What makes good people do bad things? How can moral people be seduced to act immorally? Where is the line separating good from evil, and who is in danger of crossing it?
Renowned social psychologist Philip Zimbardo has the answers, and in The Lucifer Effect he explains how-and the myriad reasons why-we are all susceptible to the lure of "the dark side." Drawing on examples from history as well as his own trailblazing research, Zimbardo details how situational forces and group dynamics can work in concert to make monsters out of decent men and women.
Zimbardo is perhaps best known as the creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Here, for the first time and in detail, he tells the full story of this landmark study, in which a group of college-student volunteers was randomly divided into "guards" and "inmates" and then placed in a mock prison environment. Within a week the study was abandoned, as ordinary college students were transformed into either brutal, sadistic guards or emotionally broken prisoners.
By illuminating the psychological causes behind such disturbing metamorphoses, Zimbardo enables us to better understand a variety of harrowing phenomena, from corporate malfeasance to organized genocide to how once upstanding American soldiers came to abuse and torture Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. He replaces the long-held notion of the "bad apple" with that of the "bad barrel"-the idea that the social setting and the system contaminate the individual, rather than the other way around.
This is a book that dares to hold a mirror up to mankind, showing us that we might not be who we think we are. While forcing us to reexamine what we are capable of doing when caught up in the crucible of behavioral dynamics, though, Zimbardo also offers hope. We are capable of resisting evil, he argues, and can even teach ourselves to act heroically. Like Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem and Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, The Lucifer Effect is a shocking, engrossing study that will change the way we view human behavior.
From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

Long and appreciated:

I guess the plethora of reviews testifies to the importance of this book. And I'll assume that my response is directly related to the number of years I taught social psychology. While others found it boring or tedious, I was grateful to have the full description of the prisoner/guard research. While others found that he strayed from his theme, I found it well-developed and appropriately sequential. Most of all, it brought back memories of my colleague emerging ashen-faced from his 75 minute class where he... more info

Fascinating:

If you ever wanted to know why people can stand idly by while someone commits a crime, commits an act of cruely against a child or animal, or motivates the populace into mass homicide, then this book is for you.
It covers the spectrum from every day occurances and seemingly innocent acts of "minding my own business" to how this can be used as an excuse for ignoring some of the world's injustices. A big part of this is the abu graib instances, but you could probably as easily apply it to Nazi Germany or... more info

The Yahweh effect:

As noted on the jacket, "Psychologist Zimbardo masterminded the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, in which college students randomly assigned to be guards or inmates found themselves enacting sadistic abuse or abject submissiveness."
Prof. Zimbardo's lab subjects were American college students--your ordinary, beer-drinking, fun-loving, fornicating liberal humanists. What possessed them to enter into Dr. Zimbardo's laboratory and suddenly start acting like evangelical Christians? These were not bad... more info

good:

its a good book to read especially if your into psychology it is also a good ethics review(i used it in that class).if ur a casual reader it still a good buy.

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