subject: The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil Review [print this page] The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil Review
Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment from the early 70's used college students for a study, making half of them prisoners and the other half guards. With instructions meant to polarize, the worst in human nature quickly came out, and the experiment had to be discontinued prematurely. Unlike other important studies, this one could not be duplicated because of ethical concerns, but many similar studies have been done - most of them validating Zimbardo's result: that with few exceptions, the best of us can be coerced to perform evil acts under the right social circumstances. A book about Zimbardo's findings is long overdue. The incident at Abu Ghraib and his participation in the trial sparked his enthusiasm to share this story with us.
Chapter I - According to the story in the Bible, Lucifer, God's favorite angel, challenged God's authority - thus began the transformation of Lucifer into Satan. Zimbardo finds here an analogy to the situation in all wars, where men routinely justify being inhumane to other men, despite clear direction otherwise from the Geneva Convention.
Chapters II - IX - Zimbardo had 24-hour audio and video surveillance of the prison and kept meticulous written notes. He presents verbatim transcripts of tense conversation and photographs. A variety of situations from world history are presented showing disturbing descriptions of torture, rape, and general abuse of a captured, helpless enemy. He then draws analogies between real history and the Stanford prison experiment.
Chapters X - XI - Elaboration on the importance, ethical considerations, and notoriety of the Stanford prison experiment. If you Google "experiment," the first website listed is this one, out of a potential 300 million.
Chapters XII - XIII - How powerful social pressures can cause good people to do bad things - nuts and bolts of evolutionary psychology, social theory, and recent applicable research. Humans are essentially social. Creating semi-permanent networks and hierarchies of interaction is what people do and it is more than just a strategy for survival. The "us versus them" mentality evolved for and worked well for hunter-gatherers - nowadays we could and should do better.
Chapter XIV - Application of the findings of the Stanford prison experiment to Abu Ghraib. The author was an expert witness for previously highly-honored Sergeant Frederick, one of the defendants. He describes the situation that ended in abuse, from the permissive attitudes starting at the top (Rumsfeld advocating a "take the gloves off" approach to detainees) to 40 straight nights of 12-hour shifts.
Chapter XV - The military command and the Bush administration are portrayed as accomplices for their widespread reliance on torture-interrogation, well-documented by independent sources. In the new leadership at Abu Ghraib, the DVD of the Stanford prison experiment has been used to warn the new guards about the group-think hazards that are inherent in the prisoner-guard relationship.
Chapter XVI - Some people do not yield to the power of social influence. The author outlines a program intended to build resistance to mind-control strategies. Ordinary people may become heroes simply by doing the right thing.
For those willing to consider the bad as well as the good aspects of human nature, a must-read.
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