THE GREAT PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENT WITH BENEFIT CLAIMANTS

The Stanford prison experiment is one of the most famous experiments in psychology.

‘Twenty-four male students out of seventy-five were selected to take on randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison situated in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond Zimbardo's expectations, as the guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue. Two of the prisoners quit the experiment early and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. Certain portions of the experiment were filmed and excerpts of footage are publicly available.’[1]

I thought of the Stanford prison experiment the other day when listening to the House of Commons debate on benefit sanctions, of which I spoke in my last post :-http://alextalbot.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-rules.html
As MP after MP recounted  irrational, cruel and sometimes downright inhuman actions by Jobcentre Plus staff it was increasingly clear that the abuse of claimants has become systemic. Undoubtedly a solid reason for this has been direction from above, the sanctions were made much harsher in 2012, and despite repeated denials from the government it is clear that a target culture exists.
 That said the irrationality and cruelty demonstrated by some of the examples that MP’s gave hinted at something more sinister and I began to wonder if something along the lines of the Stanford experiment was in fact taking place. The mind-set of those some of those operating the system was most starkly revealed by a recruitment agent Kelly-Jane Stone who openly boasted on Twitter of the satisfaction she felt when her actions led to someone having their benefits stopped.[2]

If the ghastly and dispiriting history of the 20th Century taught us anything it sadly taught us that given arbitrary power over others people will abuse it.  As Zimbardo, who carried out the Stanford experiment observed; “Only a few people were able to resist the situational temptations to yield to power and dominance while maintaining some semblance of morality and decency; obviously I was not among that noble class.” Taken from his book The Lucifer Effect Philip Zimbardo.
The cultural climate created toward benefit claimants by government ministers and newspaper campaigns by the Daily Mail, The Sun, and the Daily express have surely also greatly contributed to a state of affairs in which treating benefit claimants with arbitrary cruelty has become acceptable.[3]
The Stanford experiment highlighted something that anyone who has ever lived in a totalitarian society has long known, give people arbitrary power they will begin to behave in ways they would not normally act in their everyday lives or in other situations.
The increase in the use of food banks directly correlates with the new
harsher sanctions regime. 
The Stanford experiment was called off after six days because of the inhumanity that was beginning to surface. We are now entering the third year of the new harsher sanctions regime. How long will people continue to sit back as some of the most vulnerable in society  live in a state of affairs in which their ability to house, clothe and feed themselves are subject to the arbitrary whims of the guards who hold the key to their benefits?



[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/job-agent-boasted-on-twitter-about-halting-suckers-benefits-8758207.html
[3] Although extreme, the case of Mark Wood an extremely vulnerable man with mental health problems who starved to death after having his benefits cut is not unfortunately an isolated case. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/28/man-starved-to-death-after-benefits-cut. The fact that so little outrage has been expressed by this case speaks volumes.



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