Studying "Evil"

Anyone who has ever studied psychology will remember reading about the Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo, the very prominent social psychologist. Recently, I discovered Zimbardo’s new book called The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. I have just finished about one-fourth of it, and it is both fascinating and excellent. If you want to read just one great book about the psychology of bad behavior, then I’d recommend either this book, or Roy Baumeister’s Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty.

Zimbardo’s book opens with an extremely detailed examination of the Stanford Prison Experiment, practically moment-by-moment. Subjects were recruited to participate, they were screened for obvious problems (including by way of interview and psychological testing), and then they were randomly assigned either to function as guards or as prisoners in a specially-constructed jail in a building on the Stanford campus. They were paid for their “work,” which was to have lasted for a period of two weeks. The results are famous, or infamous: the ordinary young men who were assigned to serve as “guards” quickly became amazingly sadistic toward the “prisoners,” who were also ordinary young men and who had committed no crimes. The prisoners responded in various unexpected ways, as well (groveling acquiescence, rebellion, and extreme psychological deterioration) that had not been predicted. Conditions became so insane that the experiment was called to a halt after only five days, and then only when a psychologist who was an outsider to the original design saw what was happening, and raised strong objections. Zimbardo candidly notes that he, too, should have seen that the experiment should have been stopped, and much sooner than it was.

What the book does is, first, provide a wealth of fascinating detail about these young men, their behavior, and their reflections on their behavior. Secondly, it persuasively sets out the implications of the experiment, providing the standard social-psychological emphasis on environmental factors as opposed to dispositional factors. Finally, it discusses more recent instances of outrageous human behavior (prisoner maltreatment at Abu Ghraib, for example).

One of the young men who served as a guard is quoted about his experience, as follows: “’ I realized… that I was as much a prisoner as [the other subjects who served as prisoners] were… They had more of a choice in their actions. I don’t think we did. We were both crushed by the situation of oppressiveness, but we guards had the illusion of freedom. I did not see that at the time, or else I would have quit. We all went in as slaves to the money. The prisoners soon became slaves to us; we were still slaves to the money. I realized later that we were all slaves to something in the environment. Thinking of it as “just an experiment” meant no harm could be done with reality. That was the illusion of freedom.’”

You might also want to take a look at Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment website, linked to this blog under the del.icio.us links. You can see slides and film clips, including one in which one of the former “prisoners” is on film, talking to one of the “guards.” He complains bitterly about how he was treated. Then, the “guard” asks him: “What would you have done, in my place?” The “prisoner” pauses, then responds: “I don’t know.”