Zimbardo

Peter A. Georgescu        There's a Prison Guard in Each of Us

As a child in Romania, I watched the Communist authorities come into our house and pull my grandfather from my grandmother's arms -- taking him to a prison where he was eventually kicked to death by a guard. My brother and I, along with my grandmother were then put to work in a labor camp for years, beyond the ability of our parents to save us. They'd been on a trip overseas when we were seized and had no choice but to stay in America, trying one ploy after another to free us, all of it in vain. Eventually Romania released us, but only when President Eisenhower interceded on our behalf, after months of shaming publicity from the world media, which took up our cause with vigor. Yet this happened only after we were put through years of life-threatening labor. We came to America to live with our parents, and were blessed to have happy lives thanks to the goodness of countless people who helped us. Yet I've spent decades trying to understand the origin of evil in human behavior -- what was it that prompted the authorities to put two small, innocent children through years of forced labor?

So when I first read about Philip Zimbardo's famous Stanford Prison Experiment, it fascinated me. When you read about how ordinary human beings can be induced to act in a way most of us would consider evil, it's easy to think it's unnatural. Or that the conditions of the experiment must have created unusual pressures most people wouldn't ordinarily encounter in life -- and that the experiment itself must be to blame for the results. Yet, my own experience led me to see in this experiment an exposure of what is, in reality, tendencies innate to all human beings. I'd seen ordinary villagers adapt to a new Communist regime and commit evil against innocent people -- it seemed this experiment was exploring precisely the kind of questions that had obsessed me all my life. It spurred me in my effort to comprehend why people can so quickly find themselves doing evil.

I found a way to forgive my Romanian captors by seeing evil as something built into the brain itself. It's our heritage from countless years struggling to survive in the tall African grass, among our predators, after our primate ancestors descended from the trees.- Peter Geogescu

I write about this experiment and what it now means to me, and the road of personal exploration that led me to understand what I'd experienced as a child, in The Constant Choice. As it turns out, I found a way to forgive my Romanian captors by seeing evil as something built into the brain itself. It's our heritage from countless years struggling to survive in the tall African grass, among our predators, after our primate ancestors descended from the trees. Most of what we consider evil was actually perfectly sensible behavior if you go far enough back in history. It kept us alive in a primitive world with scarce resources and tribal conflict. Our culture has evolved into something far more sophisticated with codes of action based on universal moral law -- yet this moral law stands in direct conflict with what the older portions of our brain urge us to do under stress. Civilization has largely become an effort to evolve our culture and our behavior in a way that helps nullify these impulses that once enabled us to survive but now threaten our future as a race. Zimbardo showed that evil is integral to human nature, lurking in all of us. Yet, once we realize this, we can freely chose to move beyond these impulses -- if we are on the watch for them in ourselves. But we need to recognize how close we all are to becoming a prison guard and then chose instead to be something far better -- and that means recognizing how accurate Zimbardo's experiments were and what they mean for all of us, when we consider all the choices we make every day.

Bryan Wood       The Social Influence of Good vs. Evil

When I ponder the concept of good versus evil, I pause for a moment to recognize that the words have varying meanings to different people. While one culture may view the stoning of women for sexual behavior perfectly acceptable, others will view it as being despicable and an abomination to humanity. The important fact is to isolate and define a form of evil that is all-encompassing for the human species and not varied between individual cultures.

As humans, we precariously straddle two worlds. One world is based on our genetic hard-wiring which is geared towards survival and aggression -- our animal instincts. Our other world is the modern, civilized society based on rules and conformity which we have created and enjoy. The vast majority of people reside prominently in civilized society, and they dismiss their instinct for aggression and dominance. Being a part of the group ensures safety and prosperity, and the group strongly influences and defines individual behavior.

This relationship between the group and the individual is a two-way street. The group defines rules and limitations, and the individual complies for the purpose of integration. The end result of this is mutually beneficial to the good of one and the good of many. Evil acts occur when one aspect of this system breaks down and either the motivations of the group as a whole become corrupted or an individual rebels against the norms created by society.

As a whole, we recognize evil acts as being those committed by individuals who have abandoned society. Deranged individuals who commit rampage style shootings, those who target children for sexual exploitation, those who target vulnerable women for rape, and so on. These are acts which, regardless of their root cause, have no seed of good within them. They are committed solely for the purpose of delivering pain, suffering, and torture to the victims, with no redeeming value to society, and without remorse.

When the individual breaks away from the group in this manner, there is very rarely any chance for true rehabilitation.

When the failure of good is on the side of the group as a whole, however, the result can be much different. If good people are subjected to degraded values within the group, even the best person can become subject to committing the worst acts. This is often highlighted in examples of heroes-turned-criminal in the military and police officers who find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

A war veteran is often revered as a hero in our society today, and most soldiers hold themselves to the highest standards of conduct while in battle. However, if the group as a whole becomes broken, the strength of the brotherhood between soldiers can drive many to do things which later carry grave regret. In January of 2012, such an example came to light in America.

A group of soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines rose to infamy when a video surfaced on the internet depicting them urinating on dead Taliban fighters. The soldiers are heard saying "Golden like a shower," and "Have a great day buddy," while desecrating the remains. In our modern, civilized world, we would rank this act as evil under almost any terms, but it's important to remember this didn't take place here. It took place in the less civilized, less modern world of war, and it took place under conditions most would never dare to imagine much less experience. So, what went wrong?

Soldiers, while legally adults, are very often still within a very impressionable age. If I dare to think back to myself at the age of 19 or 20 years old, I hardly recall a mature adult. If people at such an age are removed from an environment of order, structure and safety, and placed in an environment of disorder, chaos, and fear, the motivation of the group shifts, and the results can devastate lives.

In a scenario such as the soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, the motivating factor for the group became anger and rage. As the soldiers dealt with significant combat resulting in heavy casualties, the individuals responded in suit. While urinating on the remains of others may be regarded as evil, it is very important for others to form the distinction between the act itself and the people committing it. The act may be evil, but the people themselves are not. The moral compass of the group lost its way, and the natural drive for the individuals to conform brought them to a very unwanted infamy.

Violence and evil are no strangers to our world, and they are never going away. However, if we learn to recognize the sources of derelict behavior, we may be able to intervene and prevent good people from making tragic decisions.

Marina Nemat   The Many Faces of Evil

In 1977, a 21-year-old political prisoner, Ali Moosavi, was tortured in Evin prison in Tehran, Iran, by SAVAK, the Shah's secret police. Ali was a devout follower of Ayatollah Khomeini, whom the vast majority of Iranians, including Marxists, Islamists, liberals, seculars, etc., came to support during the revolution as the only leader who could unite everyone against the monarchy. Ali was hung from a ceiling in a torture room in Evin. He was beaten for hours and then repeatedly electrocuted. He believed in his cause, which, according to him, had to do with bringing justice and democracy to Iran. To many people, he was a hero.

In 1982, it had been about three years since Iran had become an Islamic republic, but the country was neither free nor democratic. On a daily basis, thousands of young people protested on the streets against the antidemocratic policies of the new regime. Hundreds of protestors were arrested and then tortured in Evin, which was supposed to be shut down with the success of the revolution in 1979, but it wasn't. In 1980, Ali Moosavi became an interrogator/torturer in Evin and tortured teenagers. Iran was at war with Iraq. To Ali, torturing and executing "the enemies of the revolution" was an act of justice and goodness; he believed he was defending Iran's national security and God. Even at this stage, he was a hero to many.

In front of the Iranian Embassy in Stockholm, shortly after the 2009 elections in Iran and the mass protests and arrests that followed, an Iranian woman yelled, "We'll torture you all just the way you tortured us! We'll kill you all!" She was angry because of all the terrible things that were done to her in Evin, and she didn't see that by torturing and killing, she would contribute to the same evil she was trying to defeat. To her, heroism has to do with killing and torturing the enemy. Her value system is distorted and has been overcome by hate, which has originated from her personal suffering when her dignity and survival were threatened.

Hannah Arendt wrote about Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, that even though his deeds were monstrous, he was quite ordinary. He was not stupid, but he was thoughtless, incapable of thinking independently or critically. Arendt believed that Eichmann was the embodiment of what she called the banality of evil, the capability of "normal" people to commit evil in certain circumstances. She wrote that, unlike popular belief, not all Nazis were psychopaths.

One human being intentionally harming another is an evil act. If we agree on this, we would soon have to answer some difficult questions. How about the many states in the U.S. that practice the death penalty? Are those who practice it, even when the law allows it, evil?- Marina Nemat

During his TEDTalk, titled Psychology of Evil, Philip Zimbardo, who is known for his Stanford Prison Study, in which 24 "normal," healthy individuals were randomly selected to be "prisoners" or "guards" in a mock dungeon located in a basement at Stanford University, fails to clearly define what evil is in practical terms. What kind of acts can be categorized as evil? This might seem obvious, but, in some cases, it is not. I believe, for example, that one human being intentionally harming another is an evil act. If we agree on this, we would soon have to answer some difficult questions. For example, how about the many states in the U.S. that practice the death penalty? Are those who practice it, even when the law allows it, evil? After all, they justify killing another human being. As Mr. Zimbardo says during his talk, saving the life of another is a heroic act. He gives us the example of the New York subway hero, Wesley Autrey, who jumped in front of a moving train to save a total stranger as many bystanders froze and watched. But if we allow our laws to, under any circumstances, deem the deliberate act of taking another person's life right and just, then we contradict ourselves. Mr. Zimbardo suggests that in order to counter evil, we need to have heroism classes for kids in schools. But how can we train more Wesley Autreys who jump in front of moving trains to save another person if, in the real world, the person we risk our lives to save could be condemned to death sometime in the future according to our own laws because of a crime they might have committed? If we allow violent acts like torture and murder under anycircumstances, in all practicality, we feed evil and empower it. Punishment, national security, protecting God or country, etc. can never be used as reasons to justify violence. If we justify violence in the name of good, no heroism class can ever save us from the hell we will gradually sink into. Before heroism, we need to teach our children the difference between right and wrong and the meaning of good and evil. We need to not only tell them, but also to show them with the way we live our lives and write our laws that harming other human beings can never be justified. Without this solid foundation, our talks and lectures become soulless propaganda. Evil is not simple and does not fit in a box; it manifests itself in many shapes and forms, from the victim who becomes a torturer, the Nazi who follows orders, and the psychopath who kills without remorse, to the bystander who remains silent in the face of terrible injustice. Heroism classes sound like a bad reality show; they will sell, but they will not make the world a better place. Let's start with less glamorous but much more practical anti-bullying, how-to-be-compassionate classes. Small sacrifices pave the way for big ones.
Robert Koehler                 Abu Ghraib Revisited

Philip Zimbardo's TEDTalk on Abu Ghraib and "The Psychology of Evil" is up to 2,374,000 hits. Apparently people are hungry to know about the deep psychology of American foreign policy.

And perhaps they're hungry to look, again... again... at the Abu Ghraib torture photos that first surfaced in 2004. Cruelty and evil inspire a twisted awe; they pull us into the black hole of our own heart, where we see ourselves in hideous distortion.

"Nothing is easier," said Dostoevsky (quoted by Zimbardo in his presentation), "than denouncing an evildoer. Nothing is more difficult than understanding him."

Zimbardo, the psychologist who conducted the famous, or infamous, Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971, and subsequently wrote a book called The Lucifer Effect, has devoted his career to studying the systemic nature of human violence and the corrupting effect of power, especially anonymous power, over others. The experiment, using college-student volunteers, had to be called off after five days, well ahead of its planned duration, because the abuse of power had gotten so thoroughly out of hand.

All of which has a certain relevance to real life, you might say. When the Abu Ghraib scandal hit the fan nearly a decade ago, the Bush administration immediately singled out and prosecuted a few low-ranking guards for committing such garishly photogenic, PR-damaging abuses against their Muslim prisoners. No matter that their orders were to "soften up" the prisoners for interrogation. No matter that they had been encouraged and praised by their superiors until the photos were leaked to the public.

The dehumanized Muslim prisoners tore open our hearts with their fragile humanity, and the American guards, laughing at their pain, seemed completely devoid of humanity.-- Robert Koehler

The situation was suddenly messy. Uh oh, scapegoats needed.

And slowly the horror of the scandal dissipated. The issue became the prosecution and punishment of the isolated, low-ranking evildoers and, for some, fury at the hypocrisy of the military and the Bush administration.

But what about the torture itself? The photographs showed hell on earth, evidence of a social and spiritual cancer that had dangerously metastasized. And we were the agents. This was all happening in the middle of our war on terror... our war on evil itself, and here were American soldiers, acting, excuse me, as though they were the evil ones. The dehumanized Muslim prisoners tore open our hearts with their fragile humanity, and the American guards, laughing at their pain, seemed completely devoid of humanity.

We haven't absorbed the shock of this, much less pondered the implications, much less adjusted national policy. We've just suppressed it, normalized it (that's war for you) and moved on. Except, of course, we haven't -- any more than we've moved on from much else in our national past.

As Zimbardo notes, the proper question to ask about Abu Ghraib isn't who but what is responsible? This is the question we haven't asked at anywhere close to the level of national decision-making -- because, of course, we can't. The implications are too large. Foreign policy isn't supposed to be rational; the Department of Defense is a medieval priesthood, pursuing its ends in ritual and secrecy.

Why are we waging this war? Why are we continuing to terrorize parts of Central Asia with our drone strikes? Why did we kill five children last month, along with five adults, with a drone strike in eastern Afghanistan, within hours of President Obama's State of the Union address?

"The NATO-led coalition declined to confirm whether there had been an air strike in the area overnight, saying only that it was looking into allegations of civilian casualties," the Guardian reported the next day. And this is all we'll ever hear of the incident.

If the bodies are too public, we'll get an official expression of "deep regret," such as NATO's International Security Assistance Force gave us several days ago, after Australian soldiers killed two Afghan children during a firefight. For good measure, they added assurances that ISAF remains "committed to minimizing civilian casualties," according to Agence France-Presse.

Somewhere in the collective psyche there is unchecked internal bleeding over the killing and the indifference and the lies. We're trapped in a nation that can't stop wielding its lethal power.

And this, I think, begins to explain the consuming and continuing curiosity about Zimbardo's TEDTalk and Abu Ghraib. At a level beyond geopolitics and beyond nationalism itself, we can't let go of the question, who are we?

Pain and death should deepen us. To remain shallow and banal in the face of death is perhaps the greatest sin of all. When I look at the Abu Ghraib photos I think of a book called Without Sanctuary -- a compilation of lynching postcards and photos from the early 20th century, which came out in 2000. The same insanity is present in the photos, the same happy smiles, as corpses dangle from trees and light poles.

This is what we're capable of when we go to war and choose to live in hate. We know it because, when we look at the photos, we recognize ourselves.

Sam Sommers                   Life, Oversimplified

Personality is overrated.

One of our biggest misconceptions about human nature is that the people around us are of consistent, predictable character. When thinking about one another we tend to oversimplify, categorizing each individual as either a good or an evil person, a hero or a coward, and so forth.

But the reality of our social universe is far more nuanced. People are complicated and compellingly contradictory. Human nature is surprisingly context-dependent.

Zimbardo makes this case using graphic visual evidence to show us the darkest capabilities of otherwise ordinary individuals. But our tendency to explain away bad behavior as the result of "a few bad apples" isn't limited to egregious atrocities. In fact, I rely on the very same principles when speaking to corporations and other organizations about, say, the psychology of fraud and unethical behavior.

In pondering ethical lapses, there are at least three reasons why the bad apple model falls short. First, because unethical behavior is context-dependent. Frame a problem as a "business decision" and people rely on more questionable tactics to solve it than when the same exact problem is framed as an "ethical decision." Furthermore, research demonstrates that the business framing can have lingering unconscious effects, rendering people more likely to cheat on subsequent tasks as well.

Indeed, the psychology of fraud is a lot like the psychology underlying one of society's more lighthearted ills: the comb-over.-- Sam Sommers

Second, unethical behavior is contagious. Consider one study in which researchers arranged for college participants to witness another student's unethical behavior. When the cheater was from the same school as participants, observers became more likely to cheat themselves. But when the public cheater wore a shirt with another school's name on it, observers cheated less -- witnessing a rival's unethical behavior seems to remind us of the importance of holding ourselves to a higher standard.

And unethical behavior is incremental. We usually think of fraud and ethical violations as elaborate schemes deliberately plotted out in nefarious fashion. Sure, that happens. But more often you see the little white lie that snowballs out of control. The résumé half-truth that evolves into a publicly perpetuated fabrication. The fudged expense report that opens the door to unambiguous embezzlement.

Indeed, the psychology of fraud is a lot like the psychology underlying one of society's more lighthearted ills: the comb-over. The hair starts thinning, so you look in the mirror each morning and adjust a little bit here, a little bit there... every day, you do just a bit more than the day before to compensate... then, before you know it, years have passed and, without a conscious decision to do so, you're out and about sporting the full-blown Trump.

So the message of Zimbardo's talk isn't confined to military atrocity, cult suicide, or other extreme behaviors that conjure traditional notions of evil. Nor is it limited to how we react to negative behaviors. Even in the most general of terms, the influence of context is one the most important aspects of human nature to which we don't pay enough attention.

Recognizing this turns assumptions about the social universe upside-down. You're a free-thinker who does what's right, not what's popular? Of course you are. But everyone thinks that. Actually, it's surprisingly easy to be swayed by crowds unless you recognize and avoid the situations that promote the herd mentality.

Men are from Mars and women from Venus? Not so fast. Of course there are testable biological explanations for sex differences in aggression, sense of direction, who we're willing to mate with, and so on. But many of these supposedly interplanetary (read: fixed) differences between men and women shrink or even disappear with tiny tweaks to circumstance.

Even our most intimate of instincts are shaped by immediate surroundings. Take love. We pine for Mr. or Mrs. Right and pay dating websites to find "just my type." But falling in love is also about context. Like proximity: Just sitting near someone in a lecture hall makes students more attracted to certain classmates. And arousal: Don't approach that possibly special someone at the office; ask him out while he's on the elliptical at the gym. The science says you'll get a better reaction that way.

In short, our situations matter. Where you are, who you're with, what's going on around you at any particular moment... these are critical factors that shape how you think, what you do, and the person you appear to be in all walks of life. We may gravitate toward a world view based on stable personality type -- one populated by unambiguously good and bad apples -- but we don't know people as well as we think we do. That's a conclusion that reverberates from the halls of the military prison to the walls of the corporate boardroom. And it's a lesson with the power to make all of us better, not to mention more effective people.

Janice Harper     What the Stanford Prison Experiment Can Teach Us About the Workplace

Next time you think about workplace bullies, you might do well to consider the Stanford Prison Guard experiments. Philip Zimbardo's ground-breaking research on the social psychology of evil has a lot to teach us about bad apples in the workplace. With so much attention on workplace "bullies" as the primary culprits of workplace aggression, there remains a tendency to look for the lone bad apple believed to be making life hell for the workforce. Yet as Zimbardo's research demonstrated, bullying is contagious and anyone can and will become a workplace bully if put into an institutional setting where aggression is encouraged and cruelty unpunished.

In the prison guard experiments, Zimbardo found that when playing the role of guards, ordinary non-sadistic people became increasingly aggressive, were arbitrary in their punishments, and exhibited pleasure at the humiliation of their "prisoners." The more they dehumanized these prisoners, acted under the cloak of anonymity, and realized there would be no accountability for their abuses, the more their aggression escalated.

Even among those guards who initially resisted the aggression,all eventually rationalized their decision to join ranks with authoritarian guards, and all soon rationalized their behavior as legitimate due to the behavior of the one being punished -- even when the one being punished had clearly done nothing wrong and the punishment was by any standard a violation of human decency. Perhaps most disturbing of all, no matter how great and arbitrary the cruelty became, none of those who inflicted the brutality expressed any remorse when they returned home and were free of the artificial "prison" in which they'd acted with impunity. By having legitimated their actions as necessary and brought on by the target, through a process of cognitive dissonance the "guards" had come to believe they acted morally and appropriately.

We must dare to step beyond the boundaries of the individual bully paradigm, to consider how group psychology contributes to workplace aggression and turns good people bad.- Janice Harper

Through his subsequent research of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, Zimbardo has shown how anyone placed into a position of authority over another and assured that their actions will be tolerated so long as they please those in authority above them, will act in ways they never would in other circumstances. By applying his findings to workplace bullying, we can readily see how rapidly an entire workforce can be swept into the maelstrom of aggression when someone in a position of leadership marks a worker for elimination. Yet the current anti-bullying paradigm fails to explore this group dynamic, and consequently remains inadequate for addressing it.

A focus on interpersonal conflicts between the bad bully and the good worker focuses on seemingly inherent qualities of individuals, and fails to explain the sheer brutality that ensues when bullying expands to include multiple people engaged in shunning, gossiping about, sabotaging, and making accusations and reports against a targeted worker. The collective bullying of a worker is called "mobbing," and it typically ensues when a worker does or says something to annoy management, and management declares or demonstrates that the worker is unwanted. When that happens, it takes little effort to persuade the broader workforce to turn against the worker.

Just as Zimbardo talks about the slippery slope of evil that begins with the subject mindlessly taking the first step toward aggression through a seemingly minor action, when mobbing begins, workers are not initially encouraged to be cruel to the targeted worker. Far from it; they are told the worker must go, that it is the worker's own doing, and the worker will be better off if they just move on. The first step onto the slippery slope of mobbing behavior thus often begins with something as simple as agreeing with management that the targeted worker must go -- even if the decision to terminate the worker is clearly arbitrary or punitive or in some cases illegal, such as retaliation for reporting sexual harassment, discrimination or unlawful behavior.

As mobbing commences, workers initially distance themselves from the targeted worker, then begin gossiping. Soon gossip turns to damaging rumors and speculation, which in turn lead to false reports being made to management, refusal to cooperate or work with the worker, and depriving the worker of resources necessary to do their job. The worker is further subjected to a series of secretive investigations, damaging evaluations, allegations of misconduct, and workplace surveillance (as emails are monitored, offices and phones searched, and work scrutinized for errors).

One of the findings of Zimbardo's team was that the arbitrariness of punishments, lack of privacy, public humiliation, and increasing powerlessness led those playing the role of "prisoner" to become enraged, confused and ultimately defeated. In this same way, through the uncertainty of what has been said about them, what will be said next, and how one's past and current words or acts will be distorted and reported, the mobbing target learns to be constantly on guard and in fear of even the most benign social encounters, leading the targeted worker to appear paranoid and mentally unstable, regardless of how mentally stable they were before the mobbing began.

Just as it would have been absurd for Zimbardo to get rid of the bad guards in hopes the aggressive behavior would be stopped, getting rid of the bullies in an institutional setting that has ignited and encouraged mobbing is an impossible task, given the number of aggressive participants. By shifting from a focus on bad apple bullies, to a focus on the institutional context that ignites group bullying or mobbing in the workplace, more effective workplace policies and practices become possible.

But to get there, we must dare to step beyond the boundaries of the individual bully paradigm, to consider how group psychology contributes to workplace aggression and turns good people bad. To avoid the slippery slope of workplace aggression, we might do well to mindfully step onto the path of workplace compassion. Instead of quixotically ridding the workplace of bullies, let us reflect on how we can contribute to a kinder, gentler way of working together. It begins not with how we treat those inside the golden circle, but how we treat those who've been cast from it.

7 social processes that grease the slippery slope of evil.

1. Mindlessly taking the 1^st small step.
2. Dehumanization of others.
3. De-individuation of self (anonymity).
4. Diffusion of personal responsibility.
5. Blind obedience to authority.
6. Uncritical conformity to group norms.
7. Passive tolerance of evil through inaction or indifference (in unfamiliar situation)

See General Fey’s report.

Need a public health model for bullying, abuse,

Solzhenitsyn: the line between good and evil runs through the human heart.

Hero: ordinary people who act when others are passive.

Sacral nerve root is what triggers orgasm.

The Lazarus reflex