What’s the Formula for Evil?

July 29, 2008

So, I’ve been reading this book (halfway through it as of this writing) - The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. It’s a rather heavy read, almost like a college psychology textbook, but I love heavy reads once in a while. The book was written by Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford University psychology professor who conducted the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment back in the ’70s. He took a group of normal, healthy (physically, mentally and emotionally) male college students and placed them in a makeshift prison at the basement of Stanford University. Half were randomly assigned as prisoners and the other half as guards.

The objective of the study was to see how the students would react in an environment alien to them (none of them have been imprisoned before and none of them have been jailguards before). The study was supposed to last for two weeks, but about three prisoners already mentally and emotionally broke down by the end of the first week. On the other hand, in a matter of less than seven days, the guards became more and more aggressive toward the prisoners. The experiment was cut short because it was getting out of hand - almost all of them, guards and prisoners alike, forgot that it was just an experiment. They have immersed themselves in the role so deeply that it had altered their behavior.

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