In the article, “Source of Sadism”, the author talks about the American soldiers and their acts of torture toward the prisoners of Iraq in Abu Ghraib and the psychology behind it. There are many theories on why the soldiers acted the way they did toward the prisoners and who to blame. Few psychologists did experiments and studies on “normal” people to try to come to a conclusion. Psychologists believe that every man has potential to be a torturer. There are three traits that psychologist found necessary to be a torturer.
There were two studies that were done to them. One was done by Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo. In the study he decided to take a group of people and randomly split them up, some being guards and the rest being prisoners.
