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The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

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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.

The premise of this book is captivating, and I read it almost immediately after seeing Dr. Zimbardo on the Daily Show, where I learned of it. The first 2/3rds of this book are fascinating, particularly the account of the Stanford Prison Experiment and subsequent experiments regarding the human capacity for evil. I greatly admire Zimbardo, but the book is not what I expected.

The first 66% of the book is psychological, and it seems to me that the last 33% is more historical and political. I started to lose interest during the analysis of Abu Ghraib because it was just repeating the concepts we had learned earlier in the book, and was no longer new and intriguing. The book was just way too long, period, to cover the same themes - deindividuization, dehumanization, etc., etc. I wanted more from this book than it delivered, but it was still worth reading.

This book is the breathtaking culmination of more than 30 years of careful research into the causes of evil. Dr Zimbardo, Stanford professor, former president of the American Psychological Association, host of the PBS series Psychology, and author of the bestselling introductory psychology text of all time, has devoted nearly all of his academic career to careful studies of the path between good and evil.

His dozens of research papers have documented how environmental and social forces can push even the best of us toward bad behavior. Even more importantly, he has documented the steps we can take as individuals and as societies to become more humane. His findings are widely respected within the academic community. This is not "controversial" stuff; it's the right stuff.

Dr. Zimbardo's review of the field is lively and engaging. Then, he brings us new findings and shows how they apply in ways that can powerfully change lives. This is an exciting book that needs to be widely read.

David Maxfield
Vice President of Research
VitalSmarts LC

There is no question that Zimbardo is a great scholar and that he had spent years, decades, studying this subject. Yet, good scholarship doesn't always translate to good writing. This is a thick (literary and otherwise) book. The overall argument presented by Zimbardo is clear, but it feels that it is bogged down by so many details. There are pages after pages of transcripts from the original study. And here is the point. It all depends what you expect. If you want very detailed account of the 1971 study, that's what you get. Clear, detailed, well-supported and well-explained. If you look mainly for straightfoward answers to the question how good people turn evil, this book could be a difficult read.

Reading this book was a chilling experience.

Basically, it deals with the issue of why seemingly good and moral people can do bad and immoral things.

In 1971 Philip Zimbardo created the "Stanford Prison Experiment" wherein a group of college-aged students took part in a mock prison experiment at Stanford University. Some took the part of prisoners and some the part of the guards. It was a grant-funded experiment that was to last for two weeks. It began on a Sunday but by the following Friday, the project was called off due to the brutal behavior of the guards and the emotionally traumatized prisoners. At the premature end of the experiment Zimbardo and his co-workers collected a lot of information and data. But most important, they did a lot of soul searching as to why the brutal behavior happened and how they, the originators of the program, may have unintentionally contributed to it.

Among others, there are references to the My Lai massacre, the Holocaust during World War Two and (most memorable for our generation) the Abu Ghraib prisoner torture horror. Zimbardo used his Stanford Prisoner experiment to help figure out why those unconscionable acts took place. It was sobering reading and while I was fascinated with what I read, there were times I had to put the book down to think, get my bearings - and cry.

Zimbardo presents many sobering insights into human nature as to why basically decent, law-abiding people can do such things. For me, two things items stand out:

1. The "bad barrel" as opposed to the "bad apple" theory. He shows how certain circumstances and events can make it easier to do wrong things. He doesn't believe in excusing circumstances to justify bad behavior, but he does show how certain environments render the wrong choices easier to make.

2. The desire for social acceptance. He quotes freely from the C. S. Lewis article "The Inner Ring" to show how the desire for acceptance into the inner circle can make otherwise good people do some bad things.

I see a twofold way to read this book:

First of all, we need to be honest with ourselves and realize that most likely, we could fall into the same trap of cruelty.

Second, although we could fall into it, we don't have to, either. Zimbardo spent a lot of time showing us heroes - both known and unknown - who had the courage to stand up to evil - including Christina Maslach, one of Zimbardo's colleagues - whom he later married!

This is a book to read carefully, to absorb and to reflect upon. There's a lot of information here, and I firmly believe that if it is read in the right attitude, it will make us better people.

Upon first glance you can tell what Dr. Zimbargo set out to do. He wanted to write a book about the dark side in everyone, use examples from real life to illustrate his point and finally provide guidance on how to stay moral. His book however, falls slightly short of this vision.

The main focus of this book is the Standfard Prison Experiment. This was a social psychology study that examined the effects of situational forces on the behaviours and actions of people. It's an interesting study and well worth the time to research on your own. Unfortunately, it doesn't offer many angles when trying to illuminate the dark side of people as a whole.

After a thorough and often-times overly detailed account of this event Dr. Zimbargo offers some insight and explanations into his findings. I thought this was the best part of the book. These are Dr. Zimbargo's own thoughts on paper and they are interesting. Furthermore, he goes onto discuss other social psychology experiments (google "Milgram Experiments")that drew similar conclusions to his study. Unfortunately, this part is not very long.

The next section of the book draws parallels between the Stanford Prison Experiment and the environment at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. This part of the book is very dry. By page 300 you've been hit over the head so many times with the Stanford Prison Experiment that it loses its awe factor.

Lastly, Dr. Zimbargo discusses how people can remain good in difficult situations. This part of the book is lacking.

All and all its a decent book. I thought it would've been better if Dr. Zimbargo relied a little less on the Stanford Prison Experiment and a little more on other mediums to explain the impact of situational forces on people.

I don't know of many things more important than understanding how regular people like you and me can be manipulated by systems and situations into doing terrible things. The Holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia, ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, the Mai Lai massacre, Abu Ghraib, and the horrors currently being perpetrated in Darfur, in Guantanamo, and in torture centers run by governments around the world cannot be understood, and certainly cannot be prevented, without such understanding.

That is what Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo, creator of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment 30 years ago, does in this detailed, sobering, and profoundly insightful book.

I will not try to summarize what Zimbardo says, because I think that every person concerned about the state of the world should read the book from the preface to the last page of the notes.

What I can say is that Zimbardo's analysis is not based on ancient religious or philosophical ideas about good and evil; it most emphatically does not accept that the great and small terrors that we humans continue to inflict on each other are caused by "a few bad apples;" and it refuses to let those of us who are sure that, unlike so many others, we could never be moved to do terrible things, remain secure in that delusion.

Instead, _The Lucifer Effect_ is based on fact, on decades of hard-won experimental evidence, and on careful and insightful reasoning.

To his credit, Zimbardo also discusses the heroism of those equally ordinary people who successfully resist the powers of a cruel system or situation to corrupt and destroy. I hope that if enough people read this book, it will inspire more of us to that level of empathy, humanity, independence, and courage.

Robert Adler, author of _Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation_; and _Medical Firsts: From Hippocrates to the Human Genome_.

Zimbardo addresses questions in this book such as "What makes good people do bad things?" "How can moral people be seduced to act immorally?" and "Who is in danger of crossing the line?" He then sets the stage by asserting that we live in a "mass murder century" - more than 50 million have been systematically murdered by government decrees (actually, many indirectly so through starvation). In 1915, Ottoman Turks slaughtered 1.5 million Armenians, then the Nazis liquidated at least 6 million Jews, 3 million Soviet POWs, and 2 million Poles, Stalin's empire murdered 20 million Russians, Mao Zedong up to 30 million, the Japanese army killed about 300,000 Chinese in a few months during 1937, the Khmer Rouge regime 1.7 million in Cambodia, Saddam 100,000 Kurds, and most recently about 1 million Tutsi in Rwanda were killed by their neighbors.

Zimbardo is best known for conducting an decades-prior experiment at Stanford in which student volunteers were randomly assigned to be either guards or prisoners. As in prior similar studies (students in other locales told to administer shocks to others who made errors), the experiment quickly surprised the administrator by how quickly those "in charge" descended into depravity. Uniforms and rules shaped guards and shock administrators' behaviors. Problems intensified if shock administrators were told their subjects were "animals" by an "authority," masks were worn (liberated hostile impulses), and on the night shift (relief from boredom, sense less subject to outside observation). Diffusing responsibility (eg. experiment leader saying he/she would take responsibility) also acerbated the situation.

Prisoners experienced a loss of personal identity and subjected to arbitrary control of their behavior, as well as deprived of privacy and sleep developed passivity, dependency, and depression. Those scoring highest on conventionality and authoritarianism did best.

Zimbardo then devotes much of "The Lucifer Effect" so analyzing Abu Ghraib and other abuse situations in light of his Stanford experiment findings. He found documentation of about 400 Iraq abuse cases - Abu Ghraib was not an isolated incident. Discussion and investigation showed that the Army failed to provide adequate to-down constraints to prevent prisoner abuse, and set an agenda and procedures that encouraged dehumanization and deindividualization that stimulated guards to act in creatively evil ways. Our suspending Geneva Conventions and military rules of conduct vs. prisoners was part of this.

Brigadier General Karpinski was in charge of the 10,000-some prisoners plus staff - despite lacking experience running any kind of prison system. She soon retreated to a safer location near the airport, was absent much of the time, and failed to bring in any outside expertise. Another problem was the confused chain of command - the location of most abuse (Tier 1A) was supposedly under control of civilian interrogators who repeatedly urged the MPs to "soften up" the prisoners and had killed at least one prisoner through abuse and then covered it up. Lt. Col. Pappas' (another one of the Abu Ghraib leaders) driver had been killed by a mortar, leaving Pappas traumatized - never taking off his flak jacket or helmet, even while showering, and resulting in his being declared "not combat fit." Soldiers were housed on site in cramped, rat-infested quarters - subject to mortaring, eating MREs instead of cafeteria food, and 12-hour work days for at least 40 days without relief. Sanitation facilities were woefully inadequate, and made worse by the heat. Guard dislike of the prisoners was further intensified by instances where Iraqi guards were bribed to give weapons to inmates who then used them on the Americans.

Zimbardo concludes that Bush et al were responsible for redefining torture as acceptable, and failing to follow-up most accusations of mis-treatment - especially at the officer level. Instead, Gitmo abuse techniques were imported and encouraged.

"The Lucifer Effect" ends with suggestions on how to encourage goodness in others and ourselves, as well as how to resist falling into behaviors exhibited at Abu Ghraib, within Nazi Germany, and many other locations.

Having always been fascinated by psychology, I was excited to read that Prof. Zimbardo had finally written a book about the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). The first 200 pages go into great detail about the six days the experiment lasted (though it had been planned to last two weeks) before being cut short due to the drastic changes in both "prisoners" and "guards." The next 100 pages present his detailed examination of the different variables in the experiment, their implications then and now, the nature of good and evil, and what makes people change. The last 200 pages cover the Abu Ghraib abuses, their frightening similarity to the SPE on many levels, the call for bringing the military and governmental brass to some accountability for creating the "bad barrel" that led normal soldiers to become abusers. He ends with a description of heroism and how we can avoid being coerced by the situations and systems that surround us to act for a better world. A terrific book! Much needed.

Dr.Philp Zimbardo grew up in poverty in the South Bronx, New York, a ghetto where many kids joined gangs. As part of the gang initiation process, ghetto kids had to steal, fight against other kids, do some daring deeds, intimidate girls and Jewish kids going to synagogue. None of this was ever considered evil or even bad; it was merely obeying the group leader and conforming to the norms of the gang. Dr. Zimbardo writes in THE LUCIFER EFFECT:"Ghetto shaped much of my outlook on life and my priorities (page xi)" He contends that people are not inherently evil, but rather are victims of situation that they are confronted with. People act and react more in accordance with the situation they are in than according to their personality. Under certain circumstances, most people will commit acts of evil.

Dr. Zimbardo is a renowned psychologist and deserves much credit for this well-written extensively researched and important book. I do not feel qualified to question any of Dr. Zimbardo's answers to the question:"Are you capable of evil?" My formal education ended at the age of thirteen when the Germans invaded Poland. My empirical life leads me to acknowledge that MOST individuals, under certain circumstances, like fear of being accused of resisting despicable authority, are likely to commit acts of evil. However, not so, all individuals.

During the Holocaust, I saw Germans and their collaborators looting, expropriating, mocking, beating, torturing, shooting, hanging, burning alive, babies choked or smashed to death, starving and other unimaginable acts of extreme wickedness carried out against innocent people. 123 members of my extended family were murdered. On May 9, 1945, the Russian soldiers, who liberated the concentration camp Waldeburg, in Germany, where I had been a captive, told us: "We are giving you three days of absolute freedom to rape, to steal and to kill Germans. We have full empathy for your suffering, because we have lost 22 million of our people." I did not go out to kill Germans. I had no desire and no impulse to act brutally; I was not even vengeful! I am grateful that the Germans did not succeed, during the Holocaust, in debasing my inherited values, which were instilled in me during the formative years of my life. I fear and despise evil. I have always difficulties to comprehend how some people dare to be evil and being fascinated by it. Experiencing the scourge of evil people, my incessant question was: "Why bad things happen to good people?" I asked God to enable me to live in a peaceful world among the righteous and not to have to face the wicked again. I am convinced that under no circumstances could I kill or hurt physically any person. There are many people, all over the globe, that shun violence and hate hatred. Once, I worked in a factory together with German employees. They were forbidden to make even eye contact with us, prisoners. Still, a German middle-aged woman hid a sandwich for me, every day, for thirty days. She risked her life for me thirty times. It would be inconceivable that a righteous person like her was capable of committing evil acts, under any circumstances!

"During the Holocaust no German in the military was ever killed, sent to a concentration camp, imprisoned, or punished in any serious way for refusing to kill Jews. Many knew they did not have to kill, because their commanders explicitly told them so. Some men accepted their commander's offer and removed themselves from the task of killing. Nothing happened to them; they were given other duties. (Worse Than War p 149)" Apparently most mobilized Germans chose to take part in the murder of innocent men, woman and children, not just because of the circumstance, but because of being immoral.