TOW #16 - The Lucifer Effect

Written by the man who organized the Stanford Prison Experiment, Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil is an intriguing analysis of what ultimately changes people from good to bad. Zimbardo continues to use personal anecdotes and historical allusions in order to help put together theories as to why evil develops within seemingly normal people. Analyzing his own experiment, Zimbardo writes "The power of this situation ran swiftly and deeply through most of those on this exploratory ship of human nature. Only a few were able to resist the situational temptations to yield to power and dominance while maintaining some semblance of morality and decency," (4147). As a psychologist. Zimbardo's words establish a predetermined sense of ethos among his obervations. Also, there is less bias in his observations, as he is using the actual data of how many people reacted negatively towards  how people reacted positively. However, Zimbardo fails to specify where the line between morality and evil lies in his research. It's a very objective perspective, so had he specified his limitations, that would have been much easier to comprehend. At the beginning of every few sections, Zimbardo also makes sure to remind the readers of the prevalence of the developing evils using historical allusions. He once says "More than 50 million people have been systematically murdered by government decrees, enacted by soldiers and civilian forces willing to carry out the kill orders..." (433) and proceeds to list a copious amounts of events in which this statement is relevant. This provides a sense of realism to an idea that seems so unrealistic, even in the namesake. Even for those who may not believe in actual evils or the 'lucifer effect', they are given proof that this is prevalent enough of a topic to develop a sense of curiosity about. I think the Lucifer Effect does a brilliant job of executing an out of the box idea to a universal audience, pulling multiple perspectives underneath his wing in order to project his views forward.