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Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect

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When a newborn is brought onto this earth, they are completely innocent. They can’t say anything, or do anything, therefore; there is no possible way to assume their character. It is what this newborn choses to do with their life in later years that will determine who they will become, and there are two paths in life that they can take. They can either choose to always make good decisions, and never become too self-absorbed, or they can choose to let their pride influence their actions. Most of the time, evilness has the biggest impact on those who easily adapt to their external influences. There are three real-life situations that support the fact that good people can turn evil. In each experience, people are placed in a situation that gives …show more content…

According to Zimbardo, his reason for this experiment was so that “examining and understanding the causes of evil might we be able to change it, to contain it, to transform it through wise decisions and innovative communal action” (Zimbardo, 20). The experiment consisted of young men in college being appointed either a prisoner or guard position. Every man, prisoner or guard, started off normal- some more polite than others, some more aggressive, but overall normal. As time goes by, Zimardo states that “the Stanford prison would become the scene of abuses that eerily foreshadowed the abuses of Abu Ghraib by Army Reserve Military Police years later” (Zimbardo, 46). Within just days of the experiment, guards were transitioning from soft, easy going men, to forceful, demanding, and quite abusive. In the same sense, the prisoners went from nervous, innocent men to rebellious and chaotic men. By the end of the experiment, it was obvious that the participants acted in a way that best represented who they were in terms of the prison. Because the guards had an overflow of pride and power, they became evil as they used it to their advantage and abused the prisoners. The prisoners became evil as they turned their lack of power into a form of protest, which caused a great amount of

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