you could cut it into a lecture
instead of dumping the whole half hour. Again,
with the DVDs, people are doing that. We can
show 5 minutes from this segment and 5 min-
utes from another one to enrich lectures rather
than replacing them with the movies.
At the time, the leading Annenberg Corpora-
tion programs were in Spanish, biology, and I
think English, and, as far as I know now, Dis-
covering Psychology is Annenberg’s most pop-
ular series. I should mention I don’t make a
penny from it. I signed a contract; it was non-
profit. I actually lost money on it. They gave me
my Stanford salary for doing it, and because I
was not publishing as much in those 3 years as
I did normally, I did not get a raise when I came
back. I would have people say, “You must be
rich because you are selling all these videos,”
and I replied, “I don’t make a penny off it.” I
actually lost money, but it is the best thing I
ever did in my career as an educator.
I think hundreds of thousands of students
have gotten introductory psychology credit just
watching the series and having a standardized
test, getting 3 or 4 units of introductory psy-
chology credit. It started as a college resource,
now it is in most high school AP and regular

psychology courses, and also is being shown in
psychology classes around the world.
Duane Shuttlesworth: Among your vi-
sions as APA president, you cited the impor-
tance of psychology’s appeal to the public. Do
you consider yourself to be an ambassador of
psychology of sorts?
Philip Zimbardo: Of all the courses kids
take in college, they invariably say ours is the
most relevant to their lives. Ours meaning psy-
chology at all levels, child development, social
psychology, and so forth.
So, essentially my focus has been: How do
we package all the good stuff that we’re doing
that is relevant to people’s lives, including their
lives at all levels, changing their conceptions
about what people are all about, changing their
conceptions of themselves as change agents,
changing their health status, making them less
shy, making them be better parents, and so
forth, and so forth? That has been an abiding
mission.
[Psychologists may say], “Well, it’s just not
our job to build a bridge. We give you the
formula; somebody else goes out to do it.” I’m
saying, “No, no, if it’s our research, we should
say at the end of every article, in the discussion
section, here’s how I think this could make an
action-focused difference. How it could be ap-
plied in a school setting, in a setting for the
elderly, in juvenile court, in conflict resolutions,
and more.”

So, I think I’m trying to be an ambassador of
goodwill, in all the things that psychology can
bring to the world. And Step 1 is we have to
know what we’re doing and we have to share in
a way that’s accessible. That’s reasonable.
We’ve got to go beyond publishing only what’s
in our journals, which are really for each other,
to working hard to have OP-ED pieces, maga-
zine pieces, newspaper pieces, and psycholo-
gists having more and more blogs. There are
very few psychologists that really have mean-
ingful blogs. And apparently, I didn’t know
what peoples’ lives are like, but now too many
people spend too much of their lives on the
Internet. You check out some of these sites, and
for example, you see that 1.9 million people
have viewed my 10-minute YouTube video,
“The Secret Powers of Time,” an animated ver-
sion of a full-length talk I gave in London’s
Royal Society of Arts recently. Essentially, I
EXPERIMENT
T
hi
s
do
cu
m
en
t i

s
co
py
ri
gh
te
d
by
th
e
A
m
er
ic
an
P
sy
ch
ol
og
ic
al
A
ss

oc
ia
tio
n
or
o
ne
o
f i
ts
a
lli
ed
p
ub
lis
he
rs
.
T
hi
s
ar
tic

le
is
in
te
nd
ed
s
ol
el
y
fo
r t
he
p
er
so
na
l u
se
o
f t
he
in
di

vi
du
al
u
se
r a
nd
is
n
ot
to
b
e
di
ss
em
in
at
ed
b
ro
ad
ly
.

think we all have to do more to take what we do
effectively in the classroom and put it out in
other formats, at the very least for the parents of
our students. And also to the relatives of our
kids and to the people in our community with-
out kids, and that’s what it means to be giving
psychology away to the general public [see
Slavich (2009)]. Passionate psychology teach-
ers give psychology away every day to our
students. However, we know that, at most, 5%
of introductory psychology students are going
to go on to graduate school. And maybe only a
few percent are going to go on to be profes-
sional. But if we imbue them with the excite-
ment that psychology is, we are affecting them
as lawyers, as architects, as potential politicians,
as negotiators, in all these ways. Again, I feel
like giving psychology away to the general pub-
lic should be the mission of every psychologist
to figure out how best to do so in her or his
domain of knowledge.
Carole White: If you had it to do over
again, might you pursue clinical psychology?
Your shyness research suggests a desire to de-
velop life skills in others.
Philip Zimbardo: That’s really a good
question. I think every student that takes intro-
ductory psychology wants to be a clinician,
wants to cure mental illness. In studying shy-
ness, here’s a normal process of people connect-
ing with each other that gets broken, that gets

distorted and people cannot make the human
connection. So again, I saw shyness as a con-
nection between a clinical and social problem.
In fact, the first article I wrote in 1975 in Psy-
chology Today [(Zimbardo, Pilkonis, & Nor-
wood, 1975)] described “a social disease called
shyness.” And on the cover was a cocktail party
with a guy standing in the middle—totally na-
ked, but nobody’s looking at him. So, I am
saying, “Here’s what shyness is.” You imagine
everybody’s looking at you, but nobody notices
you, in part, because you are anonymous. So,
shy people make themselves anonymous and
create this self-fulfilling prophecy that isolates
them from the Human Condition. It is a self-
inflicted surrender of personal freedoms of as-
sociation and action.
So, we set up an experimental shyness clinic.
Since I’m not a clinician, I couldn’t do therapy
alone, but since it’s an “experiment,” I could
work with a clinician, which I did. Then once
we could show with metrics that it made a
difference in prosocial behavioral outcomes, we
moved it out as a formal clinic in the commu-
nity, headed for 25 years by my colleague,
Lynne Henderson. It is currently a shyness
training and resource clinic at Palo Alto Uni-
versity.
Carole White: What meaning does the
40th anniversary [of the Stanford Prison Exper-
iment] have to you and to Stanford?
Philip Zimbardo: Let me be honest. After

we did it, it was simply a follow-up to the
deindividuation study, a follow up of the Mil-
gram study. The idea was that we’d write an
article, get it published, and move on. There
were other things that I was interested in. How-
ever, there was this sudden instant fame with
the prison riots and the Chronolog documen-
tary, and The New York Times Magazine article,
and so forth. Then it really blew out of propor-
tion. What’s happening now 40 years later, is
that this summer is its 40th anniversary. The
American Psychological Association will fea-
ture a panel symposium about it with Craig
Haney, head SPE [Stanford Prison Experiment]
research assistant, now distinguished professor
at UC Santa Cruz; Christina Maslach, SPE her-
oine, now professor at UC Berkeley; Scott
Plous, of Wesleyan University, who created the
SPE Web site; and me, for good measure. Stan-
ford Magazine published a major issue about
the Stanford prison study in its July/August
2011 issue. And they have actually hired a
senior writer from Time magazine [Romesh
Ratnesar], whose interviews uncovered many of
our former prisoners and guards (who are now
old guys) and many other people associated
with the study. What I am doing in connection
with its publication is to combine that with a
call to all of Zim’s Stanford alumni to get in-
volved in our new Heroic Imagination Project
[http://www.HeroicImagination.org], to help
contribute to its success. For 40 years that I
taught at Stanford University, I had classes as
large as 1,000 students at a time, so there’s got
to be a lot of them out there, some eager to give
me some financial support [laughter]! Hope-

fully, after that we can put this study to bed.
The prison study was a demonstration of how
good people can do bad things. The Heroic
Imagination Project explores all the ways that
ordinary people can be taught to be everyday
wise and effective heroes in very precise ways,
using cognitive psychology, awareness of bias,
T
hi
s
do
cu
m
en
t i
s
co
py
ri
gh
te
d
by
th

ot
to
b
e
di
ss
em
in
at
ed
b
ro
ad
ly
.
awareness of inattentional blindness, awareness
of illusions, and mostly social psychology,
awareness of the bystander effect, diffusion of
responsibility, authority, power, and more. And,
again on our Web site, we are teaching through
the use of video clips. We have about 60 of
them, and we will add more, not only research
clips, but some from Candid Camera, illustrat-
ing how ordinary people can be led to do silly
things by mindlessly conforming and other
principles. The key to our education program

both in our in-school curriculum and online
instruction is to first fortify youth and others
against the powerful negative influences of
those on the “dark side,” then inspire them to
the “bright side of heroism,” and finally, have
them become heroes-in-training to practice
daily deeds of positive social actions. Heroism
is learnable, coachable, and should be pervasive
rather than rare.
Oh, and there’s one last thing. There’s been
in the works, for years, a dramatic Hollywood
movie about the Stanford Prison Experiment.
We have a fine script by Christopher McQuar-
rie, who won the Oscar for The Usual Suspects,
actually a great writer. He was going to be the
director but cannot because of other commit-
ments. We have funding for the movie. We have
financiers who want to do it. We are going
through a series of five top directors to head the
project. Sadly, our number one was Sidney Lu-
met, who just died [April 9, 2011]. He did 12
Angry Men and other fine movies that would
have made him ideal for our SPE movie. And
now we are in the process of finding the best
available director to make the dream of a movie
into a reality. As soon as one of them says
“yes,” we go into production. That will be ex-
citing. I’ll believe it when I see it. I am hoping
Brad Pitt would play me [laughter]!
Scott Hutchens: When I had asked about
Discovering Psychology, you mentioned that it
was one of the foremost things you are proud of.
What were the other ones?

Philip Zimbardo: I gave you the shyness
research as an example, of taking a vague idea
and developing a teaching [program] out of it,
developing research out of that and developing
an applied model of clinical treatment. For me,
that is a more rounded, lasting contribution than
the prison study. The prison study will be my
legacy. It’s going to be what is on my grave-
stone. I would say Discovering Psychology, the
Shyness Institute, and the prison study have to
be included, in making us aware of the subtle
and pervasive impact of situations on our be-
havior. And lastly, I am hoping the Heroic
Imagination Project can be successful in mak-
ing us aware of how we can be the change we
envision in making a more positive and better
world we live in, starting with kids at the
youngest level and really going across the age
continuum with a new generation of social
change agents around the world.
So, I would say those four: (a) Discovering
Psychology, as giving psychology away to the
public in a meaningful way as an education tool;
(b) the Shyness Clinic and Institute, as the trans-
formation of an idea into teaching and then into
research, and finally into a viable clinical appli-
cation; (c) the Stanford Prison Experiment, for a
model of an intense behavioral study, from
which emerged an altered conception of how
human nature can be shaped by social circum-
stances; and finally (d) the Heroic Imagination
Project, which says let’s flip that 180 degrees.
Instead of focusing on how any good person can
be led to do bad things, how can any ordinary

person be led to do really good, even heroic
things? I think those would be my big four.
Maybe on my gravestone, it’ll read, “He did it
all: A, B, C, D!”
References
Diener, E., Fraser, S. C., Beaman, A. L., & Kelem,
R. T. (1976). Effects of deindividuation variables
on stealing among Halloween trick-or-treaters.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33,
178 –183. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.33.2.178
Festinger, L., Pepitone, A., & Newcomb, T. (1952).
Some consequences of de-individuation in a
group. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychol-
ogy, 47, 382–389. doi:10.1037/h0057906
Golding, W. (1954). Lord of the flies. New York, NY:
Penguin Putnam.
Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973).
Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison. In-
ternational Journal of Criminology and Penol-
ogy, 1, 69 –97.
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience.
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67,
371–378. doi:10.1037/h0040525
Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Charac-
ter, strengths, and virtues. Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association.
Singer, J. E., Brush, C. A., & Lublin, S. C. (1965).
Some aspects of deindividuation: Identity and

EXPERIMENT
T
hi
s
do
cu
m
en
t i
s
co
py
ri
gh
te
d
by
th
e
A
m
er
ic

an
P
sy
ch
ol
og
ic
al
A
ss
oc
ia
tio
n
or
o
ne
o
f i
ts
a
lli
ed
p

ub
lis
he
rs
.
T
hi
s
ar
tic
le
is
in
te
nd
ed
s
ol
el
y
fo
r t
he
p

er
so
na
l u
se
o
f t
he
in
di
vi
du
al
u
se
r a
nd
is
n
ot
to
b
e
di

ss
em
in
at
ed
b
ro
ad
ly
.
conformity. Journal of Experimental Social Psy-
chology, 1, 356 –378. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(65)
90015-6
Slavich, G. M. (2009). On 50 years of giving psy-
chology away: An interview with Philip Zimbardo.
Teaching of Psychology, 36, 278 –284. doi:
10.1080/00986280903175772
Watson, J. (1973). Investigation into deindividuation
using a cross-cultural survey technique. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 25, 342–345.
doi:10.1037/h0034218
Yourgrau, T., Freidman, T., & Brennan, W. C. (Pro-
ducers), & Zimbardo, P. G. (Narrator and On-
Screen Host). (1990). Discovering psychology
[Video series]. Boston, MA: WGBH/Annenberg.

Zimbardo, P. G. (1970). The human choice: Individu-
ation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, im-
pulse, and chaos. In W. J. Arnold & D. Levine (Eds.),
1969 Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (pp. 237–
307). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Zimbardo, P. G. (1971). The power and pathology of
imprisonment. Congressional Record (Serial
No. 15, October 25, 1971). Hearings before Sub-
committee No. 3, of the Committee on the Judi-
ciary, House of Representatives, Ninety-Second
Congress, First Session on Corrections, Part II,
Prisons, Prison Reform and Prisoner’s Rights:
California. Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Office.
Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). On the ethics of intervention
in human psychological research: With special ref-
erence to the Stanford Prison Experiment. Cogni-
tion, 2, 243–256. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(72)
90014-5
Zimbardo, P. G. (1974). The detention and jailing of
juveniles. Hearings before U.S. Senate Committee
on the Judiciary Subcommittee to Investigate Ju-
venile Delinquency, 10, 11, 17, September, 1973.
Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Of-
fice, 141–161.
Zimbardo, P. G. (2007). The Lucifer effect: Under-
standing how good people turn evil. New York,
NY: Random House.
Zimbardo, P. G. (Consultant, On-Screen Performer),

Goldstein, L. (Producer), & Utley, G. (Correspon-
dent). (1971, November 26). Prisoner 819 did a
bad thing: The Stanford Prison Experiment [Tele-
vision series episode]. In L. Goldstein (Producer),
Chronolog. New York, NY: NBC-TV.
Zimbardo, P. G., Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Jaffe,
D. (1973, April). The mind is a formidable jailer:
A Pirandellian prison. The New York Times Mag-
azine, Section 6, pp. 38, ff.
Zimbardo, P. G., Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Jaffe,
D. (1974). The psychology of imprisonment: Pri-
vation, power and pathology. In Z. Rubin (Ed.),
Doing unto others: Explorations in social behavior
(pp. 61–73). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Zimbardo, P. G., Pilkonis, P., & Norwood, R. (1975).
The silent prison of shyness. Psychology Today,
69 –70, 72.
Received June 14, 2011
Revision received September 1, 2011
Accepted September 6, 2011 �
T
hi
s
do
cu
m

ly
.
Original Article
Are the American Psychological
Association’s Detainee Interrogation
Policies Ethical and Effective?
Key Claims, Documents, and Results
Kenneth S. Pope
Norwalk, CT, USA
Abstract. After 9–11, the United States began interrogating
detainees at settings such as Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and
Guantanamo. The American
Psychological Association (APA) supported psychologists’
involvement in interrogations, adopted formal policies, and
made an array of public
assurances. This article’s purpose is to highlight key APA
decisions, policies, procedures, documents, and public
statements in urgent need of
rethinking and to suggest questions that may be useful in a
serious assessment, such as, ‘‘However well intended, were
APA’s interrogation
policies ethically sound?’’; ‘‘Were they valid, realistic, and
able to achieve their purpose?’’; ‘‘Were other approaches
available that would address
interrogation issues more directly, comprehensively, and

actively, that were more ethically and scientifically based, and
that would have had a
greater likelihood of success?’’; and ‘‘Should APA continue to
endorse its post-9–11 detainee interrogation policies?’’
Keywords: American Psychological Association, detainee
interrogation, ethics, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib
The devastating events of 9–11 brought a tangle of com-
plex issues, dangerous realities, and hard choices. To help
meet these challenges, the United States began interrogating
detainees. The interrogation settings included the Abu
Ghraib Prison in Iraq, the Detention Center at Bagram
Airbase in Afghanistan, and Camps Delta, Iguana, and
X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.
The American Psychological Association (APA) played
a key role in supporting detainee interrogations and
highlighted psychologists’ contributions to this aspect of
national security. For example, APA submitted a statement
on psychology and interrogations to the US Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence explaining that ‘‘psychologists
have important contributions to make in eliciting informa-
tion that can be used to prevent violence and protect our
nation’s security’’; that ‘‘conducting an interrogation is
inherently a psychological endeavor’’; and that ‘‘psychology
is central to this process’’ (American Psychological Associ-
ation, 2007b).
US officials also saw a central role for psychologists:
Pentagon officials said . . . they would try to use only
psychologists, not psychiatrists, to help interrogators
devise strategies to get information from detainees
at places like Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The new policy
follows by little more than two weeks an overwhelm-

ing vote by the American Psychiatric Association
discouraging its members from participating in those
efforts (Lewis, 2006).
APA promoted support for its interrogation policies in its
press releases, its journals, its web site, its Internet lists, its
conventions, the APA Monitor on Psychology, and other
venues. This article assumes that the public interest, the pro-
fession, and psychological science are best served when we
meet the vigorous promotion of policies, claims, and conclu-
sion with equally vigorous critical examination. Critical
thinking about policies, claims, and conclusions is essential
no matter how prestigious, authoritative, trusted, or
respected the source, or how widely-accepted, strongly held,
and seemingly self-evident the policies, claims, and
conclusions.
This article’s approach is not to provide a simplified set
of supposed answers, preemptive conclusions, or confident
certainties. Its purpose is to highlight key APA policies, pro-
cedures, and public statements that seem in urgent need of
rethinking and to suggest some questions that may be useful
in a serious assessment.
In reviewing material from different points of view,
I have chosen in many instances to quote directly the words
of APA officers and the members of the special task force on
ethics and national security that APA appointed to shape
ethical policy in this area, and also critics of APA’s
policies. Some rhetoric on both sides may seem intense,
Hogrefe OpenMind License [http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/a000001]
Zeitschrift für Psychologie / Journal of Psychology 2011; Vol.
219(3):150–158
DOI: 10.1027/2151-2604/a000062

� 2011 Hogrefe Publishing. Distributed under the
confrontational, or divisive. It is important to not let the rhet-
oric itself become a focus or distraction but to understand
and consider carefully the substance of each statement.
Here are a few APA policies, procedures, and assertions
that could benefit from a fresh look, careful consideration,
and critical thinking, along with some suggested questions
that might be useful.
How APA’s Interrogation Policy
Was Adopted and Announced
To shape its interrogation policy, APA formed what was
called a ‘‘Blue Ribbon’’ panel (James, 2008, p. 246): the
Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and
National Security (PENS Task Force). Typically the APA
Council of Representatives, which met a few weeks after
the PENS Task Force issued its report, carefully reviews
and discusses task force reports prior to voting on whether
to approve them. However, when the PENS task force pro-
duced its report, the APA Board of Directors declared a state
of emergency, invoking Article VII, Section 4, of the APA
Bylaws, and voted by e-mail on July 1 to approve the report
as APA ethics policy.
Bypassing Council’s normal review process had signifi-
cant implications. Council members are elected by APA’s 54
diverse divisions and by the state and provincial psycholog-
ical associations. The Council’s deliberative processes sub-
ject proposed policies to intense scrutiny, critical
evaluation, and vigorous debate from multiple points of

view. Concerns from APA members who are not a part of
governance can be voiced through their Council representa-
tives. This rigorous review process can uncover a policy
proposal’s fallacies, bias, unfounded conclusions, significant
weaknesses, overlooked information, unexamined alterna-
tives, and possible unintended consequences prior to Coun-
cil voting on whether to accept, endorse, and approve the
proposal as APA policy. However, the PENS report
bypassed Council’s critical review and debate prior to adop-
tion, and Council did not vote on whether to accept,
endorse, and approve the proposal as APA policy.
Why were various key announcements of the actual
adoption process inaccurate? Here are four examples:
(1) APA issued a press release emphasizing that: ‘‘The
American Psychological Association (APA) Council
of Representatives, the Association’s governing body,
has endorsed a Task Force Report on Psychological
Ethics and National Security today. . . .’’ (American
Psychological Association, 2005a).
(2) The APA president during whose term the APA Pres-
idential Task Force was appointed and submitted its
report announced in American Psychologist, APA’s
journal of record, that ‘‘the APA Council of Represen-
tatives approved the PENS Task Force Report at its
August 2005 meeting’’ (Levant, 2006, p. 385).
(3) APA’s Monitor on Psychology, which is sent to all
APA members and made available to the public on
the APA web site, noted that the PENS report ‘‘was
accepted by APA’s Council of Representatives’’
(Mumford, 2006, p. 68).

(4) Over a year after the PENS report had become policy,
APA submitted a statement that was published in
Salon: ‘‘The reality is that APA’s Council of Represen-
tatives endorsed the current policy...’’ (Benjamin,
2006).
In some instances, the incorrect announcements that it
was the Council that had approved the report as APA policy
were followed by some form of an erratum. For example, a
statement appeared in Monitor on Psychology that ‘‘it was
incorrect to state that the Council accepted the report’’
(Correction, 2006). Similarly, Salon published an e-mail that
the APA spokesperson had circulated to Council acknowl-
edging that ‘‘Council took no official action on the report’’
(Benjamin, 2006). APA Council member Bernice Lott,
reviewing the history of these announcements, wrote:
‘‘APA’s policy . . . presented in the report of the Presidential
Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security
(Report, 2005), was never adopted or approved by the
Council Representatives. Nor was the Council ever asked
to do so. Public statements that have implied or said other-
wise have been inaccurate, and some have been publicly
corrected’’ (2007, pp. 35–36). Unfortunately, even in those
instances in which a correction was attempted, an erratum
appearing months after the original incorrect statement
may not be seen by all or even most of the readers of the
original article or be reflected in the secondary literature.
How APA adopted and announced its interrogation pol-
icy is one area that could benefit from a fresh look, careful
consideration, and critical thinking. Incorrect information in
an organization’s initial news release can find its way into
newspaper reports, journal articles, and other coverage of
the announcement. When the incorrect information is also
widely disseminated over the course of more than a year
to such venues as the organization’s journal of record, its

magazine, its web site, and the popular media, there occurs
the risk that, however unintentionally, the result is
widespread misunderstanding and a misleading historical
record containing inaccurate information.
Widely-held incorrect beliefs and misleading historical
records can show remarkable resilience, persistence, and
resistance to correction. They can become, in the words of
Olio and Cornell (1998), ‘‘an academic version of an urban
legend’’ (p. 1195). APA’s official statements in its news
releases, on its web site, in its journal of record, and else-
where should be reliable, trustworthy, and valid.
Accuracy in announcements gains added importance
when the official record is incomplete. The official ‘‘Pro-
ceedings of the American Psychological Association for
the Legislative Year’’ records all votes on major policy
issues by the APA Board of Directors and Council of Rep-
resentatives. The ‘‘Proceedings,’’ published each year in the
American Psychologist, ‘‘are the official record of the
actions of the Association taken during the year by both
the Board of Directors (the Board) and the Council of
Representatives (Council)’’ (Paige, 2006, p. 411). However,
K. S. Pope: APA Detainee Interrogation Policies 151
� 2011 Hogrefe Publishing. Distributed under the Zeitschrift
für Psychologie / Journal of Psychology 2011; Vol. 219(3):150–
158
the 2005 Board of Directors vote to adopt the PENS report
as official policy received no mention in the American Psy-

chologist’s ‘‘Proceedings’’ (Paige, 2006) for 2005.
Avoiding Activities That Harm
Detainees and Ensuring That
All Interrogations Are Conducted
in a Safe, Legal, Ethical, and Effective
Manner
APA claimed that psychologists were ‘‘in a unique position
to assist in ensuring that processes are safe, legal, ethical,
and effective for all participants’’ (Behnke, 2006, p. 154;
see also American Psychological Association, 2005b). The
organization assured the public that psychologists would
not be involved in harming detainees. The director of the
APA Ethics Office emphasized that ‘‘psychologists knew
not to participate in activities that harmed detainees’’ (Lewis,
2006). The 2007 APA president emphasized that psycholo-
gists’ involvement makes an important contribution toward
keeping interrogations safe and ethical (Brehm, 2007).
A statement from the APA Ethics Office appearing in Psy-
chology Today underscored what psychologists’ participa-
tion achieves in all interrogations: ‘‘The ability to spot
conditions that make abuse more likely uniquely prepares
psychologists for this task. Adding a trained professional
ensures that all interrogations are conducted in a safe, legal,
ethical, and effective manner that protects the individual and
helps to elicit information that will prevent future acts of
violence’’ (Hutson, 2008).
These claims deserve a fresh look, serious consideration,
and a critical analysis. What evidence did APA rely on in
making these confident assurances about all interrogations?
Were the claims subjected to critical scrutiny before placing
the authority, prestige, trust, and influence of the organiza-
tion behind them? Does the subsequent historical record
support these blanket assurances?

When thinking through these questions, it may be useful
to consider some of the following material.
The Boston Globe (2008; see also Goodman, 2007) sum-
marized a series of investigative news reports in an editorial
that began: ‘‘From the moment US military and civilian offi-
cials began detaining and interrogating Guantanamo Bay
prisoners with methods that the Red Cross has called tanta-
mount to torture, they have had the assistance of psycholo-
gists.’’ Eban (2007) reported that ‘‘psychologists weren’t
merely complicit in America’s aggressive new interrogation
regime. Psychologists . . . had actually designed the tactics
and trained interrogators in them while on contract to
the CIA.’’ A Senate investigation found that ‘‘military
psychologists were enlisted to help develop more aggressive
interrogation methods, including snarling dogs, forced nud-
ity and long periods of standing, against terrorism suspects’’
(Flaherty, 2008).
Mayer broadened the focus from psychologists designing
tactics and training investigators in the ‘‘aggressive new inter-
rogation’’ to include other roles as well. She reported that
‘‘[General] Dunlavey soon drafted military psychologists to
play direct roles in breaking detainees down. The psycholo-
gists were both treating the detainees clinically and advising
interrogators on how to manipulate them and exploit their
phobias. . .’’ (Mayer,2008a,p.196).Shewrotethat ‘‘psychol-
ogists were heavily involved in drawing up and monitoring
interrogation plans, which were designed individually for
each detainee.... Sleep deprivation was such a common tech-
nique...pornography [was used] to manipulate detainees....
Detainees were routinely shackledin painful ‘stress positions’
’’ (Mayer, 2008b).

The CIA special review of counterterrorism, detention,
and interrogation activities, marked ‘‘Top Secret’’ but later
declassified, documented yet another area of psychologists’
involvement (US Central Intelligence Agency, Inspector
General, 2004). In addition to psychologists designing the
aggressive interrogation techniques and their ‘‘direct roles
in breaking detainees down,’’ still other psychologists (i.e.,
‘‘outside psychologists’’) played key roles in providing
assurances that use of aggressive techniques, such as water-
boarding, was safe and would not cause lasting mental
harm.
The special review’s appendix C, a communication from
the US Department of Justice to the CIA Acting General
Counsel, noted that the CIA ‘‘consulted with outside psy-
chologists, completed a psychological assessment and
reviewed the relevant literature on this topic. Based on this
inquiry, you believe that the use of the procedures, including
the waterboard, and as a course of conduct would not result
in prolonged mental harm.’’ The input from outside psychol-
ogists fit with the reports of some on-site psychologists:
‘‘Your onsite psychologists have also indicated that JPRA
[Joint Personnel Recovery Agency] has likewise not
reported any significant long-term mental health conse-
quences from the use of the waterboard.’’1
It is worth noting that some documents and critics suggest
that psychologists also engaged in activities relevant to APA’s
reassurances about keeping interrogations legal. The
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) made government
documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act
publicly available. The ACLU (2008) pointed out that the
government’s own documents confirmed that ‘‘psychologists
supported illegal interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan.’’ For
additional concerns about legal issues relevant to interroga-
tions, please see ‘‘Guantanamo Bay: Overview of ICRC’s

work for internees’’ (International Committee of the Red
Cross, 2004).
1 The Joint Personnel Recovery Agency is in charge of the
Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) schools. The
agency is
‘‘responsible for missions to include the training for SERE and
Prisoner of War and Missing In Action operational affairs
including
repatriation’’ (US Central Intelligence Agency, Inspector
General, 2004). The SERE program trains soldiers (and civilians
working for the
Defense Department or private contractors working with the
military) to survive, evade capture, resist torture and
interrogation, escape, and
maintain the military code of conduct.
152 K. S. Pope: APA Detainee Interrogation Policies
219(3):150–158 � 2011 Hogrefe Publishing. Distributed under
the
Scholars like Robert Jay Lifton (2008) critiqued APA’s
policies and assurances in this area. He stated: ‘‘The idea
that psychologists should be kept around during interroga-
tion in order to protect the person being interrogated or
avoid or advise against extreme harmful measures, that idea
seems quite absurd to me.... Some of the greatest roles in
bringing that [i.e., ‘‘some of the worst abuses . . . to break
down our prisoners’’] about have been played by
psychologists.’’

Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights,
and 11 other organizations sent an open letter to APA (Open
letter, 2009) about what it termed APA’s ‘‘grievous misman-
agement of this issue’’; APA’s ‘‘providing ethical cover for
psychologists’ participation in detainee abuse; and APA’s
handling of the detainee interrogation issue creating ‘‘the
greatest ethical crisis’’ in the profession’s history and mak-
ing a ‘‘terrible stain on the reputation of American psychol-
ogy.’’ A Lancet article critiqued APA’s PENS policy as a
‘‘disgrace’’ (Wilks, 2005). Professor of Medicine and Bio-
ethics Steven Miles, author of Oath Betrayed: America’s
Torture Doctors (2009a) wrote: ‘‘The American Psycholog-
ical Association was unique among US health professional
associations in providing policy cover for abusive interroga-
tions’’ (2009b).
The Nuremberg Ethic
On August 21, 2002, for the first time in its history, APA
took a stand counter to a basic ethic that seized the world’s
attention at the Nuremberg trials. In what became known as
the Nuremberg Defense, the Nazi defendants said they were
just ‘‘following the law’’ or ‘‘just following orders.’’ The
Nuremberg Court and world opinion rejected that attempt
to avoid responsibility. The resulting Nuremberg Ethic
was clear: People who chose to violate fundamental ethical
responsibilities could not avoid responsibility by blaming
laws, orders, or regulations.
APA’s post-9–11 ethics code rejected the historic Nurem-
berg Ethic, stating that when facing an irreconcilable conflict
between their ‘‘ethical responsibilities’’ and the state’s
authority, ‘‘psychologists may adhere to the requirements
of the law, regulations, or other governing legal authority’’
(Section 1.02). One draft had added ‘‘in keeping with basic

principles of human rights.’’ APA decided to allow that spe-
cific limitation in the code’s introduction but to drop it from
the code’s enforceable section. This enforceable Standard
1.02 letting psychologists violate fundamental ethical
responsibilities in favor of following a regulation, a law,
or a governing legal authority clashed with APA’s ethical
foundation and what had been its defining values.
It is important to note that this doctrine of ‘‘giving psy-
chologists the option to violate their ethical responsibilities
in order to follow the law, regulations, or other forms of
legal authority had been discussed before September 11’’
(Pope & Gutheil, 2008). Not only had the doctrine been
included in various ethics code drafts over the years, but
the controversy over conflicts between ethical and
legal responsibilities has a long history in psychology.
For example, ‘‘When Laws and Values Conflict: A Dilemma
for Psychologists’’ (Pope & Bajt, 1988), appearing in
American Psychologist over two decades ago, reported a
survey of psychologists’ beliefs and experiences in this area.
However, it was only after 9–11 that APA took a step
unprecedented in its over 100-year history: The APA Coun-
cil of Representatives voted to let psychologists set aside
basic ethical responsibilities if they conflicted irreconcilably
with laws, regulations, and other forms of governing legal
authority, which included military orders. APA’s vote to
reject the Nuremberg Ethic, occurring less than a year after
and in the context of both the 9–11 attack on the United
States and the US military’s launch of Operation Enduring
Freedom in Afghanistan in response to that attack, clearly
communicated to the profession, policy makers, and the
public its shift in values.
The US military emphasized APA’s new enforceable eth-

ical standard in its formal policy for psychologists involved
in ‘‘detention operations, intelligence interrogations, and
detainee debriefings’’ (US Department of the Army, 2006,
p. 152). Citing APA’s changed ethical standard, the army
policy stated: ‘‘A process for maintaining adherence to the
Code when it conflicts with applicable law, regulation, and
policy is outlined below’’ (p. 154). The policy states that
after addressing and attempting to resolve the issue, and
after appropriate consultation, ‘‘If the issue continues to
elude resolution, adhere to law, regulations, and policy in
a responsible manner.’’
APA’s historic change in its ethics code drew widespread
criticism. The editor of the British Medical Journal placed a
photograph from Abu Ghraib prison on the cover of one
issue and wrote:
Just obeying the rules has long been insufficient for
doctors. The judges at Nuremberg made clear that
obeying commands from superiors didn’t remove per-
sonal accountability. Doctors couldn’t deviate from
their ethical obligations even if a country’s laws
allowed or demanded otherwise.... So deeply
ingrained is this ethic in health care that it’s surpris-
ing, even shocking, to find that the same code isn’t
shared by psychologists, at least in the United States.
(Godlee, 2009)
A British psychologist responded to the editor’s critique
with a letter to the editor titled ‘‘Fortunately UK psycholo-
gists Don’t Use the APA Code of Ethics’’ (Triskel, 2009).
Similarly, Burton and Kagan (2007), writing in the British
Psychological Society’s Psychologist, wrote:
Most concerning of all, the APA allows its members
the ‘‘Nuremberg defence’’ that ‘‘I was only following

orders.’’... The implication is that psychologists are
permitted to assist in torture and abuse if they can
claim that they first tried to resolve the conflict
between their ethical responsibility and the law, regu-
lations or government legal authority. Otherwise they
can invoke the Nuremberg defence (p. 485).
158
Facing such criticism, APA argued that 9–11 had no
effect on its Council’s vote, nine months after 9–11, to
reverse APA’s longstanding commitment to the Nuremberg
ethic and to vote, for the first time in APA’s 100+ year his-
tory, to abandon that ethic. According to this reasoning,
there had been drafts of the change prior to 9–11, and there-
fore 9–11 could not have influenced the Council’s willing-
ness to approve the proposed change. For example, the
Ethics Office Director wrote: ‘‘The relevant aspect of stan-
dard 1.02, on conflicts between ethics and law, was drafted
in the fall 2000 and thus has no connection whatsoever to
the events of September 11, 2001.’’
Does APA’s reasoning constitute deductive proof or a
logical fallacy? After 9–11, the US Congress adopted anti-
terrorist legislation affecting search warrants, wiretaps, FBI
access to information, surveillance orders, and other govern-
mental activities. However, the relevant aspects of virtually
of these parts that were gathered under the umbrella ‘‘Patriot

Act’’ had been drafted and had existed in bill form prior to
9–11. For example, Senator Orin Hatch (2003) wrote:
The tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001 — and the killing of
more than 3,000 Americans — are forever etched in our
nation’s memory. Soon after this tragic attack, Congress
in bipartisan fashion enacted the Patriot Act, a long-
overdue set of measures that provided law enforcement
and intelligence agencies with basic tools needed to
fight and win the war against terrorism. In 1996, I pro-
posed many of these same measures in an anti-terrorism
bill.
By APA’s reasoning, the passage of the Patriot Act thus
had no connection whatsoever to the events of September
11, 2002, because the relevant aspects of the act had been
drafted before 9–11.
After adopting this enforceable standard in 2002, APA
continued to support, teach, and promote it as official ethical
policy for eight years, including the period that some of the
most controversial state policies regarding interrogations
were in still in place. Other groups spoke out against the
notion that state authority can serve as an acceptable reason
to abandon basic ethical responsibilities. Less than a year
after APA discarded the Nuremberg Ethic from its code,
for example, the World Medical Association’s president
issued a public reminder: ‘‘At Nuremberg in 1947, accused
physicians tried to defend themselves with the excuse that
they were only following the law and commands from their
superiors...the court announced that a physician could not
deviate from his ethical obligations even if legislation
demands otherwise’’ (World Medical Association, 2003).
APA did not reverse its opposition to the Nuremberg Ethic
until 2010, when it amended enforceable Standard 1.02.

Humane Treatment of Detainees
In shaping an ethics code that differed from the Nuremberg
Ethic, APA carefully distinguished between those parts of its
Ethics Code, policies, guidelines, and public statements that
were aspirational versus the code’s 89 enforceable stan-
dards. APA allowed the constraining phrase ‘‘in keeping
with basic principles of human rights’’ to appear in the
code’s aspirational introduction but decisively removed that
constraint from the enforceable section.
Similarly APA refused to add to the enforceable sections
of the Ethics Code protections that explicitly addressed
detainees. Historically, when widespread concerns arose
about the impact of psychologists’ behavior on groups at
risk, APA moved decisively to create specific requirements
and limitations in the ethics code’s enforceable standards.
These groups have included persons ‘‘for whom testing is
mandated by law or governmental regulations,’’ ‘‘persons
with a questionable capacity to consent,’’ research partici-
pants, ‘‘subordinates,’’ clients, students, supervisees, and
employees.
Facing concerns about the impact of psychologists’
behavior on research animals, to cite one example, APA cre-
ated an enforceable standard supporting the ‘‘humane treat-
ment’’ of laboratory animals. But APA decided that its code
should not recognize detainees as a group that might be vul-
nerable or at risk during interrogations in settings like Abu
Ghraib, Bagram, or Guantanamo.
APA’s decision to adopt an enforceable standard focus-
ing on ‘‘humane treatment’’ of animals but not to adopt
an enforceable standard focusing on ‘‘humane treatment’’
of detainees deserves rethinking. In the context of APA’s

claim that psychologists should play a central role in the
interrogation process, does the record support their stance
against adding any enforceable standard focusing on
‘‘humane treatment’’ of detainees to the Ethics Code?
APA’s Statements on Torture
APA took the same stance on its various statements, clarifi-
cations, and modifications of its stance on torture. These
included, for example, the 2006 ‘‘Resolution Against
Torture’’ (American Psychological Association, 2006); the
2007 ‘‘Reaffirmation of the APA Position against Torture’’
(American Psychological Association, 2007a); and the
2008 ‘‘Amendment to the Reaffirmation of the APA Posi-
tion Against Torture’’ (American Psychological Association,
2008a). In each case, APA decided against adding the reso-
lution on torture, the reaffirmation, the amendment to the
reaffirmation, or any other statements about torture to the
89 enforceable standards in the Ethics Code.
On September 17, 2008, APA issued a press release
about a new policy:
The petition resolution stating that psychologists may
not work in settings where ‘‘persons are held outside
of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g.,
the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva
Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropri-
ate), unless they are working directly for the persons
being detained or for an independent third party

the
working to protect human rights’’ was approved by a
vote of the APA membership. (American Psycholog-
ical Association, 2008b).
APA’s press release did not acknowledge that this policy
was not enforceable. However, the APA Office of Public
Affairs issued clarifications about the ballot initiative under
the title ‘‘Petition on Psychologists’ Work Settings: Ques-
tions and Answers.’’ The response to the question ‘‘If
adopted would the petition be enforceable by APA?’’
includes this statement: ‘‘As explained above, the petition
would not become part of the APA Ethics Code nor be
enforceable as are prohibitions set forth in the Ethics Code’’
(American Psychological Association, 2008c).
Similarly the ballot that APA sent to members for a vote
on this policy was accompanied by a statement that the pol-
icy would not be enforceable. This statement, written by a
former APA president, emphasized APA’s position: ‘‘APA
is clear that the petition, if adopted, is not enforceable’’
(Resnick, 2008).
Does the record support APA’s position that such poli-
cies should be unenforceable?
The Interpretation of
‘‘Avoiding Harm’’
APA’s ethics code includes the statement: ‘‘Psychologists
take reasonable steps to avoid harming their clients/patients,
students, supervisees, research participants, organizational

clients, and others with whom they work, and to minimize
harm where it is foreseeable and unavoidable’’ (American
Psychological Association, 2002, p. 1065, 2010c). How is
this statement interpreted? The article ‘‘Mixed Agency in
Military Psychology: Applying the American Psychological
Association Ethics Code,’’ published in an APA journal,
quoted this section of the ethics code and stated: ‘‘At times,
psychologists employed by government agencies may feel
compelled to limit the freedom or overlook the best interests
of one person to promote or safeguard the best interests of a
larger group, or even society at large’’ (Kennedy & Johnson,
2009, p. 27).
A PENS Task Force member provided a more detailed
analysis of ‘‘the real ethical consideration’’ in an NPR inter-
view. He explained that
psychologists were supposed to be do-gooders. You
know, the idea that they would be involved in produc-
ing some pain just seems to be, you know, at first
blush, something that would be wrong because we
do no harm. But the real ethical consideration would
say, well, by producing pain or questioning of some-
body, if it does the most good for the most people, it’s
entirely ethical, and to do otherwise would be uneth-
ical (Military Psychologist Says Harsh Tactics Justi-
fied, 2009; see also Richey, 2007).
According to this analysis, the ethical focus shifts to
what is good for American citizens
The ethical consideration is always to do the most
good for the most people. And America happens to
be my client. Americans are who I care about. I have
no fondness for the enemy, and I don’t feel like I need
to take care of their mental health needs (Military

Psychologist Says Harsh Tactics Justified, 2009).
APA journals have a long history of published articles
endorsing the ethical legitimacy of psychologists’ participat-
ing in activities that can cause harm if the intent is to do ‘‘the
most good for the most people’’ or ‘‘to promote or safeguard
the best interests of a larger group, or even society at large’’
(see Pope, 2011). Back in the 1940s, for example, an APA
journal article urged APA members to use their skills to
defeat the enemy: ‘‘We must now comb all literature avail-
able to us with the object in mind of determining the factors
which are ‘destructive’ of human well-being and efficiency.
These findings must then be ruthlessly applied’’ (Watkins,
1943, p. 135).
Responses to Criticisms
A comprehensive critical assessment of this area includes not
only APA’s policies, procedures, and claims but also the
responses to critics and criticisms. This section highlights
responses from those whom APA selected to serve on the
PENS Task Force to shape APA’s ethical policies in this area.
As with all of the material cited in this article, readers are
stronglyencouragedtoreadtheoriginalworksintheir entirety
rather than rely on the brief quotes excerpted here.
Criticisms or even just disagreements with the PENS
report can be considered unreasonable per se. One PENS
member describing thinking of the PENS report’s conclu-
sions as ‘‘no brainers. What decent, moral psychologist
could disagree?’’ (James, 2008, p. 247).
Critics are sometimes suspect because of their alleged
political leanings and tendencies to invent facts. ‘‘But this
was not enough for many of the radical left-wing members
of the American Psychological Association and other human

rights and physician societies around the country.... They
disregarded the facts and created their own’’ (James, 2008,
p. 248).
Those who disagree with APA’s PENS policies can also
be seen not as offering alternative approaches to this com-
plex area but instead as seeking to cut and run. Another
PENS member, in a coauthored article in an APA journal,
wrote that ‘‘to run away from an area where we can help
both the country and the individuals in detention is simply
wrong’’ (Greene & Banks, 2009, p. 30).
A third PENS member emphasized the tendency of crit-
ics who have not been in these situations (detainee interro-
gations) to lack the necessary knowledge to speak on the
topic:
158
Anyone who wants to throw stones in this situation
really needs to step back and figure out what they
would do themselves in these situations, and not just
kind of be ivory tower critics, but get down and either
get in a situation or really keep their mouths shut.
Most of the time, they have no idea what they’re talk-
ing about (Military Psychologist Says Harsh Tactics
Justified, 2009).

Previous sections of this article cited the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which received Nobel
Prizes in 1917, 1944, and 1963, as a source of data. But the
ICRC’s motives could be disparaged as anti-American.
A PENS Task Force member explained:
Like most other soldiers, I saw the ICRC representa-
tives as a bunch of radical do-gooders, mostly from
Europe, who were as interested in giving America a
black eye as they were in truly helping the innocent....
The ICRC claimed, very wrongly and without any
evidence, that psychologists were stealing detainee
medical information and helping investigators craft
torture (James, 2008, pp. 180–181).
According to this view, the story of healthcare profes-
sionals participating in torture was a fabrication: ‘‘It was
the ICRC who concocted the story of medical torture’’
(James, 2008, p. 181).
Similarly, material from the US Defense Department
reporting that a psychologist ‘‘conspired to teach psycholo-
gists and interrogators from Cuba how to reverse engineer
SERE school to torture detainees’’ (James, 2008, p. 248)
was viewed as completely off base. The PENS member
wrote that the ‘‘DOD inspector had gotten the story about
the SERE psychology training at Fort Bragg all wrong....
It was either one hell of a lie, flat-out bullshit, or a factual
error – it didn’t happen the way the August 2006 DOD
inspector said it happened’’ (p. 249).
A passage from a PENS member’s book described a
direct response to a critic: ‘‘At a meeting of the American
Psychological Association in 2006, I confronted one of
my critics and threatened to shut his mouth for him if he
didn’t do it himself. I’m told it was the most excitement

at an APA meeting in about 20 years’’ (James, 2008,
p. 251).
Some criticism of the PENS policies that APA adopted
came from PENS members themselves. Although the
PENS Task Force originally included 10 members, one
member sent a message to the chair and other members
after the report was written. The message included this
passage:
Out of ethical concerns, I have decided to step down
from the PENS Task Force because continuing work
with the Task Force tacitly legitimates the wider
silence and inaction of the APA on the crucial issues
at hand.... The...approach the APA has taken on these
issues is inappropriate to the situation, inconsistent
with the Association’s mission, and damaging to our
profession (Wessells, 2006).
Another PENS Task Force member wrote that ‘‘the plat-
itudinous PENS report, as I see it, largely represents political
damage control’’ (Arrigo, 2006; see also ‘‘APA Interroga-
tion Task Force Member Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo Exposes
Group’s Ties to Military,’’ 2007).
Conclusion
APA is the largest organization of psychologists in the
world, with over 148,000 members and a distinguished his-
tory reaching back over 100 years. No one can know how
persuasive APA’s many reassurances were and what impact
they may have had on the public’s beliefs about the interro-
gations at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo, and other
sites being safe, legal, ethical, and effective. It is possible,
however, to ask basic questions about APA’s policies and

public statements. In fact, the careful questioning of policies,
claims, methods, approaches, and assumptions is an impor-
tant role and responsibility of psychologists (Pope, 1996,
1997; Pope & Vasquez, 2011)
The topics covered here are, of course, not comprehen-
sive. For example, APA’s claims about what methods of
interrogations are effective are reviewed in another article
in light of the scientific literature, the continuing controver-
sies, and the research underlying a prominent approach to
interrogation, learned helplessness (Pope, 2011).
The following key questions can be useful no matter
what our current beliefs about APA’s controversial ethical
policies in this area. Constantly rethinking our response to
them – always asking ‘‘What if I’m wrong about this?’’;
‘‘What information, insight, or perspective could I be miss-
ing?’’; ‘‘Is there another way to understand this that might
be more valid or useful?’’ – can be an important part of
the discipline and science of psychology, leading us to
new realizations.
A few of the key questions, whose themes shape this
article, include:
• However well intended, are APA’s interrogation poli-
cies ethically sound?
• Are they valid, realistic, and able to achieve their
purpose?
• Did APA subject them to adequate critical scrutiny from
sufficiently diverse perspectives to identify fallacies,
unfounded conclusions, significant weaknesses, over-
looked information, unexamined alternatives, and pos-
sible unintended consequences prior to adopting the

policies and making public claims and assurances?
• Does the record support APA’s assurances that psychol-
ogists knew ‘‘not to participate in activities that harmed
detainees,’’ and that the addition of a psychologist
‘‘ensures that all interrogations are conducted in a safe,
legal, ethical, and effective manner that protects the
the
individual and helps to elicit information that will pre-
vent future acts of violence’’?
• Did sound ethical reasoning support APA’s stance that
the Nuremberg Ethic should be dropped from its ethics
code and replaced by the doctrine that psychologists
should be able to set aside their ‘‘ethical responsibili-
ties’’ if those responsibilities were in inherent conflict
with military orders, governmental regulations, national
and local laws, and any other form of governing legal
authority?
• In the context of APA’s claim that psychologists should
play a central role in the interrogation process, does the
record support their stance against adding any enforce-
able standard focusing on ‘‘humane treatment’’ of
detainees to the ethics code?

• Were the PENS policies APA’s only viable option, or
were other options available that would address interro-
gation issues more directly, actively, and comprehen-
sively; that were more ethically sound and scientifically
based; that could have contributed more to national
security by fostering better interrogations that were more
productive; and that would have had a greater likelihood
of success?
• Should APA continue to endorse and to put its author-
ity, influence, and the weight of its large membership
behind the PENS policies, which were never revoked,
as its formal ethical policies?
Acknowledgments
This article is an updated and expanded adaptation of the
chapter ‘‘Are APA’s Detainee Interrogation Policies Ethical
and Effective’’ by Kenneth S. Pope, which was published
in Ethics in Psychotherapy and Counseling: A Practical
Guide (4th ed.) by Kenneth S. Pope and Melba J. T.
Vasquez, published by John Wiley and Sons in 2011. It is
reprinted with permission of John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
References
American Civil Liberties Union. (2208, April 30). Newly
unredacted report confirms psychologists supported illegal
interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Press release.
Retrieved from http://bit.ly/97hxR4
American Psychological Association. (2002). Ethical Principles
of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. American Psychol-
ogist, 57, 1060–1073.
American Psychological Association. (2005a). APA Council

Endorses Ethical Guidelines for Psychologists Participating
in National Security-Related Investigations and Interroga-
tions August 29. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/news/
press/releases/2005/08/security.aspx
American Psychological Association. (2005b, June). Report of
the American Psychological Association Presidential Task
Force on psychological ethics and national security.
Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/pubs/info/reports/pens.
pdf
American Psychological Association. (2006, August 9). Resolu-
tion against torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading
treatment or punishment. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/
about/governance/council/policy/chapter-3.aspx
American Psychological Association. (2007a, August 19). Reaf-
firmation of the American Psychological Association Posi-
tion Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment and Its Application to Individuals
Defined in the United States Code as ‘‘Enemy Combatants.’’
Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/about/governance/
council/torture-amend.aspx
American Psychological Association. (2007b, September 21).
State-
ment of the American Psychological Association on psychology
and interrogations submitted to the United States Senate select
committee on intelligence. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/
ethics/programs/position/legislative/senate-select.aspx
American Psychological Association. (2008a). Amendment to
the reaffirmation of the American Psychological Association
position against torture. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/
about/governance/council/policy/chapter-3.aspx

American Psychological Association. (2008b, September 17).
APA members approve petition resolution on detainee
settings. APA press release. Retrieved from http://www.
apa.org/news/press/releases/2008/09/detainee-petition.aspx
American Psychological Association. (2008c, July 28). Petition
on psychologists’ work settings: Questions and answers.
Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/news/press/statements/
qa-work-settings.aspx
APA interrogation task force member Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo
exposes group’s ties to military. (2007, August 20). Democ-
racy Now. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/9W05NG
Arrigo, J. M. (2006). Psychological Torture – the CIA and the
APA. PsycCRITIQUES, 51 (30). No Pagination Specified.
doi: 10.1037/a0003712
Behnke, S. H. (2006). Psychological ethics and national
security:
The position of the American Psychological Association.
European Psychologist, 11, 153–155. doi: 10.1027/1016-
9040.11.2.153
Benjamin, M. (2006, August 4). Psychologists group still
rocked
by torture debate; In an angry response to Salon, the American
Psychological Association defends its policy on participating
in terror suspects’ interrogation. Salon. Retrieved from
www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/08/04/apa
Boston Globe. (2008, August 30). Boston Globe editorial:
Psychologists and torture. Boston Globe. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/c1t0mK
Brehm, S. (2007, January 9). APA news release of letter from

the
APA president to the editor of Washington Monthly.
Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/news/press/response/
washington-monthly-response.pdf
Burton, M., & Kagan, C. (2007). Psychologists and torture:
More
than a question of interrogation. The Psychologist, 20,
484–487.
Correction. (2006). Monitor on Psychology, 37, 7.
Eban, K. (2007, July 17). Rorschach and awe. Vanity Fair.
Retrieved from http://bit.ly/aAbkCu
Flaherty, A. (2008, June 17). Probe: officials warned about
harsh
interrogations. USA Today. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/
9N63Rc
Greene, C. H. III, & Banks, L. M. III (2009). Ethical guideline
evolution in psychological support to interrogation opera-
tions. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and
Research, 61, 25–32. doi: 10.1037/a0015102
Godlee, F. (2009, May 16). Rules of conscience. British
Medical
Journal, 338, 7704.
Goodman, A. (2007, June 8). Psychologists implicated in
torture.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved from http://www.
seattlepi.com/opinion/318745_amy07.html

158
Hatch, O. (2003, May 14). In defense of the Patriot Act. USA
Today. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/bkleBk
Hutson, M. (2008, April 4). Keeping interrogation clean.
Psychol-
ogy Today. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/
articles/200611/keeping-interrogation-clean
International Committee of the Red Cross. (2004, January 30).
Guantanamo Bay: Overview of ICRC’s work for
internees. Retrieved from http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/
documents/misc/5qrc5v.htm
James, L. C. (2008). Fixing Hell: An army psychologist
confronts Abu Ghraib. New York, NY: Grand Central
Publishing/Hachette Book Group.
Kennedy, C. H., & Johnson, W. B. (2009). Mixed agency in
military psychology: Applying the American Psychological
Association ethics code. Psychological Services, 6, 22–31.
doi: 10.1037/a0014602
Lifton, R. J. (2008, August 11). Robert Jay Lifton on the
American Psychological Association and torture. [Video].
Producer/Director: Hermine Muskat. Studio: Back Bay
Films, LLC. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/dn78Nd
Levant, R. F. (2006). Making psychology a household word.

PHILIP G. ZIMBARDO ON HIS CAREER AND THESTANFORD PRISON EXPE.docx

PHILIP G. ZIMBARDO ON HIS CAREER AND THESTANFORD PRISON EXPE.docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

More from mattjtoni51554

More from mattjtoni51554 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

PHILIP G. ZIMBARDO ON HIS CAREER AND THESTANFORD PRISON EXPE.docx