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Book EXCERPT Think You're Above Doing Evil? Book EXCERPT Think you’re above doing evil? Think again. In August of 1971, social psychologist escapades. The images are of punching, Not only had I seen such events, I had Philip Zimbardo performed an infamous ex- slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on been responsible for creating the conditions periment at Stanford University, one whose their feet; forcibly arranging naked, hooded that allowed such abuses to flourish. As the results still send a shudder down the spine prisoners in piles and pyramids; forcing project’s principal investigator, I designed because of what they reveal about the dark male prisoners to masturbate or simulate the experiment that randomly assigned side of human nature. In The Lucifer Effect: fellatio; dragging a prisoner around with a normal, healthy, intelligent college students Understanding How Good People Turn Evil leash tied to his neck; and using unmuzzled to enact the roles of either guards or prison- (Random House, $27.95), Zimbardo recalls attack dogs to frighten prisoners. ers in a realistically simulated prison setting the Stanford Prison Experiment in cinematic I was shocked, but I was not surprised. where they were to live and work for several detail. We watch as nice, middle-class The media and the “person in the street” weeks. My student research associates and young men turn sadistic; the experiment is around the globe asked how such evil I wanted to understand the dynamics oper- terminated prematurely due to its character- deeds could be perpetrated by these seven ating in the psychology of imprisonment. imploding power. These events shaped the men and women, whom military leaders How do ordinary people adapt to such rest of Zimbardo’s career, focusing him on had labeled as “rogue soldiers” and “a few an institutional setting? How do the power the psychology of evil, including violence, bad apples.” Instead, I won- differentials between guards torture, and terrorism. In 2004 he served dered what circumstances in and prisoners play out in their as an expert witness for the defense in that prison cellblock could daily interactions? If you put one of the Abu Ghraib court-marshal hear- have tipped the balance and good people in a bad place, ings. Zimbardo gives a detailed analysis of led even good soldiers to do do the people triumph or the events at Abu Ghraib in this new book, such bad things. does the place corrupt them? drawing on social psychology research, Would the violence that is en- the military’s investigative reports, his own Parallel Universes in Abu demic to most real prisons be interviews, and hundreds of photos never Ghraib and Stanford’s absent in a prison filled with released to the general public. Like Russian Prison The reason that I was good middle-class boys? poet Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a former pris- shocked but not surprised oner in Stalin’s gulag, he argues that “the by the images and stories Anonymity and Deindividu- line between good and evil is in the center of prisoner abuse in the Abu ation The enduring interest of every human heart.” Ghraib “little shop of horrors” in the Stanford Prison Ex- was that, three decades periment over many decades Horrific Images of Abuse at Abu Ghraib earlier, I had witnessed eerily similar scenes comes, I think, from the experiment’s star- In May 2004, we all saw vivid images of as they unfolded in a project that I directed: tling revelation of “transformation of charac- young American men and women engaged naked, shackled prisoners with bags over ter”—of good people suddenly becoming in unimaginable forms of torture against ci- their heads, guards stepping on prison- perpetrators of evil as guards or pathologi- vilians they were supposed to be guarding. ers’ backs as they did push-ups, guards cally passive as prisoners in response to The tormentors and the tormented were sexually humiliating prisoners, and prison- situational forces acting on them. captured in an extensive display of digitally ers suffering from extreme stress. Some Situational forces mount in power with documented depravity that the soldiers images from my experiment are practically the introduction of uniforms, costumes, and themselves had made during their violent interchangeable with those from Iraq. masks, all disguises of one’s usual appear- 66 C M Y K WE also likE ’em; throw ’em down to the ground; some Einstein by Walter would be stripped. It was told to all of us, Isaacson (Simon & they’re nothing but dogs. You start look- Schuster, $32) Last ing at these people as less than human, and year’s release of Albert you start doing things to ’em that you would Einstein’s love letters never dream of.” proved that we still The Stanford Prison don’t know everything Smocks and ID-numbers for the prisoners and Experiment relied on about the celebrated mirrored sunglasses for deindividuating silver physicist. Isaacson the guards helped to reflecting sunglasses incorporates these let- create an atmosphere of anonymity—and for the guards along ters—as well as more a situation ripe for with standard military- familiar bits of Einstein abuse—in Zimbardo’s style uniforms. The lore—into a masterful 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment. power the guards as- portrait of the man be- sumed each time they hind the science. From the teenage atheist donned these uni- who renounced his German citizenship Book EXCERPT Think you’re above doing evil? Think again. forms was matched to the peace-activist septuagenarian who by the powerlessness pursued an “equation of everything” on his ance that promote anonymity and reduce the prisoners felt in their wrinkled smocks. deathbed, the Einstein in this page-turner personal accountability. When people feel Obviously, Abu Ghraib Prison was a far is inventive and fallible, with his accom- anonymous in a situation, as if no one is more lethal environment than our relatively plishments intimately linked to his noncon- aware of their true identity (and thus that no benign prison at Stanford. However, in both formity. Anecdotes from Einstein’s life slide one probably cares), they can more easily cases, the worst abuses occurred during seamlessly into accounts of his science; be induced to behave in antisocial ways. the night shift, when guards felt that the his triumphs appear not as isolated and When all members of a group are in a authorities noticed them least. It is reminis- inexplicable bursts of genius, but as care- deindividuated state, their mental function- cent of Golding’s Lord of the Flies, where fully cultivated blooms ing changes: they live in an expanded-pres- supervising grown-ups were absent as the from a hardworking—if ent moment that makes past and future masked marauders created havoc. unorthodox—gardener. distant and irrelevant. Feelings dominate With such rich raw reason, and action dominates reflection. The Why Situations Matter material, so carefully usual cognitive and motivational processes We want to believe in the essential, unchang- mined, there is reason that steer behavior in socially desirable ing goodness of people, in their power to re- to welcome another paths no longer guide people. It becomes sist external pressures. The Stanford Prison Einstein biography. as easy to make war as to make love, with- Experiment is a clarion call to abandon sim- out considering the consequences. plistic notions of the Good Self dominating The Wild Trees At Abu Ghraib, MP Chip Frederick recalls, Bad Situations. We are best able to avoid, by Richard Preston “It was clear that there was no accountabil- challenge, and change negative situational (Random House, ity.” It became the norm for guards to stop forces only by recognizing their potential to $25.95) Giant redwood wearing their full military uniforms while on “infect us” as they have others who were trees shared the planet duty. All around them, most visitors and the similarly situated. This lesson should have with the dinosaurs, yet civilian interrogators came and went un- been taught repeatedly by the behavioral somehow survived the named. No one in charge was readily iden- transformation of Nazi concentration camp asteroid impact. Today the 380-foot titans tifiable, and the seemingly endless mass of guards, and by the genocide and atrocities of Northern California are the tallest trees prisoners, wearing orange jumpsuits or to- committed in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Bu- on Earth, and as old as the Parthenon. tally naked, were also indistinguishable from rundi, and Sudan’s Darfur region. Until recently their unexplored crowns one another. It was as extreme a setting for Any deed that any human being has ever were thought to be largely devoid of life. creating deindividuation as I can imagine. committed, however horrible, is possible for Preston introduces a small band of climb- Dehumanization of prisoners occurred by any of us—under the right circumstances. ers and scientists obsessed with seeing for virtue of their sheer numbers, enforced na- That knowledge does not excuse evil; it themselves. Amidst a jungle gym of trunks kedness, and uniform appearance, as well democratizes it, sharing its blame among and branches, they discover fruiting berry as by the guards’ inability to understand ordinary actors rather than declaring it the bushes, hanging fern gardens, dwarf oak their language. One night shift MP, Ken province of deviants and despots—of Them trees—even tiny crustaceans. Preston joins Davis, later reported how dehumanization but not Us. The primary lesson of the Stan- the pioneers as they sky-walk hundreds of had been bred into their thinking: “As soon ford Prison Experiment is that situations feet above the ground. His complete im- as we’d have prisoners come in, sandbags can lead us to behave in ways we would mersion in his subject makes for a superla- REDITS C instantly on their head.
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