The Lucifer Effect By Zimbardo

The ‘Stanford prison experiment’, or the ‘Zimbardo experiment’, influenced Abu Ghraib in Iraq. The Abu Ghraib is to toughen up prisoners who misbehaved. Nobody would’ve known about Abu Ghraib, if photos were not revealed. Zimbardo’s experiment showed how people respond to a cruel environment without clear rules. Dr. Zimbardo put an ad in the paper for healthy male volunteers.

Though this was just an experiment many of the test subjects were quickly pushed to their limits and the ones in authority took their roles to the extreme. Eventually, this caused an early shut down of the experiment. There was a total of 9 students who were willing to be the prisoners in this experiment. The study issued that the guards would be forced to give brutal and cruel torture upon the prisoner. The experiment was known as one of the most controversial studies in the history of social psychology because even though it was an experiment, the prisoners went through major psychological changes and one prisoner even succumbed to a short period of insanity. Through deindividualized torture, exploitation and manipulation many of the test subjects underwent the same torture as those who were imprisoned at Abu Ghraib. It was finally shut down by a woman by the name of Christina Maslach but similarly to Abu Ghraib no one was held accountable for the short period of torture. Also like Abu Ghraib, the men who played the role of the guards in The Stanford Prison Experiment underwent psychological changes where they became evil, relentless and manipulative all while blaming it on the fact that they’re “just following orders.” In many cases when a person is given authority, they abuse it

“Cruelty is all out of ignorance. If you knew what was in store for you, you wouldn’t hurt anybody, because whatever you do comes back much more forceful than you sent it out.” (Willie Nelson). The Stanford Prison Experiment was extremely similar to the concentration camps of the Holocaust in many was however the one think that that makes then similar was the fact that they were both extremely cruel and dehumanized people. Three things that the victims of both events faced are dehumanization, cruelty, and extreme mentally scaring things that they will never forget. Both the concentration camps in the Holocaust and the Stanford Prison Experiment were things that did not go well and were immensely traumatizing.

In “The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism,” Marianne Szegedy-Maszak informs the reader of the situation United States guards caused against Iraqi detainees. Under Bush’s presidency, United States soldiers brought physical abuse and humiliation upon the Abu Ghraib Prison. Szegedy-Maszak briefly analyzes the situation and compares the abuse to further scientific experiments in which test obedience. One of the experiments was the topic of another article titled, “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” written by Philip G. Zimbardo. In his work, Zimbardo discusses the experiment he held at Stanford University. A group of male students from the university were paid to participate in an experiment held in a mock prison. Half of the group

“That line between good and evil is permeable,” a psychologist from Stanford University by the name of Zimbardo once said. “Any of us can move across it… I argue that we all have the capacity for love and evil — to be Mother Theresa, to be Hitler or Saddam Hussein” (qtd. In Dittmann). Social psychologist Zimbardo implies that we can easily swap from side to side. What factors elicit darkness? What draws out the darkness, making us jump from good to bad? There are many views in the society that attempt to tackle this question. For instance, social psychology and philosophy. Social psychology tends to side with situation and or authority. On the other hand, philosopher John Locke is certain that the accumulation of experiences is the cause. What is the ultimate answer?

From what we know of these two horrible events, we can determine that they can both be summarized as the disgusting mistreatment of human lives. The strange thing is, that though they are so similar in fundamental reasoning, they occurred under drastically different situations and time periods. The earlier incident, The Stanford prison experiment, took place in the summer of 1971. (Haney, Zimbardo, 2008) The experiment was carried out by the psychology department of Harvard, students and some administrators from the psych. department turned certain floors of their building into a make-shift jail. This jail had multiple cells, cots for prisoners, even a solitary confinement room. These areas were actually just offices and closets that had been transformed to make the experiment seem more real for the participants. Said participants were young males that applied to be in the experiment and were payed for their participation. The young men were randomly assigned to their placement as guard or prisoner. The experiment seemed

People are always getting into situations that have two possible ways to go. That person can choose the right thing to do or the worse. There have been numerous amounts of people asking the question “what is good and evil?” Many have tried conducting experiments to try and find the roots of what makes people good/evil? Evil acts and evil itself can be shown through the social, economic, and mental environment.

citizens, but it was the researchers afterwards that contributed the most startling idea. Zimbardo, the same man who ran the Stanford Prison Experiment, said in an interview with the New York Times, “Prisons tend to be brutal and abusive places unless great effort is made to control the guards’ base impulses. It’s not that we put bad apples in a good barrel. We put good apples in a bad barrel. The barrel corrupts anything that it touches” (Swhwartz, 2004 p. 2). A professor of Law at Loyola University, Marcy Strauss, studies criminal procedure and wrote a forty-two page manuscript on the lessons that should be discussed beyond news articles. Strauss said of Abu Ghraib, “Undoubtedly, these factors [poor training of guards, poor oversight and horrendous conditions] played a major role in facilitating the abuse. Correcting these conditions is imperative. But, to end the introspection there would be a mistake” (Strauss, 2005 p.9). The idea that people could be malignant under specific circumstances has been proven by Milgrams’ studies and this idea is now apparent in real life. Thus, the concern for prisons, as pointed out by both Zimbardo and Strauss, cannot simply be that the guards or correctional officers do not abuse people in the future. The issue is that the maltreatment and indignity in Abu Ghraib was a result of the poor foundation of the U.S. correctional system (Strauss,

They wore them down by the antics I mentioned above and I think the prisoners also came to the realization that there is nothing that can do to change their situation they have no authority or control. Although his experiment was viewed as controversial and iconic. I cannot in any way, shape or form justify a research permissible within the current ACJS ethical standards. I don’t believe any experiments could top the Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment. How could you replicate or create an experiment similar to this one if there was no rules or guidelines to adhere by? By having no rules or guidelines is what made this experiment one of a kind and unique. Even by the ACJS ethical standards applied in my eyes, I still view it as unjust and unethical. I don’t believe that these standards should be altered so as to permit this type of research. I believe experiments like this have no place in Psychology. Despite the punishment, the individuals

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once said, “The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Every indivdual has the decision between good and evil. Not every person will choose the right side of the line. When an indivdual crosses over the line to the evil side this is known as The Lucifer Effect. Philip Zimbardo, the individual that coined the idea, presented the ideas behind why people change and turn evil even if though their whole life they were not known as an evil person. According to Zimbardo, people turn evil for one of two reasons; The Lucifer Effect and the seven social processes that grease the slippery slope of evil (TED Talks).

Why is it that the most morally well rounded individuals will eventually succumb to evil and do terrible things? Looking throughout history, performing evil deeds has seen a trend that is present in every era. From the beginning of America, to even today, scandals occur intentionally hurting others. Presidents who have the most power in the country, have shown their darker side when put under pressure. But what really causes it?

The Stanford prison experiment was unique because they wanted to watch and learn the behaviors of a prisoner and a prison guard, observing the effects they found some pretty disturbing things among the students. Dr. Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues at Stanford University stayed true to what they believed, and they did what they felt they needed to do to find a set of results for their simulation. Unfortunately they where swallowed into the experiment, when they became the roles, just as the students where. So from their point of view I want to say that what they where doing was ethical, and being that the prison experiment was stopped before its half way mark showed that they realized that it was time to call it quits. Dr. Zimbardo noticed

This goes along with society. “The danger of trying to explain evil is that we risk falling into the abyss of predestination: that given these life events, this social surround and

There are many similarities between the behavior of the wardens in Stanford Prison Experiment and the behavior of the soldiers at the prison in Abu Ghraib. I think the first and most obvious comparison would be the blatant misuse and abuse of power. In both instances the figures in authority were aware of their ability to make demands that their subordinates had to comply with, and they took full advantage of it.

Lucifer's name means"light bearer," and was changed to Satan, meaning adversary, when booted out of Heaven. Satan before he fell, was God's created angel, created perfect without sin, elevated as God's main dude among angels, as an archangel, an anointed cherub. God did not fail Lucifer, but Lucifer failed God. His beauty and position filled his heart with pride, his God-given free-will to corrupt his wisdom, and one-third of the angels (his devils) to rebel. Satan, as an adversary, hates God and all that is God's, including mankind, desiring to bring destruction upon God, mankind, and His creation.