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Jun 28, 2010

Rebecca rated it:

Philip Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect is a difficult read, not because its premise is particularly startling, but because its examination of the psychology of evil shows it to be disturbingly simple. By placing each act of breathtaking cruelty beside a description of its perpetrator--invariably an ordinary, psychologically normal person--Zimbardo makes clear that we are just animals socialized into one behavior, and easily socialized into another. And though he never outright asks it, every page More...

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May 10, 2008

Amanda rated it:

I, after a couple of weeks, have finally finished “The Lucifer Effect.” I normally don’t dog ear books because, well, that’s almost sacrilegious, but there were points that I knew I wanted to come back to. Like this one which really came out there unexpectedly, and had me laughing so hard.

After asking what his parents do, his religious background, and whether he goes to church regularly, Prescott is angered by the prisoner’s statement this his religion is “nondenominational. He reto More...

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Dec 16, 2007

George rated it:

Well, interesting title and interesting subject, but I highly doubt his hypothesis. This book was borne out of Philip Zimbardo's work with a U.S. army soldier, who was one of the prison guards at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Zimbardo is also the one who ran the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment in the 1970s. Basically, his premise in this book is that circumstances shape the individual, and our actions can be molded by the circumstances that we are in. E.g., it was the duress and egregious circumst More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 15, 2007

Katie rated it:

I was excited to read this, since I have a psychology background and had heard that it was a good look at the Stanford Prison Experiment, which I studied in college. I wasn't too impressed with this book though. It is at least 100 pages too long and bogged down by excessive detail, making it read like a numbing textbook. The breakdown is as follows: 200 pages on Zimbardo's Prison Experiment, 100 pages of analysis of the experiment, 75 pages on Abu Ghraib, 75 pages about the Bush administration's More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

May 27, 2008

Glenn rated it:

The first half of this book is devoted to the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971. Zimbardo recruits normal young men to be randomly assigned as guards or prisoners in the basement of Jordan Hall (a simulated prison, for the purpose) and intends the experiment to last two weeks. It is cancelled after 6 days because of a nervous breakdown and observed abuses.

The second half of the book is about prison abuses at Abu Ghraib. Zimbardo was an expert witness on behalf of one of the seve More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 01, 2007

Maria rated it:

First the Pro's: This book was written by the principle investigator of the "Stanford Prison Experiment" in the 1970's. This individual also was an expert witness at the trial of SFC Frederick, one of the MP's convicted for abusing prisoners at Abu Garhaib. It sheds light on how poor leadership and systemic dehumanization can lead normal people to commit acts of incredible cruelty. I think it is an important read for any of us who anticipate staying in the military long enough to b More...

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Oct 01, 2008

Tori rated it:

I actually had to skip a chapter in this book, as it was a loner and there was no way to renew it and the fines were piling up, so I skipped chap. 15 "Putting the System on Trial" as it was not applicable to the point I read the book for (to gain a better understanding of villains for my writing). Overall, this is perhaps the most depressing book I've ever read. It challenged my beliefs about humanity, and made all too clear how base our country has been and has become. Reading it w More...

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Aug 08, 2007

Matt rated it:

I used to watch Zimbardo on PBS when I was home sick from school. This book is full of information and research about how a normal, "average" person can be turned towards cruelty and an instrument of an dehumanizing system when placed in the right role and with the right kind of social pressure. It is intense and I had to skim parts of it to avoid depression about the human condition. It connects the results Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment with the Abu Ghraib scandal, and expl More...

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Jan 16, 2010

John added it

Zimbardo argues that human behavior is highly plastic and that evil behavior comes from situational rather than dispositional factors (outer vs inner determinants). He talks a lot about what happened and why in his fascinating and revealing Stanford Prison Experiment. The rest is about the what and why of US military personnel torturing people at the Abu Ghraib prison and sketches of numerous other experiments supporting his thesis. He argues that the experiments and evaluations of what happened More...

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Dec 16, 2009

Nancy rated it:

I would give this book 5 stars for subject matter and 3 stars for execution. While this Stanford Prison Experiment is a fascinating subject, and it's great to get all the details lo these many decades later, the book offers diminishing returns after the first half or so. It picks up a bit when Zimbardo gets into the parallels with Abu Ghraib, but that section dwindles in value after a while as well. Still, the fact that the experiment so clearly shows the impact of environment on behavior and ho More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 21, 2008

Rachael rated it:

If you've ever wondered how people get to "that" point when they can do something you consider heinous or evil, this is an interesting read. This book discusses the Stanford Prison Experiment and how the impact of a situation can have a greater impact on human behavior than we as an American society recognize. Although everyone has individual choice, we habitually underestimate the impact of the situation on the individual in both positive and negative cases. It is a fascinating and More...

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Feb 17, 2008

Sonia rated it:

um, so i decided to stop reading this book because it's not suprising to me (in the LEAST!) that a bunch of college educated, middle-class white kids would act all brutish and prison-guardesque if they didn't have to be responsibile for any of their actions, and stuff. hello, blackwater? hello, um, the u.s. army? hello, fox news network? screw situational ethics when white boys have the whole world as their prison den!

also, i stopped reading this book because zimbardo (google his More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 15, 2008

Virginia rated it:

Zimbardo writes like a social scientist. That is to say, this book contains a lot of interesting information about both his work and related areas of social psychology, but it became a real snozer. More reader-friendly than, say, an academic journal article, but hardly the can't-put-it-down page-turner that I wanted it to be. I have a great deal of respect for Dr. Zimbardo, and the parallels between the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Abu Ghraib are remarkable, but I still had a hard time gut More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 01, 2012

Elomari rated it:

This book shows you exactly how twisted human beings can be. This book has very offensive dialog, if you are a person that doesn't tolerate abuse very well, you shouldn't read this book. From the beginning it is abusive and very graphic. I cried many times along with the prisoners, which I can't even bring myself to call them fake prisoners anymore, since that is what they really became. The need for money drove them into this scenario, in were they thought there would be a way out, shall they c More...

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Jan 25, 2012

Aaron rated it:

I read this book at the exact right time in my life, at the end of college and before grad school. Just as I was thinking about what it would mean to be an educator, this book pushed me right over the edge. It's such a fascinating read, and really makes you contemplate things you'd probably rather ignore, like humanity's capacity for, well, humanity in the face of stress, strife, and life in general.

I think it's a little self-referential and a bit self-congratulatory, which means the a More...

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Mar 23, 2011

Caroline rated it:

This is an absolutely fascinating book, about how and why otherwise good people can come to commit horrific acts, acts that they themselves would have said they were not capable of. The core of the book is an in-depth description and discussion of the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE), which was devised and overseen by Zimbardo himself, followed by an expose of the Abu Ghraib abuses in Iraq and how those events can be explained by the conclusions of the SPE.

Zimbardo argues that in cases More...

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May 21, 2010

Xing rated it:

Touted as a retrospective account of events during the Stanford Prison experiment, in exponentially greater detail than what's provided on the website, but that section comprises 'only' a few chapters of the book- Zimbardo went on in succeeding decades to work as a consultant for various prisons and institutions, and conducted extensive research on military policies, the structure of military prisons, and the running of detainment centres. He describes what he's learnt over the years and applies More...

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Jun 19, 2009

Link1990 rated it:

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Jun 07, 2009

Steven rated it:

This is an important book. It presents a perspective on the roots of human behavior, let's call it "the situational approach," against other orientations. As Philip Zimbardo notes, many of us commonly commit the "Fundamental Attribution Error," in which (page 212) "dispositions matter more than situations." That is, when others do something of which we disapprove, we tend to assume that some internal motivation led them to the bad deed, rather than that they may hav More...

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Aug 16, 2010

Audra rated it:

Zimbardo takes common understandings about how situations, culture, etc, shape people and makes them strong, new, vibrant. It's changed (upgraded?) what I see and think as I go through the day. At first I thought "oh no, not more about the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Milgram Experiments, I know all that stuff", but gradually I realized I hadn't actually applied that info to my awareness of thee and me. Nor did I know about the many, many other spinoff experiments and what they sh More...

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Jul 21, 2011

Eden rated it:

Philip Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil was a stimulating read. A lot of psychology books tend to be a bit dry or scientifically wordy, becoming tedious and stodgy. It’s refreshing to be able to retain knowledge that can later be reflected on.

The Lucifer Effect delves into the psychology of roles we assume when forced into power struggles. It’s a facet of research that reveals the power of social situations and the social construction of reality More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Aug 05, 2011

Colin N. rated it:

I picked up "The Lucifer Effect" because Zimbardo, the author, was the creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment in the 1970s, which I had studied in Psych in college and thought was really interesting. Zimbardo expands on the lessons learned from that experiment to present an extensive analysis of what forces cause good people to act in evil ways. His basic thesis is that people often focus on disposition in assigning blame for evil acts, thinking that a person must be inherently ev More...

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Nov 28, 2008

Toby rated it:

Pragmatic and important information for all of us struggling to remain ethical in complex systems and groups. As much as I'm not a fan of psychological studies, this speaks to intuition: it's often inhumanly hard to speak truth to power, partly because when we in relation to power, truth gets confused. Helps to remember that when trying to have compassion for folks working in systems of oppression and for ourselves. Also, don't try to be a hero alone. This book speaks to our very real limitation More...

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Feb 27, 2011

Istop4books rated it:

I bought this book with high hopes of understanding human nature and, while I clearly have to give the author credit for his remarkable studies, I found the book sorely lacking in a heavy-handed editing effort. Most of the book reads like the straight transcript of notes. This happened on such a date and such a time in such a way - for more than 200 pages of relentless minutiae of the Stanford Prison Experiment, with a bit of explanation thrown in here and there (which was the only thing which More...

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Apr 20, 2009

Annie rated it:

Overall, I thought this was a really fascinating and in-depth book. I'd heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment before, and always been curious but didn't really know much beyond the pop culture references. Zimbardo's retelling of what went on in the experiment is really, really gripping reading, and he's able to go into an incredible level of detail about what happened.

I thought the sections on Abu Ghraib and the U.S. government were fascinating too - Zimbardo obviously doesn't More...

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Mar 24, 2010

Lisa rated it:

The dust jacket and introduction of this book claim that the author will investigate such horrors as the Holocaust, the Jonestown massacre, the Rwandan genocide, and Abu Gharib prison abuses. However, more than half the book is a play by play of Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment. The other topics are briefly touched upon, but with nowhere near the depth that he scrutinizes his own experiment. It becomes incredibly tiring to have one experiment cited over and over as proof for why people d More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 02, 2009

Merilee rated it:

I'd give this book 4.5 stars if I could. It's a very well-documented book written by the creator of the famous/infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, in which students were randomly selected to play either prisoners or guards and the psychological carnage which followed after only a few days. Zimbardo served as a consultant for the defense of one of the accused officers at Abu Ghraib, and draws many conclusions about the rotten barrels (the situations and "systems") which lead to More...

13 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 04, 2012

Peter rated it:

This is a tough book to review. On one hand, I'd like to give it five stars. Everyone needs to understand the effects of Group-Think and situational/opportunistic evil. The way Zimbardo exposes both his own failings in this regard, the Stamford Prison Experiment and Abu Graib are chilling to read. But from a readability perspective, this is a three star book. It's difficult to hang in there until the investigation of the Iraqi prison fires up, and I almost didn't make it. This reads more like a More...

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Sep 03, 2011

Karyn rated it:

I got to the end of this book with relief that I could read something else. I thought the information was valid and thought-provoking, however I agreed with him at least 100 pages before he stopped writing. I felt the agenda of the book was to show the fault of the American military and government that allowed atrocities like Abu Ghraib to occur, and used the MP's as scapegoats. While I agree with him, I was hoping the theory would be applied to other situations. I ended up skimming some pages, More...

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Jan 18, 2010

Broodingferret rated it:

I enjoyed this book more than I do most of its type. Usually books written by academics that detail their personal research findings and theoretical conclusions read like text books, but with smaller print and no pictures. While this book is absolutely crammed with information, it is also very engaging and well-written. It does take a bit to get through, as it is almost 500 pages, but Zimbardo has a writing style that makes the book easier to handle than I expected it to be. Zimbardo manages More...

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