The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

by Philip G. Zimbardo

Could some of the world’s evil result from ordinary people operating in circumstances that selectively elicit bad behavior from their natures?

The fundamental human need to belong comes from the desire to associate with others, to cooperate, to accept group norms. However, the SPE shows that the need to belong can also be perverted into excessive conformity, compliance, and in-group versus out-group hostility.

Most agents of intervention initially intend benefits to the target of change and/or society. However, it is their subjective values that determine the cost-benefit ratio and raise critical ethical questions for us to consider.

ethics can be categorized as “absolute” or “relative.” When behavior is guided by absolute ethical standards, a higher-order moral principle that is invariant with regard to the conditions of its applicability can be postulated—across time, situations, persons, and expediency.

Doug revealed that he started to simulate extreme distress in order to be released, but then that role got to him. “I figured the only way I could get out of the experiment was to play sick, first physical. Then when that didn’t work I played at mental fatigue. However, the energy it took to get into that space, and the mere fact that I could be so upset, upset me.” How upset? He reported that his girlfriend told him that he was so upset and nervous that he talked about the experiment constantly for two months afterward.

Any action that calls attention to one’s person threatens her or him with potential humiliation, shame, and social rejection and thus must be avoided. In response to that inner guardian, the prisoner-self shrinks back from life, retreats into a shell, and chooses the safety of the silent prison of shyness.

twenty-nine staff members at Elgin State Hospital in Illinois were confined to a ward of their own, a mental ward in which they performed the role of “patient.”

They argue that “by bringing SERE tactics and the Guantanamo model onto the battlefield, the Pentagon opened a Pandora’s box of potential abuse .

Five of the main tactics in the SERE program to render detainees or others being interrogated as amenable to yielding information and confessions are: • Sexual humiliation and degradation • Humiliation based on religious and cultural practices • Sleep deprivation • Sensory deprivation and sensory overload • Physical torment to achieve the psychological advantages of fear and anxiety, such as “water-boarding,” or hypothermia (exposure to freezing temperatures)

This motivational force is doubly energized by what Lewis called the “terror of being left outside.” This fear of rejection when one wants acceptance can cripple initiative and negate personal autonomy. It can turn social animals into shy introverts.

Most of us construct self-enhancing, self-serving, egocentric biases that make us feel special—never ordinary, and certainly “above average.”

research shows that 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.

One of the earliest studies on conformity, in 1935, was designed by a social psychologist from Turkey, Muzafer Sherif.

Majority decisions tend to be made without engaging the systematic thought and critical thinking skills of the individuals in the group. Given the force of the group’s normative power to shape the opinions of the followers who conform without thinking things through, they are often taken at face value. The persistent minority forces the others to process the relevant information more mindfully.

French social theorist Serge Moscovici,16 the conflict between the entrenched majority view and the dissident minority perspective is an essential precondition of innovation and revolution that can lead to positive social change.

Nearly half (46 percent) of the nurses reported that they could recall a time when they had in fact “carried out a physician’s order that you felt could have had harmful consequences to the patient.” These compliant nurses attributed less responsibility to themselves than they did to the physician when they followed an inappropriate command.

An investigation of thirty-seven serious plane accidents where there were sufficient data from voice recorders revealed that in 81 percent of these cases, the first officer did not properly monitor or challenge the captain when he had made errors.

mediated violence, where authorities pass along orders to underlings who carry them out or the violence involves verbal abuse that undercuts the self-esteem and dignity of the powerless.

Sometimes “bad shit happens,” but usually there are identifiable situational and systemic forces operating to make it happen.

Deindividuation makes the perpetrator anonymous, thereby reducing personal accountability, responsibility, and self-monitoring. This allows perpetrators to act without conscience-inhibiting limits.

Dehumanization takes away the humanity of potential victims, rendering them as animallike, or as nothing.