Which recent event was reminiscent of Philip Zimbardo's mock prison experiment conducted iin 1971?

Answer 1

I am not sure how recent you are seeking, but what comes to mind is the 2004 detainee abuse incident at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, when American soldiers, many of whom were low-ranking and not very experienced, got so caught up in feeling powerful that they began tormenting, humiliating and mistreating the Iraqi detainees, even going so far as to take photographs of themselves next to some of the inmates they were abusing.

In Dr. Zimbardo's experiment, he did not expect the "guards," who were college students involved in an experiment, to become brutal towards the "prisoners," fellow classmates in the experiment. And yet, they did engage in humiliation and mistreatment, getting so caught up in feeling powerful that the experiment had to be cancelled. Sadly, the Abu Ghraib situation was not a game, and detainees were in fact severely mistreated. The majority of the soldiers who did it to them were probably not evil people in real life, and yet, with uniforms and authority and no supervision, they turned into brutal taskmasters, capable of hurting others just because they could.