The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

“Upholding a Good-Evil dichotomy also takes ‘good people’ off the responsibility hook. They are freed from even considering their possible role in creating sustaining, perpetuating, or conceding to the conditions that contribute to delinquency, crime, vandalism, teasing, bullying, rape, torture, terror, and violence. ‘It’s the way of the world, and there’s not much that can be done to change it, certainly not by me.’” 

The theory of dispositionalism places the entire onus for societal ills and bad acts on individual actors. This theory is easy to accept because it relieves most people of the responsibility they might feel to do something to rectify the ills and the bad acts they observe in society. Zimbardo points out that societal ills will never be solved if they continue to be treated “dispositionally.” He believes that a situational and systemic approach, rather than a dispositional one, can improve society because it implicates all societal actors as agents of change instead of the mere few who have the potential to act badly.

“The power elite is composed of men whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women; they are in positions to make decisions having major consequences. Whether they do or do not make such decisions is less important than the fact that they do occupy such pivotal positions: their failure to act, their failure to make decisions, is itself an act that is often of greater significance than the decisions they do make. For they are in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effective means of power and the wealth and celebrity which they enjoy.”

Zimbardo proposes that systemic factors in society are crafted by the power elite. These leaders of business, government, and the military shape every situation in which individual members of society act. As such, the power elite bear the greatest responsibility for the actions of individuals within those situations. The decisions of the power elite often have more impact on ordinary men and women than the decisions that these ordinary people have on themselves. 

“Together Craig, Curt, and I engaged in a bit of ‘groupthink,’ advancing the rationalization that there must have been a flaw in our selection process that had allowed such a ‘damaged’ person to slip by our screening-while ignoring the other possibility that the situational forces operating in this prison simulation had become overwhelming for him. Consider, for a moment, the meaning of that judgment. Here we were in the midst of a study designed to demonstrate the power of situational forces over dispositional tendencies, yet we were making a dispositional attribution!”

In response to the mental breakdown of one of the prisoners, the team of psychologists in charge of the Stanford Prison Experiment neglect to acknowledge the impact of the situation on the subjects. Zimbardo reflects on this moment, marveling at the strength of the effect of dispositional attribution on individual reasoning. In this case, it is strong enough to influence a team of psychologists who are performing an experiment that specifically observes situational forces on individual behavior. Zimbardo and his fellow experts in the field neglected to appreciate the strength of dispositional attribution until after the experiment had concluded.

“I realized then that I was as much a prisoner as they were. I was just a reaction to their feelings. 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.” 

According to the subject quoted in this passage, both the guards and the prisoners experienced a sense of imprisonment within the context of their roles in the experiment. This subject was assigned the role of guard, not prisoner, but nevertheless, he felt imprisoned by his role of guard; he felt forced to act according to the situation, and not according to his own desires and preferences. Though the guards ostensibly had authority over the prisoners, they ironically lacked authority over themselves and conformed to the expectations of the brutal environment of the prison. 

“I was really my number, and 416 was going to have to decide what to do, and that was when I decided to fast. I decided to fast because that was the one reward the guards gave you. They always threatened they wouldn’t let you eat, but they had to give you eats. And so I stopped eating. Then I had a sort of power over something because I found the one thing they couldn’t crack me on. They were going to catch shit eventually if they didn’t get me to eat. And so I was sort of humiliating them by being able to fast.” 

In the Stanford Prison Experiment, both prisoners and guards experienced rapid deindividuation. Almost immediately, they all relinquished their identities as students with lives outside of the prison and became their prison number. Prisoner 416 speaks of his need to maintain some semblance of control over himself and over the guards; by not eating, he was able to feel a sense of power and connection with himself. Fasting, a passive act, had the ironic potential to inspire action, as his behavior would cause problems for the guards. 

“She didn’t care if everyone in the world thought that what I was doing was okay. It was simply wrong. Boys were suffering. As principal investigator, I was personally responsible for their suffering. They were not prisoners, not experimental subjects, but boys, young men, who were being dehumanized and humiliated by other boys who had lost their moral compass in the situation.” 

When Zimbardo’s girlfriend Dr. Christina Maslach observes the breakdown of the experiment, she forces him to see what he and his team are unable to see. Her heroic bravery in this moment interrupts the experiment and shuts it down completely. Zimbardo defines a form of heroism as resistance to powerful situational forces influencing a person to act otherwise; in this situation, Maslach was able to resist the power of Zimbardo and his team. Though the team had normalized the suffering of the subjects, Maslach knew the experiment was going wrong, and thanks to her, the suffering of the young men was stopped.

“While I was focused on the abstract conceptual issue, the power of the behavioral situation versus the power of individual dispositions, I had missed seeing the all-encompassing power of the System that I had helped create and sustain.” 

In this passage, Zimbardo, the Stanford PhD behind the design of the Stanford Prison Experiment, reflects on the immense power of situational forces. During the experiment, he loses himself as Dr. Zimbardo the social psychologist and becomes Zimbardo the prison superintendent. He explains that the power he had as superintendent of the prison obscured the reality of the prison system; even when subjects began to break down mentally, he persisted, demonstrating that systems, like his prison, have significant power over individuals and their behavior.

“We all want to believe in our inner power, our sense of personal agency, to resist external situational forces of the kinds operating in this Stanford Prison Experiment. For some, that belief is valid. They are usually the minority, the rare birds, those who I will designate as heroic later in our journey. For many, that belief of personal power to resist powerful situational and systemic forces is little more than a reassuring illusion of invulnerability.” 

According to Zimbardo, people typically believe they are impervious to situational forces that influence individual acts. The people who believe that they have an absolute and unwavering ethical constitution are, in fact, more vulnerable to situational influences. Ironically, though the majority of people believe in their own agency, the reality indicates that very few individuals are able to access their personal power when the circumstances are challenging. 

“Bettelheim observed that some inmates acted like their Nazi guards, not only abusing other prisoners but even wearing bits of cast-off SS uniforms. Desperately hoping to survive a hostile, unpredictable existence, the victim senses what the aggressor wants and rather than opposing him, embraces his image and becomes what the aggressor is.” 

Zimbardo compares his understanding of the prisoners’ mindset to that of psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, whose studies focused on prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. Both sets of prisoners experienced deindividuation, which led them to embrace their roles and to view themselves in a negative light. The prisoners came to see themselves as their guards saw them, and in a matter of days, the prisoners suffered a loss of self-respect and respect of their fellow prisoners. The prisoners eventually came to respect and emulate their torturers.

“Any deed that any human being has ever committed, however horrible, is possible for any of us-under the right or wrong situational circumstances. That knowledge does not excuse evil; rather, it democratizes it, sharing its blame among ordinary actors rather than declaring it the province only of deviants and despots-of Them but not Us.” 

An important element of Zimbardo’s reasoning is the acknowledgement of the impact of situational factors on individual actions. He emphasizes that any human being, no matter how upstanding their moral codes, has the potential to act in evil ways. Evil is not the doing of extraordinarily immoral or blameworthy people; perfectly ordinary individuals are as capable of evil they are capable of heroism.

“When people feel anonymous in a situation, as if no one is aware of their true identity (and thus that no one probably cares), they can more easily be induced to behave in antisocial ways. This is especially so if the setting grants permission to enact one’s impulses or to follow orders or implied guidelines that one would usually disdain.” 

Zimbardo points out that several elements emerge as distinct situational forces which can motivate individual actions. Anonymity is a major situational component that increases deindividuation and inspires individuals to act in ways that many would consider out of character. Anonymity is linked with an absence of responsibility; if no identity exists with which an action can be linked, then the appropriateness of the action may become a moot point. 

“Ideology is a slogan or proposition that usually legitimizes whatever means are necessary to attain an ultimate goal. Ideology is the ‘Big Kahuna,’ which is not challenged or even questioned because it is so apparently ‘right’ for the majority in a particular time and place. Those in authority present the program as good and virtuous, as a highly valuable moral imperative.” 

Zimbardo addresses the importance of ideology in the context of systems and their power over people. Systems allow people to behave ways that are not always acceptable beyond the realm of the system. Systems use specific kinds of language to communicate their boundaries and expectations, and this language relies on ideology. Ideology explains and justifies the behavior enabled and encouraged by the system that is in place. 

“We are in a better position to prevent, as well as to treat, madness and psychopathology when we bring fundamental knowledge of cognitive, social, and cultural processes to bear on a fuller appreciation of the mechanisms involved in transforming normal into dysfunctional behavior.” 

A situational model, rather than a dispositional model, enables the identification of broad variables and the aforementioned “cognitive, social, and cultural processes.” These variables and processes can be manipulated to achieve desired outcomes. For example, some situational triggers can transform benevolent individuals into perpetrators of evil; if these triggers can be identified, they can be altered or removed to ensure that evil behavior does not take place.

“This means that other people’s views, when crystallized into a group consensus, can actually affect how we perceive important aspects of the external world, thus calling into question the nature of truth itself. It is only by becoming aware of our vulnerability to social pressure that we can begin to build resistance to conformity when it is not in our best interest to yield to the mentality of the herd.” 

Groupthink is a phenomenon in which social pressure leads a member of a group to conform to the beliefs of other group members. Conformity can take place even when individuals know the ‘truths’ of the group are incorrect, demonstrating that groupthink is strong enough to overcome the assertions of an individual. Social conformity is more powerful than one’s belief in oneself. The acceptance of this truth is essential if individuals want to build their resistance to groupthink. 

“We will also inquire about conditions that make bystanders to evil become passive observers and not active intruders, helpers, or whistle-blowing heroes. That slice of the evil of inaction is really a cornerstone of evil because it allows perpetrators to believe that others who knew what was going on accepted and approved it even if only by their silence.” 

The three major situational factors that influence individuals to perpetrate evil are anonymity, which causes deindividuation; dehumanization, which is the process of seeing others as less valuable and less human; and situational passivity, which directly leads to the evil of inaction. In this passage, Zimbardo asserts that the recognition of passivity’s contribution to evil behavior is essential; identifying the factors that encourage passivity and reacting against them is the first step towards ensuring that individuals will act when a situation calls for action.

“One important conclusion flows from this body of research: anything or any situation, that makes people feel anonymous, as though no one knows who they are or cares to know, reduces their sense of personal accountability, thereby creating the potential for evil action. This becomes especially true when a second factor is added: if the situation or some agency gives them permission to engage in antisocial or violent action against others, as in these research settings, people are ready to go to war.” 

The combination of situations described in this passage is demonstrated in Zimbardo’s analysis of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. The American soldiers who tortured the prisoners had been given permission to do whatever they needed to do to maintain control over the prisoners and to obtain information from the prisoners. This permission combined with the isolated experience of the American soldiers to create a psychological vulnerability to commit acts of evil. Had the American soldiers been monitored more thoroughly and had they received specific instructions regarding the limitations of their role, the abuses may not have taken place.

“Deindividuation creates a unique psychological state in which behavior comes under the control of immediate situational demands and biological, hormonal urges. Action replaces thought, seeking immediate pleasure dominates delaying gratification, and mindfully restrained decisions give way to mindless emotional responses.” 

The results of deindividuation are observable in the Stanford Prison Experiment. As soon as the guards took on their roles and entered a new environment that fostered brutality, they lost their own personal value systems that enable them to make reasonable decisions. The speed with which they transformed surprised Zimbardo; from his observations of the guards, he deduced that the parts of the brain that manage primitive behaviors and emotion quickly took control, leaving the guards in a state of vulnerability to their surroundings. 

“Over time, these external moral standards imposed by parents, teachers, and other authorities become internalized as codes of personal conduct. People develop personal controls over their thoughts and actions that become satisfying and provide a sense of self-worth. They learn to sanction themselves to prevent acting inhumanely and to foster humane actions. The self-regulatory mechanisms are not fixed and static in their relation to a person’s moral standards. Rather, they are governed by a dynamic process in which moral self-censure can be selectively activated to engage in acceptable conduct; or, at other times, moral self-censure can be disengaged from reprehensible conduct.” 

An individual’s upbringing influences that person’s self-perception and personal value system; this person learns to employ mechanisms so that they can make behavioral decisions according to what that person has learned. Zimbardo argues that the mechanisms a person learns to prevent cruel and aggressive behavior are not necessarily linked in a permanent and immovable way to their personal values. When a person is thrust into a new situation, for example, the morality that person learned no longer applies, and it can no longer be relied upon to govern individual actions. 

“Our sense of identity is in large measure conferred on us by others in the ways they treat or mistreat us, recognize or ignore us, praise us or punish us. Some people make us timid and shy; others elicit our sex appeal and dominance. In some groups we are made leaders, while in others we are reduced to being followers. We come to live up to or down to the expectations others have of us.”

Zimbardo explains that the way in which individuals are treated by others influences how they perceive themselves and behave. Humans are predisposed to seek group acceptance, and the societies in which humans exist can predict how they will react to situations more than their individual personality characteristics. For example, the prisoners in the Stanford Prison Experiment soon learned that they deserved to be treated badly; they had been screened previously to ensure that they were all stable and healthy, but because they were expected to submit to bad behavior by the guards, they did. 

“We can think of the torture dungeon at Abu Ghraib and similar facilities at Gitmo and other military prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq as having been designed by the senior ‘architects’ Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Tenet. Next came the ‘justifiers,’ the lawyers who came up with new language and concepts that legalized ‘torture’ in new ways and means-the president’s legal counselors Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, William Taft, and John Ashcroft. The ‘foremen’ on the torture construction job were the military leaders, such as Generals Miller, Sanchez, Karpinski, and their underlings. Finally, came the technicians, the grunts in charge of carrying out the daily labor of coercive interrogation, abuse, and torture-the soldiers in military intelligence, CIA operatives, civilian contract and military interrogators, translators, medics, and military police, including Chip Frederick and his night shift buddies.” 

In this passage, Zimbardo illustrates the inner workings of a system led by the power elite. He explains how the top-to-bottom structure enables the successful manipulation of situations and influences the actions of individuals. In the situations he mentions in this passage, the military leaders were able to influence the behavior of US citizens through the communication of ideology that encouraged torture and normalized the abusive treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers led by Americans.

“Administrative evil is systemic, in the sense that it exists beyond any one person once its policies are in place and its procedures take control. Nevertheless, I would argue, organizations must have leaders, and those leaders must be held accountable for creating or maintaining such evil. I believe that a system consists of those agents and agencies whose power and values create or modify the rules of and expectations for ‘approved behaviors’ within its sphere of influence. In one sense, the system is more than the sum of its parts and of its leaders, who also fall under its powerful influences. In another sense, however, the individuals who play key roles in creating a system that engages in illegal, immoral, and unethical conduct should be held accountable despite the situational pressures on them.” 

Though Zimbardo’s arguments center on the situational factors that impact behavior, they do not undermine the existence of personal responsibility. If the individual actions of individuals are governed by situations, and these situations are then manipulated by systems, then the leaders of the systems bear responsibility for the outcomes of the actions made by individuals. Zimbardo is clear on the point that the people who design systems must be held accountable for the situations they create which influence individual action.

“Heroism can be defined as having four key features: (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.” 

Zimbardo asserts that just as all humans are capable of evil, all humans are capable of heroism. Though opportunities to be a hero are as democratic as the opportunities to do evil, certain conditions must be met for an act to be truly heroic. Zimbardo laments the conflation of heroism with celebrity status, noting that widespread awareness of an act does not automatically constitute heroism.

“Heroism in service of a noble idea is usually not as dramatic as physical-risk heroism. However, physical-risk heroism is often the result of a snap decision, a moment of action. Further, physical-risk heroism usually involves a probability, not the certainty, of serious injury or death. The individual performing the act is generally removed from the situation after a short period of time. On the other hand, it might be argued that some forms of civil heroism are more heroic than physical risk forms of heroism. People such as Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dr. Albert Schweitzer willingly and knowingly submitted to the trials of heroic civil activity day after day for much of their adult lives. In this sense, the risk associated with physical-risk heroism is better termed peril, while the risk involved in civil heroism is considered sacrifice.”

Zimbardo’s analysis of heroism reveals two broad categories of heroic behavior: physical-risk heroism and civil heroism. Physical risk heroism concerns the traditional perceptions of heroism that involve moments of potential bodily harm and the physical endangerment of oneself for the sake of others. Civil heroism is typically social in nature and involves some form of social or economic sacrifice. Zimbardo argues that less obvious acts of civil heroism can be more heroic than physical-risk heroism despite its less dramatic features. The heroism of leaders like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dr. Albert Schweitzer are more heroic for the fact that they lived heroically on a day to day basis.