PHILIP G. ZIMBARDO is professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University. He is the author of, among other books, Shyness: What It Is, What to Do About It.
Those people who become perpetrators of evil deeds and those who become perpetrators of heroic deeds are basically alike in being just ordinary, average people. The banality of evil is matched by the banality of heroism. Neither is the consequence of dispositional tendencies; nor are they special inner attributes of pathology or goodness residing within the human psyche or the human genome. Both emerge in particular situations at particular times, when situational forces play a compelling role in moving individuals across the line from inaction to action.
There is a decisive moment when the individual is caught up in a vector of forces emanating from the behavioral context. Those forces combine to increase the probability of acting to harm others or acting to help others. That decision may not be consciously planned or taken mindfully but impulsively driven by strong situational forces. Among them are group pressures and group identity, diffusion of responsibility, and a focus on the immediate moment without entertaining future cost or benefit.
The military-police guards who abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the prison guards in my Stanford Prison Experiment who abused their prisoners illustrate the temporary transition of ordinary individuals into perpetrators of evil, à la Lord of the Flies. I am not speaking here of those whose evil behavior is enduring and extensive—such tyrants as Idi Amin, Stalin, or Hitler. Nor of lifelong heroes. The heroic acts of Rosa Parks in a Southern bus, of Joe Darby in exposing the Abu Ghraib tortures, of New York City firefighters at the World Trade Center disaster, are acts of bravery at a specific time and place—whereas the heroism of Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi consisted of valorous acts repeated over a lifetime. That chronic heroism is to acute heroism as valor is to bravery.
This view implies that any of us could as easily become heroes as perpetrators of evil, depending on how we are impacted by situational forces. We then want to discover how to limit, constrain, and prevent those situational and systemic forces that propel some of us toward social pathology.
It is equally important for our society to foster the heroic imagination in our citizens by conveying the message that anyone is a hero-in-waiting who will be counted on to do the right thing when the time comes to make the heroic decision.