The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

by Philip G. Zimbardo

Book Overview

The definitive firsthand account of the groundbreaking research of Philip Zimbardo--the basis for the award-winning film The Stanford Prison Experiment

Renowned social psychologist and creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo explores the mechanisms that make good people do bad things, how moral people can be seduced into acting immorally, and what this says about the line separating good from evil.

The...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812974441
• ISBN13: 9780812974447
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Random House Trade
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.3" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Poignant and subversive information!

This book has everything I wanted in an "Psychology of Evil" volume. The research is so rich and remains relevant to this day.

I openly wept over this book

Reading this book was a chilling experience. Basically, it deals with the issue of why seemingly good and moral people can do bad and immoral things. In 1971 Philip Zimbardo created the "Stanford Prison Experiment" wherein a group of college-aged students took part in a mock prison experiment at Stanford University. Some took the part of prisoners and some the part of the guards. It was a grant-funded experiment that was to last for two weeks. It began on a Sunday but by the following Friday, the project was called off due to the brutal behavior of the guards and the emotionally traumatized prisoners. At the premature end of the experiment Zimbardo and his co-workers collected a lot of information and data. But most important, they did a lot of soul searching as to why the brutal behavior happened and how they, the originators of the program, may have unintentionally contributed to it. Among others, there are references to the My Lai massacre, the Holocaust during World War Two and (most memorable for our generation) the Abu Ghraib prisoner torture horror. Zimbardo used his Stanford Prisoner experiment to help figure out why those unconscionable acts took place. It was sobering reading and while I was fascinated with what I read, there were times I had to put the book down to think, get my bearings - and cry. Zimbardo presents many sobering insights into human nature as to why basically decent, law-abiding people can do such things. For me, two things items stand out: 1. The "bad barrel" as opposed to the "bad apple" theory. He shows how certain circumstances and events can make it easier to do wrong things. He doesn't believe in excusing circumstances to justify bad behavior, but he does show how certain environments render the wrong choices easier to make. 2. The desire for social acceptance. He quotes freely from the C. S. Lewis article "The Inner Ring" to show how the desire for acceptance into the inner circle can make otherwise good people do some bad things. I see a twofold way to read this book: First of all, we need to be honest with ourselves and realize that most likely, we could fall into the same trap of cruelty. Second, although we could fall into it, we don't have to, either. Zimbardo spent a lot of time showing us heroes - both known and unknown - who had the courage to stand up to evil - including Christina Maslach, one of Zimbardo's colleagues - whom he later married! This is a book to read carefully, to absorb and to reflect upon. There's a lot of information here, and I firmly believe that if it is read in the right attitude, it will make us better people.

Disturbingly Too Easy

Zimbardo addresses questions in this book such as "What makes good people do bad things?" "How can moral people be seduced to act immorally?" and "Who is in danger of crossing the line?" He then sets the stage by asserting that we live in a "mass murder century" - more than 50 million have been systematically murdered by government decrees (actually, many indirectly so through starvation). In 1915, Ottoman Turks slaughtered 1.5 million Armenians, then the Nazis liquidated at least 6 million Jews, 3 million Soviet POWs, and 2 million Poles, Stalin's empire murdered 20 million Russians, Mao Zedong up to 30 million, the Japanese army killed about 300,000 Chinese in a few months during 1937, the Khmer Rouge regime 1.7 million in Cambodia, Saddam 100,000 Kurds, and most recently about 1 million Tutsi in Rwanda were killed by their neighbors. Zimbardo is best known for conducting an decades-prior experiment at Stanford in which student volunteers were randomly assigned to be either guards or prisoners. As in prior similar studies (students in other locales told to administer shocks to others who made errors), the experiment quickly surprised the administrator by how quickly those "in charge" descended into depravity. Uniforms and rules shaped guards and shock administrators' behaviors. Problems intensified if shock administrators were told their subjects were "animals" by an "authority," masks were worn (liberated hostile impulses), and on the night shift (relief from boredom, sense less subject to outside observation). Diffusing responsibility (eg. experiment leader saying he/she would take responsibility) also acerbated the situation. Prisoners experienced a loss of personal identity and subjected to arbitrary control of their behavior, as well as deprived of privacy and sleep developed passivity, dependency, and depression. Those scoring highest on conventionality and authoritarianism did best. Zimbardo then devotes much of "The Lucifer Effect" so analyzing Abu Ghraib and other abuse situations in light of his Stanford experiment findings. He found documentation of about 400 Iraq abuse cases - Abu Ghraib was not an isolated incident. Discussion and investigation showed that the Army failed to provide adequate to-down constraints to prevent prisoner abuse, and set an agenda and procedures that encouraged dehumanization and deindividualization that stimulated guards to act in creatively evil ways. Our suspending Geneva Conventions and military rules of conduct vs. prisoners was part of this. Brigadier General Karpinski was in charge of the 10,000-some prisoners plus staff - despite lacking experience running any kind of prison system. She soon retreated to a safer location near the airport, was absent much of the time, and failed to bring in any outside expertise. Another problem was the confused chain of command - the location of most abuse (Tier 1A) was supposedly under control of civilian interrogators who repeatedly urged the MPs

A chilling and vital look into our own human propensity for evil

I don't know of many things more important than understanding how regular people like you and me can be manipulated by systems and situations into doing terrible things. The Holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia, ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, the Mai Lai massacre, Abu Ghraib, and the horrors currently being perpetrated in Darfur, in Guantanamo, and in torture centers run by governments around the world cannot be understood, and certainly cannot be prevented, without such understanding. That is what Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo, creator of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment 30 years ago, does in this detailed, sobering, and profoundly insightful book. I will not try to summarize what Zimbardo says, because I think that every person concerned about the state of the world should read the book from the preface to the last page of the notes. What I can say is that Zimbardo's analysis is not based on ancient religious or philosophical ideas about good and evil; it most emphatically does not accept that the great and small terrors that we humans continue to inflict on each other are caused by "a few bad apples;" and it refuses to let those of us who are sure that, unlike so many others, we could never be moved to do terrible things, remain secure in that delusion. Instead, _The Lucifer Effect_ is based on fact, on decades of hard-won experimental evidence, and on careful and insightful reasoning. To his credit, Zimbardo also discusses the heroism of those equally ordinary people who successfully resist the powers of a cruel system or situation to corrupt and destroy. I hope that if enough people read this book, it will inspire more of us to that level of empathy, humanity, independence, and courage. Robert Adler, author of _Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation_; and _Medical Firsts: From Hippocrates to the Human Genome_.

A scholarly and disturbing look into the banality of evil

This book is the breathtaking culmination of more than 30 years of careful research into the causes of evil. Dr Zimbardo, Stanford professor, former president of the American Psychological Association, host of the PBS series Psychology, and author of the bestselling introductory psychology text of all time, has devoted nearly all of his academic career to careful studies of the path between good and evil. His dozens of research papers have documented how environmental and social forces can push even the best of us toward bad behavior. Even more importantly, he has documented the steps we can take as individuals and as societies to become more humane. His findings are widely respected within the academic community. This is not "controversial" stuff; it's the right stuff. Dr. Zimbardo's review of the field is lively and engaging. Then, he brings us new findings and shows how they apply in ways that can powerfully change lives. This is an exciting book that needs to be widely read. David Maxfield Vice President of Research VitalSmarts LC

Captivating

Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment from the early 70's used college students for a study, making half of them prisoners and the other half guards. With instructions meant to polarize, the worst in human nature quickly came out, and the experiment had to be discontinued prematurely. Unlike other important studies, this one could not be duplicated because of ethical concerns, but many similar studies have been done - most of them validating Zimbardo's result: that with few exceptions, the best of us can be coerced to perform evil acts under the right social circumstances. A book about Zimbardo's findings is long overdue. The incident at Abu Ghraib and his participation in the trial sparked his enthusiasm to share this story with us. Chapter I - According to the story in the Bible, Lucifer, God's favorite angel, challenged God's authority - thus began the transformation of Lucifer into Satan. Zimbardo finds here an analogy to the situation in all wars, where men routinely justify being inhumane to other men, despite clear direction otherwise from the Geneva Convention. Chapters II - IX - Zimbardo had 24-hour audio and video surveillance of the prison and kept meticulous written notes. He presents verbatim transcripts of tense conversation and photographs. A variety of situations from world history are presented showing disturbing descriptions of torture, rape, and general abuse of a captured, helpless enemy. He then draws analogies between real history and the Stanford prison experiment. Chapters X - XI - Elaboration on the importance, ethical considerations, and notoriety of the Stanford prison experiment. If you Google "experiment," the first website listed is this one, out of a potential 300 million. Chapters XII - XIII - How powerful social pressures can cause good people to do bad things - nuts and bolts of evolutionary psychology, social theory, and recent applicable research. Humans are essentially social. Creating semi-permanent networks and hierarchies of interaction is what people do and it is more than just a strategy for survival. The "us versus them" mentality evolved for and worked well for hunter-gatherers - nowadays we could and should do better. Chapter XIV - Application of the findings of the Stanford prison experiment to Abu Ghraib. The author was an expert witness for previously highly-honored Sergeant Frederick, one of the defendants. He describes the situation that ended in abuse, from the permissive attitudes starting at the top (Rumsfeld advocating a "take the gloves off" approach to detainees) to 40 straight nights of 12-hour shifts. Chapter XV - The military command and the Bush administration are portrayed as accomplices for their widespread reliance on torture-interrogation, well-documented by independent sources. In the new leadership at Abu Ghraib, the DVD of the Stanford prison experiment has been used to warn the new guards about the group-think hazards that are inherent in the prisoner-