by Philip Zimbardo
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Product Description
What makes good people do bad things? How can moral people be seduced to act immorally? Where is the line separating good from evil, and who is in danger of crossing it?
Renowned social psychologist Philip Zimbardo has the answers, and in The Lucifer Effect he explains how–and the myriad reasons why–we are all susceptible to the lure of “the dark side.” Drawing on examples from history as well as his own trailblazing research, Zimbardo details how situational forces and group dynamics can work in concert to make monsters out of decent men and women.
Zimbardo is perhaps best known as the creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Here, for the first time and in detail, he tells the full story of this landmark study, in which a group of college-student volunteers was randomly divided into “guards” and “inmates” and then placed in a mock prison environment. Within a week the study was abandoned, as ordinary college students were transformed into either brutal, sadistic guards or emotionally broken prisoners.
By illuminating the psychological causes behind such disturbing metamorphoses, Zimbardo enables us to better understand a variety of harrowing phenomena, from corporate malfeasance to organized genocide to how once upstanding American soldiers came to abuse and torture Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. He replaces the long-held notion of the “bad apple” with that of the “bad barrel”–the idea that the social setting and the system contaminate the individual, rather than the other way around.
This is a book that dares to hold a mirror up to mankind, showing us that we might not be who we think we are. While forcing us to reexamine what we are capable of doing when caught up in the crucible of behavioral dynamics, though, Zimbardo also offers hope. We are capable of resisting evil, he argues, and can even teach ourselves to act heroically. Like Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate, The Lucifer Effect is a shocking, engrossing study that will change the way we view human behavior.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Or the Angelic effect?, 2008-09-04
In 1971 Dr. Phillip Zimbardo joined the likes of Milgram and Munoz as being perhaps one of the most dubious researchers at the edge of psychology. This is because he engaged in a two week experiment to test the reactions of students to being placed in an artificial prison to see what their reactions would be.
Though the project had been scheduled for a mere two weeks, a stunned Zimbardo quickly discovered that he had to bring the project to an early close owing the exceeding brutal nature of the treatment imposed on the randomly chosen "prisoners" by the equally randomly chosen "guards."
What he found was that when the untrained were placed in controlled of the unempowered, terror could result. In this way, Zimbardo heard echoes of Nazi state, Mai Lai, and even Abugarab in the pleas of his "prisoners."
And in this regard his work significantly advances the cause of instructing just societies to establish just penal systems. By carefully comparing the excesses of his "guards" to other brutalizers Zimbardo admirably does a good job of outlining the dos and don'ts of operating a just and safe prison.
However, and this is why I entitled this review Or the Angelic effect?, Zimbardo also goes on to discuss ways in which we might through our public policy encourage that other side of human behavior...the good, the ultruistic and the laudable. Though admittedly Zimbardo walks on less sure footing as to these issues I think perhaps this part of his book may yet be the catalist for important discussions...though frankly I'm not optimistic.
Like Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan or more recently Harvard's Steven Pinker in any of his works but perhaps most notably The Blank Slate, I am not certain social engineering can do much to either encourage or discourage human behavior. In this regard I tend to suspect that in ANY situation, you will find those predictable segments of the population that will either capitalize on the event for personal benefit or alternatively rise and make it an occassion for yet another exhibition of ultruism...the choice being more the product of what's in them than what's outside of them.
However, none of this analysis takes away from the fact that this is a really good book and worth reading.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Social psychology, advocacy and impact, 2008-08-28
The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) was conducted over thirty five years ago and still its results reverberate in the consciousness of academics and policy makers. Its relevance to the present can at times appear uncanny; how could an experiment conducted in a conventional, privileged,middle class university environment using volunteer college undergraduates as participants have relevance for the ways in which the people view its President and its armed forces? Zimbardo, who conducted this experiment with passion and insight many years ago, can again take the centre stage and discuss the impact of his work on how a military system can be responsible for what can be seen to be barbaric behavior towards those who are supposed to be helped, through their hearts and minds, to see the United States as a benevolent force for good and justice. This book has been described as tedious and over-long. The descriptions of the conduct of the SPE and of the processes in the military trials are, however, to this reader, essential in getting across the gradual and virulent nature of the processes whereby the situation can gain control over the behavior of people, on both sides, caught in the thrall of the system of the military and justice. This book is essential reading for social psychologists. It is also quite clearly important for journalists, politicians and public servants, all of whom tend to see themselves as somehow immune to the demands of the situation in which they are to behave. Recent criticisms coming from the United Kinbgdom about the theory behind and the results of the SPE are largely irrelevant to the thrust of the argument of this book. Evil can still be engendered in people who seem good but who are unable to escape the powerful forces inherent in any modren system. Whereby the SPE was concerned with essentially mild and non-powerful settings, the organisatiuons of today have far more powerful control over the workers and the citizens. The message from the SPE is not that things are getting better in our understanding of the forces that govern social behaviour; rather they are getting worse.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
How good people turn evil., 2008-08-03
In the classic Stanford Prison Experiment
Philip Zimbardo took a group of ordinary students
and placed them in a mock prison, guarded by fellow
students. In less than a week, the study had
to be terminated, when the "guards" became
increasingly sadistic and the "prisoner" pathological.
Raising fundamental questions on good and evil.
Apparently most of us can be initiated
into the ranks of evil doers.
The book, the Lucifer effect, explores
how good people becomes bad.
Lucifer has of course done his job over
the centuries. In the middle ages we had
the inquisition. Where Philip Zimbardo
gives us thought provoking examples on how
good becomes bad.
I.e. The Malleus Maleficarum was required reading for
the judges of the inquisition. It begins
with a problem. How can evil exists in a world
created and governed by an all-good, all powerful
God? The answer is (was) that the Creator
allows evil to test the souls of man. Yield
to the temptations - and go to hell. Resist,
and be invited into heaven.
So to do good - evil had to be found and eliminated.
Especially, find witches and heretics and burn
them on the stake. The ardent and sincere desire to combat evil
generated evil on a larger scale than
ever seen before.
To Philip Zimbardo much of it starts when
human relationships becomes "I - it".
Humanized relationships are "I - Thou",
while dehumanized relationships are "I - It",
The misperception of certain humans
as subhuman, bad humans, inhuman, dispensable,
is facilitated with labels. stereotypes and slogans -
and most importantly - when others are treated as "it".
The Stanford prison experiment created an ecology
of dehumanization. It started with loss of freedom,
loss of privacy, and finally loss of personal identity.
It separated inmates from their past, their families etc.
Eventually, external coercive rules and arbitrary rules by guards
dictated the prisoners behaviour. Prisoners who just one week
before had been average students.
Tender caring emotions were absent among guards and
prisoners after only a few days.
"Proof" of sorts that Zimbardos thesis , that
external situations decides much of what is good
and evil, - is in fact true.
If one wants to defend human decency by saying that
the students in the Stanford Prison Experiment
were not average - Zimbardo tells you that
they were exactly that. Average.
Even though noone likes to think of themselves as average.
I.e. In a study - 86 percent of Australians rate their
job performance as above average. And 90 percent
of american business managers rate their performance
as superior to that of their average peer.
Worse - it follows that evil is within everyone:
An inventive teacher, Ron Jones, would teach
his high school students something about
Hitlers Nazi regime. Despite his forewarning to
the class about all of this - he quickly established
a new rigid classroom rule, that should be obeyed
without question.
All answers must be limited to three words or less and
preceded by "sir". When noone challenged this or other
arbitrary rules - the classroom atmosphere began to change.
The verbally fluent students lost their positions and
the less verbal, more physically assertative took
over.
The classroom movement was named the third wave.
Each day there was a new slogan. like - "strength through
discipline", "strength through action", "strength
through pride". And there would eventually be
more than 100 kids attending "a third wave rally"
outside the classroom.
When Jones finally told his students what he had
been up to - and what he wanted to demonstrate -
noone ever admitted to attenting the rally.
Another teacher, Jane Elliott, created third grade hell, when she
divided the class into blue eyed and brown eyed kids and began
telling stories about what blue eyed kids or brown eyed
kids really are like.
In Zimbados words -
Our personal identities are socially situated.
we are what we live, eat, work. It is possible to predict
a wide range of your attitudes and behaviour from
knowing your status factors - your ethnicity, social class,
education, and religion.
But still - not all is said. Occasional
a hero comes along - and can not be bullied
into accepting evil. It might be a John McCain
in Vietnamese prison that will not rat on his
country. Or it might be a Nelson Mandela
that will not answer violence with violence.
Evil does not always have the last word.
and most people eventually know what is right and
what is wrong -
But the immature, it be one prison guard, or an entire nation,
you can apparently always trick into being evil by
creating a "lucifer situation" - where evil is
"ok".
I would have given the book 5 stars had there be
more on teaching us all to be Jedi in the
face of evil - as it is, to me, it only demonstrates
that circumstance plays a big part in making
average people evil. I dont think
Zimbardo is out there to explain away evil and
take responsibility away from the individual.
But he should be far more concrete and have much more
focus on all of this.
-Simon
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Autonomy, compassion and listening to counter powerful situational dynamics, 2008-07-02
In his recent book, The Lucifer Effect, Philip Zimbardo writes about his research while conducting the Stanford Prisoner Experiment (1971) . His research and analysis with the Stanford Prisoner Experiment (SPE) describes the almost immediate effects of imprisonment on psychologically healthy humans. The effects were not limited to the prisoners. Using the same random sampling to select psychologically healthy young adult males as guards, Zimbardo created an experimental prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology department building. Before entering the experiment, most of the participants thought that the few days of the experiment would be a fun time with role playing. Within a few hours, the guards and prisoners - who were seemingly indistinguishable from each other prior to the experiment, fell into roles that reflected the grim settings of institutional prisons. Many of the guards became abusive, and most of the prisoners became passive, emotionally distraught, and within a day, had lost perspective that they were actually in an experiment. Zimbardo's analysis of this group of young men in the experiment showed how powerfully the system of the "prison" effected each player. The gravitational pull was so strong that each individual inhabited their respective roles as passive prisoners and abusive guards without much resistance. With regard to human beings, it seems that the three conditions that set up the strongest coherence in this system were the roles of captor and prisoner within the structural confines of physical setting (third condition) .
In a prison, these roles are black and white. Out in the (mostly) autonomous world, these roles are played out with more shades of grey. I can think of an abusive boss and employee falling into this system as one example.
My father recently had hip replacement surgery, and his resulting rehabilitation reminded me of another example. After his surgery and two recovery days in the hospital, a decision was made by the weekend staff to send him to a nursing home (euphemism: rehab facility) for five days to get back his strength. Before the surgery he was told he would go home after his hospital stay. Because the weekend staff did not include his surgeon, other people at the hospital without knowledge of my father's specific condition changed his itinerary. They were covering their behinds for insurance purposes, in case he fell at home and re-injured himself. My father had little choice in this: he was threatened with voided insurance if he resisted the staff's opinion. I called him after his first night at the rehab facility to see how he was doing. His behavior reminded me of the experiment described by Zimbardo. He told me that he felt like he had no rights, didn't know if he would ever get out of there, and that they were going to slowly kill him with the terrible food (no humor). This was coming from someone who was renowned for his sense of control and well being. I asked how they were treating him, and he told me everyone was very nice to him. He also told me that nobody was telling him anything about his condition or when he would be able to leave. He felt like a prisoner. The "guards" were respectful and nice. What was missing was his autonomous ability to come and go, and a chance to interact with someone who could listen to his complaints and tell him what exactly his situation was. He quickly deteriorated emotionally.
Ultimately, my father was able to get his own food, delivered by my mom, and learned after 5 days that he could leave. Once he got home, his emotional state returned to normal, and is recovering well.
Seeing my emotionally sturdy dad succumb to such a system, (one where people were trying to help him!) provided me with some insight into some conditions that prevail on this captor/prisoner system. Human beings quickly deteriorate if they feel they have no autonomy. This situation further deteriorates if they feel that their words fall on deaf ears. For the captors (or orderlies/bosses etc.): The temptation to treat them/supervise them/take care of them without sensitivity to their needs leads to further alienation and downward spiral of the system. [...]
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Stunning exploration into the power of conformity and the darker side of human nature, 2008-06-17
A stunning read for anyone interested in the darker side of humanity. Zimbardo relates his own Stanford Prison Experiment to the Holocaust, Rwandan genocide, cults, and especially his investigations into the Abu Ghraib scandal. It's well researched and well written but Zimbardo tends to talk down to his reader and patronize quite a bit. He's also pretty didactic when it comes to his politics, but if you can get past that, it's well worth the read.
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