Zimbardo The Lucifer Effect

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Philip Zimbardo’s speech focused on the theory of the Lucifer Effect, an exceptionally interesting idea about how good people can turn evil. The story in which Lucifer, God's angel was banished to Hell for disobeying God, becoming Satan, the king of evil, set the appropriate context for the idea of a transformation from good to evil, according to Zimbardo. It is an attempt to explain how someone with good morals can exhibit such harsh actions. The initial example presented, of Abu Gharib, a prison in which a series of human right violations and tortures were committed on Israeli prisoners, uncovers the atrocities as the government discovered them. People were quick to jump, pinning the blame on the soldiers who committed them, not the government itself. The example demonstrated how good soldiers turned in to “a few bad apples”. The Lucifer Effect came into play, as the soldiers guarding the prisoners, most likely good in character, performed acts of “evil”. Zimbardo hypothesized that it was not, in fact, the soldiers fault at all, but the situation that they were in, claiming,” American soldiers are good, usually. Maybe it was the barrel that was bad.” It was the environment created at the prison, and the numerous leadership failures that caused the change in these …show more content…
The soldiers were able to dehumanize the prisoners as they became blindly obedient to authority. With their normal response patterns no longer working, their morality was

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