The Lucifer Effect

[SarahKat, Buddy Reads]

This thread is to discuss The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip G. Zimbardo.

Pages: 551 pages

Length: 1 month (January)

Participants: SarahKat, Beth

Everyone reads at their own pace during a Buddy Read. Because participants can be at different parts of the book at different times, it is extremely important to mark spoilers so that the book is not ruined for someone who is not as far along as others!!!

Mark spoilers by placing {spoiler} before the text and {/spoiler} after the text but use the < and > instead of the { and }.

Here are some questions to help get the conversation started! Feel free to look up discussion questions specific to this book or come up with your own. Just make sure any questions that contain spoilers are under spoiler tags.
Discussion questions are not required but may be a fun way to talk about the book and get to know each other!

Prior to starting:
What prompted you to join this buddy read?
Have you read this author before? What do you think of their other books?

Mid-read:
What character or ideas do you relate to the most and why?
Do you have any favorite quotes or scenes?

After reading:
What was enjoyable or not-so-enjoyable about this book?
Did this book change your perception about anything, either within the book (character development) or in real life?

[SarahKat, Buddy Reads]

Hi Beth! I got this on audible and started but a library hold just came through on another book so I'll start back up in a week or two. I've only gotten through the first chapter.

So far I'm glad it's not just the same information we would have read in every summary of this experiment when first learning about it. Also, (view spoiler)[glad Zimbardo acknowledges his part in this traumatic experiment and doesn't seem to just shrug it off. But I'm a cynic and maybe that's just to save face. (hide spoiler)]

[SarahKat, Buddy Reads]

I'm back at this and got through Chapter 6.

(view spoiler)[I really like that this is the actual events within the prison and not just a clinical representation of what those events prove in the world of psychology.

I knew the gist going in of course, but hearing the day-to-day events and how it dissolved into something pretty real really quickly is disturbing, especially how sadistic some of the guards got. (hide spoiler)]

[SarahKat, Buddy Reads]

Through Chapter 11. (view spoiler)[I found the debriefing after the experiment interesting. How some of the guards downplayed their sadism or justified it in some way. That's still pretty disturbing. I like that Zimbardo kept in contact with some of the people so he knows where they ended up. Hellman, who was horrible, is just a normal dude with a wife and kids.
I think the experiment set out to prove what it was meant to, but there were a ton of different problems with it, which he does sort of go in to in the chapters afterwards.

I remember learning in one of my psych classes that the career choice of "cop" tends to attract a higher ratio of jerks to not-jerks as opposed to the general population (it was more scientific than this). However, I don't know if that conclusion was based on the cops' personalities prior to their career choice or only after. A few of the guards in this experiment didn't want to be guards from the beginning, but presumably people who are cops sought out that position.

I appreciate that Zimdardo goes into the issues with the ethics of the experiment, especially his own shortcomings. I'm also a cynic, so I wonder if he added that in as just lip service so people wouldn't hate him. (hide spoiler)]

[Beth]

This is one of my last buddy read books for the month. Starting today!

[SarahKat, Buddy Reads]

Beth wrote: "This is one of my last buddy read books for the month. Starting today!"

I'll finish today! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts :)

[SarahKat, Buddy Reads]

Here is my review

I'm fighting a headache today so it's short

[Beth]

I am still plugging along with this. It's obviously a tough read, but I have finished the recounting of the SPE itself and am at the analysis part.

So much egregious material in here, difficult to read and comprehend. Of it all, one of the most problematic sentences I've read is where the author is discussing the one guard who was one of the hardest on the prisoners and who also had the lowest "Masculinity" score. The author says, "Psychodynamic analysts would most certainly assume that [his] cruel, dominating behavior... [was] motivated by a reaction formation against his nonmasculine, possibly latent-homosexual nature." I mean, that's a lot to assume, right there! But the kicker for me was the following statement that "...there has been nothing in his subsequent lifestyle ... that has characterized this young man as anything but appropriate and normal as a husband, father, businessman, and civic-minded citizen."

I may be misinterpreting the author's meaning, but wow that sounds painfully homophobic! And this book was written in 2007, so not in that long ago.

[SarahKat, Buddy Reads]

Beth wrote: "I am still plugging along with this. It's obviously a tough read, but I have finished the recounting of the SPE itself and am at the analysis part.

So much egregious material in here, difficult to..."

There is a LOT of problematic stuff in here for sure.

I think the follow-up statement at least was talking about him not being cruel or dominating to people in his surroundings in normal life, not that being a homosexual would in some way be something other than "appropriate and normal." If the analysts were correct in their assumption that this guy is just a cruel and dominating guy because of his nature (whatever that may be), then he would have continued to show that side of himself throughout life and not just within the SPE. Remember too that the other guard who was the hardest on the prisoners had the highest "masculinity" score, so this section is disproving the idea that these guys are cruel and dominating as part of their nature and proving that it's because of the situation they are in.

[Beth]

Yep, I agree with what you're saying. And I can see the point you're making. It's just too open to intepretation to not come off as terribly problematic.

I am at the point of just scanning the pages now. The material is so dense and depressing that I can't really take it in. I'm just getting to the Abu Ghraib material. The one positive thing that I caught and read and highlighted was the act of the whistleblower Joe Darby who brought the Abu Ghraib abuses to light.

I'm about 60% through and feel like I'm hanging on by my fingernails.

[SarahKat, Buddy Reads]

Beth wrote: "Yep, I agree with what you're saying. And I can see the point you're making. It's just too open to intepretation to not come off as terribly problematic.

I am at the point of just scanning the pag..."

I listened to the audio so no option to skim, but I lost a lot of focus after the SPE stuff too.

[Beth]

Ooof. I am exhausted.

As I said earlier, this was a dense and overall depressing book. Important reading nonetheless. Thankfully there were some bright spots, as in mentioning some whistleblowers and discussing heroism in general as well as some specific heroes.

I'm glad I'm done, and I'm glad I read it.