The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

The insights gleaned from analyzing systemic/situational forces on behavior can be utilized to prevent or curb evil. Humans possess a duality of detachment versus saturation, suspicion versus engagement. Humans are skeptical yet engaging. The challenge is to oscillate between the two, realizing when to engage and when to distance oneself. No one is invulnerable to systemic and situational forces, though persons often have an illusion of such. This illusion permits the mental conditions which allow individuals to be overtaken by such powerful forces.

Research supports a reverse-Milgram altruism effect. Such effect involves three influence tactics: the foot-in-the door tactic, social modeling, and self-labeling of helpfulness. Research has shown use of these tactics can promote prosocial behavior. The foot-in-the-door tactic is enhanced when chained as a series of increasingly larger requests. Social models work via the traditional adage of ‘practice what you preach,’ demonstrating positive behavior as virtuous and desirable. Studies of children have shown that they are far more likely to replicate observed behavior than preaching. Research on self-labeling has similarly shown that giving “someone an identity label of the kind that you would like them to have as someone who will then do the action you want to elicit from them” (451).

Zimbardo presents a 10-step program for resisting undesirable social behavior and promoting civic virtue by addressing “the three S’s: self-awareness, situational sensitivity, and street smarts” (452). Step one encourages admission of mistakes to oneself and others; step two cultivates mindfulness, to curb the tendency in smart people to do dumb things when they fail to think critically; step three involves taking responsibility for one’s actions; step four supports the assertion of one’s unique identity to combat deindividuation; step five encourages rebelling against unjust authority; step six leads to the rejection of counterproductive conformity; step seven involves being frame-vigilant and recognizing how issues might be framed to serve a particular agenda; step eight asks individuals to balance one’s time perspective so as not to fall victim to “present-oriented hedonism or present-oriented fatalism”; step nine calls for the refusal to sacrifice personal or civic freedoms for the illusion of security; and step ten relates to the building confidence in one’s ability to oppose systems (453-55).

Individual heroism can involve physical risk as well as nobility of purpose and nonviolent acts of personal sacrifice. Zimbardo lists six major categories of virtuous behavior: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Historically, examples of heroism have exemplified acts of courage in a militaristic nature. However, civilian heroes are equal in their impact. As an example, Zimbardo cites China’s “Tank Man,” who “faced the ultimate test of personal courage with honor and delineated forever the proud image of an individual standing in defiance against a military juggernaut” (464). Zimbardo further differentiates civilian heroes from professionals like first responders, who are trained and bound by duty and a code of conduct. Zimbardo also distinguishes between physical-risk heroes and social-risk heroes; he explains that “[t]he risk component in heroism can be any serious threat to the quality of life” (465). Zimbardo distinguishes heroism from pseudo-heroism, which he describes as some apparent forms of heroism that are not in fact heroic. He references Daniel Boorstin, who argues that “scores of artificial celebrities grow where nature planted only a single hero” (466). Zimbardo argues that such heroes are created by powerful systemic forces.

Zimbardo articulates four key features of heroism:

(a) it must be engaged in voluntarily; (b) it must involve a risk or potential sacrifice, such as the threat of death, an immediate threat to physical integrity, a long-term threat to health, or the potential for serious degradation of one’s quality of life; (c) it must be conducted in service to one or more other people or the community as a whole; and (d) it must be without secondary, extrinsic gain anticipated at the time of the act (466).

He describes the risks associated with physical-risk heroism as peril and the risks associated with civil heroism as sacrifice, which has costs that are not time-limited. He creates a taxonomy of heroism with 12 subcategories. The categories are: military and other duty-bound physical-risk heroes; civil heroes, which are non-duty-bound physical-risk heroes; religious figures; politico-religious figures; martyrs; political or military leaders; adventurers/explorers/discoverers; scientific heroes; good Samaritans; odds beaters/underdogs; bureaucracy heroes; and whistle-blowers.

Zimbardo presents a four-dimensional model of heroism. The model is comprised of “three continua: Risk Type/Sacrifice; Engagement Style or Approach; and Quest” (480). On this model, he positions three types of heroes. The first kind of hero acts in service of an idea at one’s own peril. The second demonstrates a lifetime of sacrifice for a heroic objective. The third kind of hero engages in an act of bravery for the preservation of human life resulting in one’s own peril. Zimbardo then adds a fourth dimension: Chronicity Heroism/Acute Heroism. Chronicity heroism accrues in small actions over time, while acute heroism is shown in one single act.

Zimbardo argues against traditional hero stereotypes and states “that some heroes are ordinary people who have done something extraordinary” (483). This perspective includes both the situation and the person involved. As a result, “any of us could as easily become heroes as perpetrators of evil depending on how we are influenced by situational forces” (486).