The Lucifer Effect - Philip Zimbardo
The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil - Philip Zimbardo
Non-Fiction
Pages: 576
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 like the SPE or Abu Ghraib, those accused of committing the abuses do not bring any internal pathological tendencies to abusive or sadistic behaviour into the situation they find themselves in; rather, the psychological stresses of the situation and the overarching system in which they occur brings out such tendencies and behaviour. He doesn't excuse the individuals concerned - everyone has free will and choice to act or not, at the end of the day, even if the consequences of action or inaction may be unpleasant - but he does use the SPE as a means of explaining why such horrifying abuses occur, and how to prevent them.
It's very sobering reading, all the more so since Zimbardo uses an overwhelming array of research and evidence to back up his central thesis that anyone, you, me, anyone, could find themselves in a similar situation and act accordingly, despite our own protests that we wouldn't. In fact, he argues that it's those who are least self-aware and most self-deceptive in insisting that they could never do such things, who are most at risk from the psychological stresses of situation and system.
Non-Fiction
Pages: 576
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 like the SPE or Abu Ghraib, those accused of committing the abuses do not bring any internal pathological tendencies to abusive or sadistic behaviour into the situation they find themselves in; rather, the psychological stresses of the situation and the overarching system in which they occur brings out such tendencies and behaviour. He doesn't excuse the individuals concerned - everyone has free will and choice to act or not, at the end of the day, even if the consequences of action or inaction may be unpleasant - but he does use the SPE as a means of explaining why such horrifying abuses occur, and how to prevent them.
It's very sobering reading, all the more so since Zimbardo uses an overwhelming array of research and evidence to back up his central thesis that anyone, you, me, anyone, could find themselves in a similar situation and act accordingly, despite our own protests that we wouldn't. In fact, he argues that it's those who are least self-aware and most self-deceptive in insisting that they could never do such things, who are most at risk from the psychological stresses of situation and system.