The Lucifer Effect [52 Books #15]

The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo

Zimbardo explores transformations from ordinary, stable, average individuals into tormentors and murderers. His field is social psychology and his theory is that a three parts that define a person's responses to another are the personality, the situational pressures and the system defining the encounter. In theory, he claims, almost anyone can be brought to preform deeds even they reflect later upon as horrid violations of another.

The style is a bit to over the shoulder and preaching, and shows a clear bias against the Iraq war. It is however dense and well explained, step by step documenting experiment, experiment, and analysis of real life situations where people have crossed unthinkable lines and damaged fellow humans, and why the line was stepped over. This is not light bedtime reading: it avoids wallowing in dehumanity, but only just.

First Zimbardo discusses acts of violence and basic principals; the Rwandan genocides, the Holocaust, other such light fare are noted. The basic question is, “What makes a person shift to a new mode that sees their lifelong neighbors as inhuman beings needing to be killed?” His first experiment in this area was the famous Stanford Prison Experiment of 1970.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was supposed to investigate the minds of prisoners during incarceration and in the end got more than anyone bargained for. College students were selected, none found to have any dispositional psychological problems, and then divided by coin flip into two groups: prisoners and guards. 9 were incarcerated in the dressed-up basement of the university's psychology building while 9 guards were put on shifts of 3, with instructions to not physically harm the prisoners, prevent chaos, and preserve order. The experiment was set for a two week duration.

It lasted 6 days before an outside observer slapped sense into the head researcher – conditions had deteriorated so far, just in the first few days, that two prisoners had emotional breakdowns. The 'guards' were tormenting the prisoners because they could, depriving them of beds, sleep, communication, and decency.

There's extensive analysis of the SPE, details of other experiments in the field, like famous shock experiments, derailing conventional wisdom – one experiment had a volunteer shock a small puppy whenever it failed to perform a trick, of increasing intensity the more it misbehaved. Conventional psychologists suspected no woman would take the shocks up to the maximum on a puppy: all women did, for the puppy's own good.

Zimbardo then branches into a real life case. Abu Gharib prison, near Baghdad, was a scene of humiliation and torture, and Zimbardo was called to the defense of the coporal in charge of the wing where these acts occurred. He demonstrated how Corporal Fredricks had a decades experience as a correctional officer without any notable reprimand (he once wore the wrong uniform in his first month, and was noted as slow in counting the prisoners) went to serve in the army reserve without negative review, then was put in charge of a wing of this prison under steady bombardment, with meals only from MREs, no bathrooms, no superiors listening, and having to sleep in prison cells himself. Ocassionally civillian contractors and unidentifyied intelligence agents would drop by to interrogate prisoners – at least once killing a prisoner – and told the guards to soften up the detainees for next time. Still, despite Zimbardo's bleak picture of the stresses all the guards were under, the guards were convicted and judged 'bad apples'.

Corporal Fredricks received 8 years in Fort Leavenworth. By comparison, Second Lieutenant William Calley of the My Lai massacre received 3 and a half years house arrest and was later pardoned.

The analysis points to several factors. Those who are online often may recognize a few:

• Dehumanization – Take away the target's individuality, paint them as something lesser, strip any sense of moral obligation or empathy.

• Anonymity – cloak the attacker's identity, remove the feel that they will be recognized doing these acts

• Authority – lessen the strength of authority or, worse, have authority approve of the actions.

• Pressure – show others doing such acts, and have them presented as positive role models to emulate.

• Step By Step – begin with small steps, a slap on the wrist and escalate the inensity and severity of the actions.

Following these steps, well, I played Ultima Online, when I could point to each of these factors in the early days of the PKs. Solitary characters with silly names roamed the countryside slaying any character they met and robbing their corpses. Origin did little beyond tellign the victims they should band together. The PK problem grew and grew until it threatened to swamp the game and leave nothing but PKs, the victims having fled to Everquest and Asheron's Call. Eventually EA stepped in and made the happy fun land of Trammel where no one could ever hurt another without consent. Then came the great era of scamming....

Can't say I'd recommend the book. It's long, dense, and can ramble for a chapter on its points. There is some psychology here that think people should understand, but perhaps check out the website instead: The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo