"This book takes us where angels fear to tread, uncovering the
'Lucifer' that sits incubating in each individual and every human
institution...The professor's timely study screams out at us to be on the
alert, to be ever mindful and ever ready least we fall into this heart of
utter darkness."
Vaclev Havel, former President of the Czech Republic
"Professor Zimbardo deserves heartfelt thanks for disclosing and
illuminating the dark, hidden corners of the human soul. His book does not
always make encouraging reading. Still, he confirms that getting to know
ourselves is a crucial challenge of human existence."
Sunday Times
"all politicians and social commentators - should read this
book...an important book; if enough people absorbed its argument, we might
find ourselves in a better polity"
Product Description
In "The Lucifer Effect", the award-winning and internationally respected psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, examines how the human mind has the capacity to be infinitely caring or selfish, kind or cruel, creative or destructive. He challenges our conceptions of who we think we are, what we believe we will never do - and how and why almost any of us could be initiated into the ranks of evil doers. At the same time he describes the safeguards we can put in place to prevent ourselves from corrupting - or being corrupted by - others, and what sets some people apart as heroes and heroines, able to resist powerful pressures to go along with the group, and to refuse to be team players when personal integrity is at stake. Using the first in-depth analysis of his classic "Stanford Prison Experiment", and his personal experiences as an expert witness for one of the Abu Ghraib prison guards, Zimbardo's stimulating and provocative book raises fundamental questions about the nature of good and evil, and how each one of us needs to be vigilant to prevent becoming trapped in the 'Lucifer Effect', no matter what kind of character or morality we believe ourselves to have.
From the Publisher
A fascinating exploration of how, under certain circumstances, the human character can be transformed from good to evil
About the Author
Philip Zimbardo is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University and has also taught at Yale, NYU and Columbia. He was elected President of the American Psychological Association in 2002 and is founder of the National Center for the Psychology of Terrorism. Widely respected as an innovative researcher and writer, he presented the award-winning video series Discovering Psychology and his Stanford Prison Experiment has also featured many times on TV. His website www.prisonexperiment.org has received 15 million hits in 4 years. His books include the bestselling Shyness: What it is, What to do about it and The Shy Child.
Excerpted from The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo. Copyright © 2007. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One: The Psychology of Evil
The Lucifer Effect is my attempt to understand the processes of
transformation at work when good or ordinary people do bad or evil things.
We will deal with the fundamental question "What makes people go wrong?"
But instead of resorting to a traditional religious dualism of good versus
evil, of wholesome nature versus corrupting nurture, we will look at real
people engaged in life's daily tasks, enmeshed in doing their jobs,
surviving within an often turbulent crucible of human nature. We will seek
to understand the nature of their character transformations when they are
faced with powerful situational forces.
Let's begin with a definition of evil. Mine is a simple, psychologically
based one: Evil consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm,
abuse, demean, dehumanize, or destroy innocent others--or using one's
authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to do so on your
behalf. In short, it is "knowing better but doing worse."
What makes human behavior work? What determines human thought and action?
What makes some of us lead moral, righteous lives, while others seem to
slip easily into immorality and crime? Is what we think about human nature
based on the assumption that inner determinants guide us up the good paths
or down the bad ones? Do we give insufficient attention to the outer
determinants of our thoughts, feelings, and actions? To what extent are we
creatures of the situation, of the moment, of the mob? And is there
anything that anyone has ever done that you are absolutely certain you
could never be compelled to do?
In the course of our voyage through good and evil, I will ask you to
reflect upon three issues: How well do you really know yourself, your
strengths and weaknesses? Does your self-knowledge come from reviewing your
behavior in familiar situations or from being exposed to totally new
settings where your old habits are challenged? In the same vein, how well
do you really know the people with whom you interact daily: your family,
friends, co-workers, and lover? One thesis of this book is that most of us
know ourselves only from our limited experiences in familiar situations
that involve rules, laws, policies, and pressures that constrain us. We go
to school, to work, on vacation, to parties; we pay the bills and the
taxes, day in and year out. But what happens when we are exposed to totally
new and unfamiliar settings where our habits don't suffice? You start a new
job, go on your first computer-matched date, join a fraternity, get
arrested, enlist in the military, join a cult, or volunteer for an
experiment. The old you might not ork as expected when the ground rules
change.
Throughout our journey I would like you to continually ask the "Me also?"
question as we encounter various forms of evil. We will examine genocide in
Rwanda, the mass suicide and murder of Peoples Temple followers in the
jungles of Guyana, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, the horrors of Nazi
concentration camps, the torture by military and civilian police around the
world, and the sexual abuse of parishioners by Catholic priests, and search
for lines of continuity between the scandalous, fraudulent behavior of
executives at Enron and World-Com corporations. Finally, we will see how
some common threads in all these evils run through the recently uncovered
abuses of civilian prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. One especially
significant thread tying these atrocities together will come out of a body
of research in experimental social psychology, particularly a study that
has come to be known as the Stanford Prison Experiment.
I want to end by reversing the question with which we started. Instead of
considering whether you are capable of evil, I want you to consider whether
you are capable of becoming a hero. My final argument introduces the
concept of the "banality of heroism." I believe that any one of us is a
potential hero, waiting for the right situational moment to make the
decision to act to help others despite personal risk and sacrifice. But we
have far to travel before we get to that happy conclusion.
