Foreword

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

—John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667

Over forty years ago, I conducted an experiment that haunts me to this day. While exploring the question, “Under what circumstances does evil arise?” I watched college student volunteers readily commit acts of cruelty during a simple role-playing exercise at a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University. In fact, witnessing the dramatic behavioral and psychological transformations in these predominately white, middle-class young men following their random assignment of “prisoner” or “guard,” I was forced to terminate the planned two-week long experiment after only six days. That study, along with Stanley Milgram’s earlier demonstration of the extent to which the vast majority of ordinary adult citizens could be led to being blindly obedient to unjust authority, illustrated in dramatic fashion the pervasive power of situational forces over individual dispositional propensities.

The abuses committed at Abu Ghraib decades later (in 2004) have given the Stanford prison experience added validity. In my 2007 book The Lucifer Effect, I drew comparisons between the two situations, shedding light on the psychological dynamics at when such pronounced power disparities are evoked. These dynamics include deindividuation, obedience to authority, self-justification, rationalization, and dehumanization. The latter, in particular, is central in the transformation of normal individuals into indifferent or even wanton, prejudiced perpetrators of evil. In addition to investigating the forces that generate the evil of action, I have been as interested in understanding the forces within people and situations that lead to the evil of inaction, public apathy, or indifference to the suffering of others, the bystander effect in emergency situations or in bullying settings.

I have spent much of my professional career studying the psychology of evil, and the reason I have done so is also a testament to the power of the broader Situation shaped in part by evil-generating Systemic forces. Growing up in poverty in the South Bronx ghetto, New York City, during the years of the Great Depression, shaped much of my outlook on life and my priorities. Urban ghetto life is all about surviving by developing useful “street smart” strategies. That meant figuring out who had the power that could be used against you or to help you, whom to avoid or to whom you should ingratiate yourself. It meant deciphering subtle situational cues for when to bet and when to fold, for creating reciprocal obligations. Most importantly for me as a scrawny, sickly kid was figuring out what it took to make the transition from being a passive follower to a dynamic leader by observing both types in various settings. Once I knew those key behavioral and stylistic differences, it was easy for me to always be the leader, the captain, or the chosen and elected president (even of the American Psychological Association).

In those days, ghetto life was about people without possessions. Some of these kids became victims or perpetrators of violence; some kids I thought were good ended up doing some really bad things, in part because they were seduced by older guys whose job it was to get the kids to do bad things in order to get some money, such as selling drugs, stealing for them, or even selling their bodies. It seemed clear to me that the difference between those kids and my other friends who did not cross the line between good and evil was that those who could maintain positive values were more likely to come from intact families where there was a father present at least much of the time.

But even for us mostly good kids, there was a ritual of coming of age on East 151st Street. As part of the gang initiation process we all had to steal from the grocery store, fight against another kid who was the newer recruit, do some daring deeds, and intimidate people. In our minds, none of what we did was evil or even bad; we were merely obeying the group leader and conforming to the norms of the gang. With such rearing, it’s obvious where my curiosity about the corrupting power of authority comes from, as well as my lifelong mission to oppose it openly—including challenging the political powers that have forced our nation into unnecessary immoral wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

My former colleague at the American Psychological Association, historian Wade Pickren, has put together an amazing collection of historical milestones in the study of mind and behavior that gives readers a broader, more meaningful context to the events that unfolded in that basement at Stanford University more than forty years ago. Of course, this unique reader does much more than that—it offers us a vibrant historical context for appreciating much that makes up the Human Condition. From prehistoric times, we humans have sought to better understand each other and ourselves. Concerning a person’s propensity for cruelty, explanations have ranged from possession by evil spirits, to an imbalance of humors, to antisocial personality disorder. In the twentieth century, aggressive impulses were traced to psychosexual complexes or excess neuronal activity in the brain’s amygdala. Certainly, violence results from a complex interplay of biological, psychological, and environmental factors, but an extensive body of research has shown that immediate “situational” forces are more powerful than we acknowledge in shaping our behavior in many contexts.

One of the dominant conclusions of the Stanford Prison Experiment is that the pervasive yet subtle power of a host of situational variables can dominate the individual’s will to resist. Then there’s the System—the complex of powerful forces that create Situations. However, most psychologists have been insensitive to the deeper sources of systemic power that inhere in the political, economic, religious, historical, and cultural matrix that define situations and gives them legitimate or illegitimate existence. Instead of focusing only on “bad apples” we must realize that a full understanding of evil demands uncovering the nature of the “bad barrels” in which “good apples” are sometimes placed, as well as to determine who are the “bad barrel makers.” Thus, I argue that a full appreciation of the dynamics of human behavior requires that we recognize the extent and limits of person power, of situational power, and of systemic power.

One of the great things about the field of psychology is that, at the end of all this inquiry into the human mind, the ultimate goal is to improve quality of life on an individual and societal basis. No doubt, understanding the biological mechanisms underlying various mental disorders and abnormalities is critical to this. Our knowledge of the brain has grown significantly over the last hundred-odd years, but with recent estimates of as many as 100 billion individual neurons residing in the cortex and cerebellum, the brain is proving to be far more complex and difficult to understand than anything else in the universe. President Obama’s recent establishment of the BRAIN Initiative will certainly shed light on the most vital connections between various types of brain neuronal activity and psychological states and behavior they create, but our knowledge of this fascinating organ will probably never be complete.

Indeed, neuroscience has provided us with significant, detailed information about how the brain works, but as a myopic scholar might mistake the forest for the trees, there are limitations to what brain science can teach us about human life and the experience of being Human. Social psychology, by contrast, takes a much wider view, stepping back to observe the interaction of individuals within cultural frameworks. Changing or preventing undesirable behavior of individuals or groups requires an understanding of what strengths, virtues, and vulnerabilities they bring into a given situation. Then we need to recognize more fully the complex of situational forces that are operative in given behavioral settings. Some of those forces are cultural imperatives that may not be apparent to outsiders. Modifying them, or learning to avoid them, can have a greater impact on reducing undesirable individual reactions than remedial actions directed only at changing the people in the situation.

Most of our remedial programs to deal with social problems focus only on changing the Person—through education, propaganda, therapy, punishment, torture, imprisonment, and exile. They rarely have the desired effect if the culprit is the situation or the system or individuals with different response styles, such as being present-oriented rather than future-oriented. Instead, I believe that means adopting a public health approach to promote prevention in the general public in place of the standard medical model approach to curing existing individual ills and wrongs. However, unless we become sensitive to the real power of the System, which is invariably hidden behind a veil of secrecy, and fully understand its own set of rules and regulations, behavioral change will be transient and situational change, illusory.

Finally, for me what is so wonderful about modern, current psychology is its new breadth now married to a broader depth—in which some of my colleagues are developing new methods and procedures to unlock the secrets of mind and brain and behavior of individuals, groups, and societies across cultures and over generations.

Philip G. Zimbardo, PhD             

Professor Emeritus of Psychology,

Stanford University