Situations and human good and evil

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	• The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil Philip Zimbardo Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2008 - 576 pages average customer review:based on 60 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Situations and human good and evil

This is an important book. It presents a perspective on the roots of human behavior, let's call it "the situational approach," against other orientations. As Philip Zimbardo notes, many of us commonly commit the "Fundamental Attribution Error," in which (page 212) "dispositions matter more than situations." That is, when others do something of which we disapprove, we tend to assume that some internal motivation led them to the bad deed, rather than that they may have simply been responding to a situation as best they could.

This book strongly speaks of the value of understanding how situations can shape behavior. The book begins with a detailed description of the famous prison study, conducted by Zimbardo at Stanford University in 1971. Here, some students were assigned to play the role of prison guards and others as prisoners. After a matter of days, the experiment had to be shut down. Why? The guards begin to use their power to oppress prisoners; many prisoners lost their ability to resist and became apathetic. A stunning result, in which adopting certain roles in an experimental situation seemed to make ordinary students into devils (prison guards) or helpless individuals (prisoners). This book (page 5) "is my attempt to understand the process of transformation at work when good or ordinary people do bad or evil things. We will deal with the fundamental question: `What makes people go wrong?'"

In this book, Zimbardo goes from the prison experiment to the evil perpetrated at Abu Ghraib Prison. He contends that many of those involved in improper behavior toward prisoners at the Prison were probably caught up in a situation that influenced them to misbehave, rather than their being wicked to begin with. In other words, the personal dispositions of many of those caught up in mistreating prisoners was not because they were "bad apples," but because they were apples caught up in a "bad barrel," or system. Zimbardo, at a number of points, argues that it is very easy to write off those who misbehave as bad, rather than having to deal with the far more difficult question of how to create situations or systems or norms that move us toward positive rather than negative behavior.

Key aspects of situations that affect our behavior: social roles, rules, norms, structures, and so on. He summarizes the various instances of people doing bad things by noting that (page 444): "We have witnessed the conditions that reveal the brutal side of human nature and have been surprised at the ease and the extent to which good people can become so cruel."

In the final chapter, he presents an approach toward trying to impel people away from evil and toward good (or heroism). He provides a "ten-step program," summarized by a series of aphorisms such as "I made a mistake"; "I am responsible"; "I can oppose unjust systems." He concludes by developing a perspective on what heroism means, examples of heroism, and different types of heroism. He refers to Arendt's argument about Adolf Eichmann exemplifying "the banality of evil," in which an ordinary person (Eichmann) commits such stunning evil. Zimbardo argues that we should strive to create "the banality of heroism," where ordinary people can behave in exemplary fashion.

Will readers accept his arguments? Reading comments from other reviewers certainly suggests that his work will not appeal to those who do not believe that structures, systems, and institutions can pervert ordinary people. An individualistic society like the United States makes acceptance of a situational perspective problematic for many. Whatever one's perspective on such issues, though, Zimbardo's book forces the reader to address fundamental issues of human good and evil, and what the wellsprings of each might be.

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The Lucifer Effect

The author did a good job of convincing me that good people can become evil when in an evil environment. Putting the system on trial was okay but I had to struggle to finish the book.

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A must read

Zimbardo provides the most comprehensive review -- from Millgram to the Stanford Prison Project to the Iraqi prison atrocities -- of the systemic forces that can transform (almost) all of us to commit evil acts.

If you need to be convinced that personality is less important than situational factors in shaping behavior, this is the place to start changing your mind.

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Very Happy

It's very likely a book that some of our leaders aren't ready for, but hurray to Zimbardo for writing it. I think it should be required reading for anyone who wants to work in the area of law enforcement, especially corrections. I also appreciate Zimbardo's website and the advice it contains.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, page 9, 10, 11, 12

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