The lucifer effect: understanding how good people turn evil

Good -- or at least ordinary -- people can be brought to do bad things. Moral people can be seduced to act immorally. How this happens has been the life-study of Philip Zimbardo, creator of the famous Stanford Prison Experiment and follow-up studies. In this book he explains the psychological factors that can bring all of us -- given the right situational influences and cues -- to cooperate in violence and oppression. He describes the findings of the Stanford Prison experiment, in which a group of college-student volunteers was randomly divided into "guards" and "inmates" and then placed in a mock prison environment. Within a week the study was abandoned, as ordinary college students were transformed into either brutal, sadistic guards or emotionally broken prisoners. Zimbardo identifies the psychological causes behind such disturbing metamorphoses, and suggests that the true cause is not the "bad apple" but the "bad barrel" -- the social setting and the system contaminate the individual, rather than the other way around. The search for accountability for these acts has to focus on the designers and mangers of the system, not just the individual perpetrator. The book also includes historical examples, including the recent outrages at the Abu Ghraib military prison, and a discussion of how to teach individuals to recognize and resist evil.

1. The psychology of evil: situated character transformations. -- 2. Sunday's surprise arrests. -- 3. Let Sunday's degradation rituals begin. -- 4. Monday's prisoner rebellion. -- 5. Tuesday's double trouble : visitors and rioters. -- 6. Wednesday is spiraling out of control. -- 7. The power to parole. -- 8. Thursday's reality confrontations. -- 9. Friday's fade to black. -- 10. The SPE's meaning and messages : the alchemy of character transformations. -- 11. The SPE: ethics and extensions. -- 12. Investigating social dynamics: power, conformity, and obedience. -- 13. Investigating social dynamics: deindividuation, dehumanization, and the evil of inaction. -14. Abu Ghraib's abuses and tortures: understanding and personalizing its horrors. -- 15. Putting the system on trial: command complicity. -- 16. Resisting situational influences and celebrating heroism.