<aside> 📌 Summary The Lucifer Effect begins with a detailed recollection of the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) by psychologist Phil Zimbardo in which several college age students were placed in a prisoner-guard simulation. It wasn’t before long that the participants underwent significant character “transformations” resulting in verbal, physical, and sexual abuses and trauma that the experiment had to be stopped prematurely. Zimbardo discusses the implications of this experiment for how we understand evil, the situational factors that can produce evil in anyone, and how we can better prepare ourselves to resist unjust systems.
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This was such a fun and interesting book to read. It would have been a fascinating audiobook as well, especially the first half of the book which details the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) with included dialogue. Phil Zimbardo does an amazing job retelling this horrifying story, of which he was primarily at fault. His passion and humility shine through as he recounts the events and admits his own shortcomings and moral failures throughout.
This book is very influential. The start of the book contains a painting by MC Escher and asks you what you see. I at first saw angels then later, after reading the description saw the demons that were “hidden”. By the end of the book after reading about Zimbardo’s experiment, his discussion on human nature, and the atrocities committed by good people overseas, when the painting was on the concluding page, I clearly saw the demons first and had to look hard to see the angels!
Painting by MC Escher
This book raises paradigm shifting questions in regards to how we view others and how we view ourselves:
We tend to label people who behave poorly as “bad apples” (and rarely do we not see ourselves as “good apples”). When someone does something evil, it gives us a sense of comfort to tell ourselves, “He did that because he’s a bad person”, for when the bad person gets locked up, we feel safer. But what if, in reality, anyone can be a “bad person”? Psychology research is suggesting that anyone, given the right (or wrong) situational factors, is capable of evil. This raises important questions, especially when in cases when a “good” person does something evil. Did the good person turn evil? Or was he evil deep down?
In the SPE, pacifist college students who were enrolled as prison guards quickly assumed their new identities and showed concerning bents toward violence and abuse and justified their actions. Zimbardo discusses our human tendencies to assume identities we are given, to become our roles, and when needed, compartmentalize our duties to eliminate any dissonance or guilt. It is a defense of our ego.
On page 297, Zimbardo speaks further to human nature’s insatiable appetite. “Our species is driven by wanton desires, unlimited appetites, and hostile impulses unless people are transformed into rational, reasonable, compassionate human beings by education, religion, and family, or controlled by the discipline imposed upon them by the authority of the State.” (p297)
<aside> 👹 Our species is driven by wanton desires, unlimited appetites, and hostile impulses unless people are transformed into rational, reasonable, compassionate human beings by education, religion, and family, or controlled by the discipline imposed upon them by the authority of the State (297).
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<aside> 👹 For many, that belief of personal power to resist powerful situational and systemic forces is a little more than a reassuring illusion of invulnerability. Paradoxically, maintaining that illusion only serves to make one more vulnerable to manipulation by failing to be sufficiently vigilant against attempts of undesired influence subtly practiced on them (180).
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<aside> 👹 Without realizing it, we often behave in ways that confirm the beliefs others have about us. Those subjective beliefs can create new realities for us. We often become who other people think we are, in their eyes and in our behavior (321).
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