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In a 1971 experiment that is perhaps even more relevant to Abu Ghraib, Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo created a fake prison ward on campus and randomly assigned student volunteers to be prisoners or guards. What was to be a two-week experiment had to be cut short after just six days because the guards "began to use the prisoners as playthings for their amusement," recalled Zimbardo. "They would get them to simulate sodomy. They also stripped prisoners naked for various offenses and put them in solitary for excessive periods."
Zimbardo and other psychologists who have studied torture and sadism by prison guards and soldiers believe that most abuse can be traced to group dynamics and circumstances rather than to individual personalities. "During actual wars, if there isn't any particular command figure in charge who puts a stop to it, it can spread like a psychological epidemic," says Israeli psychiatrist Dr. Ilan Kutz. "Even people who think of themselves as very moral people, if other people are doing it, that makes it O.K." In prisons, Zimbardo has concluded, abuse is virtually guaranteed if three key components are not present: clear rules, a staff that is well trained in those rules and tight management that includes punishment for violations. All three seemed to be lacking in Abu Ghraib, he says. It's not that the place held a few bad apples; it's that "the barrel itself was rotten." --With reporting by Melissa August and Perry Bacon Jr./Washington; Mike Billips/Atlanta; Simon Crittle, Julie Rawe and Amanda Ripley/New York; Kay Johnson/Palo Alto; Siobhan Morrissey/Miami; and Nathan Thornburgh/Fort Ashby