by Phillip Zimbardo, copyright Random House 2007
Each month, Reckoning
with Wanderlust, presents a review of a book or film that relates to topics
discussed here, such as international affairs, conflict, disaster, humanitarian
work, vulnerable groups, or anything else tangentially connected. Please send
suggestions for books or films to review to deargypsyrose@gmail.com
In The Lucifer Effect,
Phillip Zimbardo explores the question of why seemingly ‘good’ or ‘normal’
people do ‘evil’ things, how environmental factors contribute to that behavior.
To use Zimbardo’s metaphor, when we speak of a ‘bad apple’ (one person doing
bad things among many people doing good things can make all the apples bad), is
it that one apple was in fact bad, or was the barrel itself (the environment)
at least partially responsible?
First, Zimbardo presents The Stanford Prison Experiment in
great detail, from his conception of it, as the Principal Investigator, to its
implementation. Allow me to briefly summarize: the Stanford Prison Experiment
was carried out at Stanford University, in California, in the 1970s. Zimbardo
recruited students over the summer to participate in an experiment, although
they were not told many details about it.
These participants were randomly assigned as either guards or prisoners,
slated to play out these roles in a fabricated prison on Stanford’s campus.
Members of each group soon come to display characteristics that one might
describe as typical of prisoners or guards, obedience or cruelty respectively.
As Zimbardo relays the exercise in great detail, the audience sees changes in
the students, as some of the prisoners are forced to withdraw from the
experiment due to physical and situational stress, while some of the guards
thrive on the power. Zimbardo eventually terminates the experiment ahead of the
planned end date after a colleague sees the guards marching prisoners down a
school hallway (during summer vacation) with paper bags on their heads, chained
together. It was only this outside observer who was able to see the outrageous
nature of the scene, as Zimbardo himself had been engulfed by the
circumstances.
Zimbardo follows this with a discussion of the ways in which
situational forces influence our behavior, and how we are prone to make fundamental attribution errors, where we
believe a person’s innate or learned characteristics are responsible for their
behavior, when in fact, situational forces play at least as much of a role.
Lastly, Zimbardo relates the Stanford Prison Experiment, and evidence
supporting the power of situational forces, to examine the abuses that occurred
at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
When reading books of this nature, we often begin with a
question, something we see but do not understand, hoping that knowledge can
help us make sense of it. For me the question was related to children
associated with fighting forces. I understand that when kidnapped, people and
children especially eventually identify with their captors in order to survive
and to mentally negotiate what they believe is their complicity in the
situation. But it is one thing to identify or sympathize with a captor, it is
another to do so to the extent that you are willing to kill and torture members
of your clan, community, or even your family, as has occurred in cases of
children associated with fighting forces during conflict.
One point that struck me as particularly applicable to this
case was Zimbardo’s explanation of the role of anonymity and deindividuation
supporting people’s slip into the grasp of situational forces. This involves
the use of uniforms, costumes, “all disguises of one’s usual appearance that
promote anonymity and reduce personal accountability.” (267) If we think of
involvement in group conflict and violence, if at all organized, it rarely
happens when one of the above conditions is not met. Everyone from militaries
of government’s, to non-state fighting forces use uniforms, not only to demand
obedience from those wearing them, but also to justify their tactics as part of
“the system” as well as to get their subordinates to think of themselves firstly
as part of the fighting force and secondly as individuals. Zimabardo
continues “When people feel anonymous in a situation... they can more easily be
induced behave in antisocial ways. This is especially so if the setting grants
permission to enact one’s impulses or to follow order or implied guidelines
that one would usually disdain.” Using disguises or uniforms obscure’s one’s
sense of personal moral identity, and with its disappearance, it becomes easier
to simply act on impulse or follow a crowd without questioning, since slipping
into some guide has tucked away the individual’s sense of responsibility. This
is true both for people in roles of authority, as well as those whose uniforms
place them in a subordinate position; it makes them more inclined to obey order
and conform with their peers, whether the result is, for example, better behavior
from students in uniforms, or similarly dressed youth committing acts that were
previously anathema to each of them individually, but are acceptable in the
group setting.
Zimbardo contrasts the common thought that people are solely
responsible for their individual actions, with his findings from involvement in
the Stanford Prison Experiment and the trials of one soldier implicated in
abuses at Abu Ghraib, “Traditional analyses by most people, including those in legal,
religious, and medical institutions, focus on the actor as the sole causal
agent. Consequently, they minimize or disregard the impact of situational
variable and systemic determinants that shape behavioral outcomes and transform
actors.” This is not to take away to power people have to make their own
decisions, nor to take away to necessity of emphasizing individual
responsibility to maintain social and moral standards in society at large.
However, if we pay more attention to the circumstances, we may see that, in
some cases, addressing negative situational influences can achieve more
progress, than addressing or condemning the actions of an individual.
Let’s think, for example, or what are called briefcase NGOs
here, those organizations that are, in fact, wholly contained in the briefcase
of the member before you, as the ‘organization’ itself is nothing more than a
front for collecting money, which will then be eaten (to use a local
expression). Imagine this happened, we are free to point at the person who
stole money and broke trust, calling him a thief, but let us also examine the
situational forces at play. He sees people in power, from policemen to
politicians accepting bribes or otherwise disguised payment with no negative
consequences, informing his development of morality. Imagine he is unemployed,
with radio or television or newspapers telling him that he is poor because
others are rich. So this man believes that taking money from those who can
afford to give, those who would donate to his briefcase NGO, is simply
accessing what is due to him. He dons the attire of the NGO set, with an
organization’s t-shirt, brochure in hand, and he becomes someone else. Imagine
that he is part of a group of people doing this, such that he becomes part of a
group. None of this undermines his personal responsibility in this case, he has
still stolen from donors and can and should still be punished. But unless the
situational influences at play are identified, by prosecuting this man we are
merely slapping at a mosquito, instead of identifying their breeding source and
working to eliminate it.
Zimbardo’s book is thought provoking and an interesting read
for its content. However, just to warn you, the writing style leaves something
to be desired, as Zimbardo practically stumbles over himself between mentioning
Stanford’s accolades repeatedly, and self-praising for his own roles in parts
of the book. This does not overwhelm the intriguing content of the book, but a
good editor could have ensured that the style and prose rose to the quality
demanded by the topic.
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