How Does Lord Of The Flies Affect Society

Malhaar Panse Mr. Karr 10th Honors Literature 29 March 2024 Research Paper: Societies Impact on People’s Morals In the novel Lord of the Flies, boys around the age of six to twelve become contentious and resort to violence when they are deserted on an island with no adult supervision. This begs the question, are humans naturally good or evil? There are many viewpoints on this topic, however, there is one theory that has research and experiments to back it up. This would be that humans are not inherently good or evil, rather they are influenced and molded by the society that they live in. An article from Psychology Today has done research on different societies over the years and found that some societies produce more violent individuals than

“After the show, infants were given the choice of reaching for either the helping or the hindering shape, and it turned out they were much more likely to reach for the helper.” (Stafford). This shows that the society that these infants had lived in had influenced them to make good decisions, but they had reached for the helping shape in the experiment because of what they had observed other people doing in their society. For the infants, they had mainly seen positive influences make good decisions, so they did the same. In Lord of the Flies, the characters that had turned savage most likely grew up in a society with negative influences, which is why they were more prone to become savage, while other characters that stayed pure would have been raised in a society without much evil and violence. A scientific journal published by Xiaomei Yang provides a perspective on Chinese philosopher Wang Yamgmin’s views on whether humans were naturally good or

“Are Humans Naturally Good, or Intrinsically Evil?” Psychology Today. 29 July 2021, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/202107/are-humans-naturally-good-or-intrinsically-evil Accessed 13 March 2024 In the article, Are humans naturally good or instinctively evil?, author Nigel Barer, PHD, asserts that it is dependent on their society, and suggests that there are evolutionary perspectives. By supplying the reader with information about evolutionary perspectives and social psychology experiments, Barber builds his claims about society being what influences whether humans are naturally good or evil. Barber’s purpose is to provide perspective on whether humans are naturally good or evil, based on experiments and research, in order to inform the general population on this topic. The author’s audience likely consists of those interested in psychology, as is evident through his references to psychology experiments and research, he addresses readers with a tone that is informal and logical. Stafford, Tom. A. “Are we naturally good or bad?” BBC. 13 January 2013, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20130114-are-we-naturally-good-or-bad. Accessed 13 March 2024 In the article Are we naturally good or bad? 2013, author Tom Stafford, researcher, asserts that humans are naturally good by nature, and society influences people to be bad, and suggests babies can be used to demonstrate this. He supports this claim by saying that babies