I always have a propensity towards psychological effects named after people, places, phenomenon, history, or even animals… examples : halo effect, butterfly effect, sheep effect, chameleon effect, Stockholm syndrome, withdrawal effect..Abiding by Newtons 3rd law, we can work backwards and realize that there is a cause for all these, its like a cause-effect or action-reaction like..
One thing that caught my eye just few minutes back is the “Lucifer Effect”. The first thing i did was google “lucifer” . Lucifer refers to a pagan based or christian faith based belief that Lucifer was an angel sent to earth but ultimately became a Satan. I instantly realized that what Lucifer effect would mean. It is simple : What makes good people turn evil!
“The “Lucifer Effect” describes the point in time when an ordinary, normal person first crosses the boundary between good and evil to engage in an evil action. It represents a transformation of human character that is significant in its consequences. Such transformations are more likely to occur in novel settings, in “total situations,” where social situational forces are sufficiently powerful to overwhelm, or set aside temporally, personal attributes of morality, compassion, or sense of justice and fair play”
At the outset the subject feels/sounds very heavy and it became heavier and heavier as I digged more on Lucifer effect. Youtube has put up videos of “Stanford Prison Experiment”. I highly recommend watching all the parts : More Info:
Stanford Prison Experience: Information about the psychological study
Phil Zambardo Talks to MIT students..
The book about Lucifer Effect by Phil Zambardo can be found in the aforementioned link.
What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? These are some of the questions we posed in this dramatic simulation of prison life conducted in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University.
The Lucifer Effect raises a fundamental question about the nature of human nature: How is it possible for ordinary, average, even good people to become perpetrators of evil? In trying to understand unusual, or aberrant behavior, we often err in focusing exclusively on the inner determinants of genes, personality, and character, as we also tend to ignore what may be the critical catalyst for behavior change in the external Situation or in the System that creates and maintains such situations.
This work finds accurate parallels with the current war torn situation in Mid East..How???? Most of you would be aware of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal few years back on how military was using torture as technique for interrogation. Phil Zambardo was actively involved in the prisoner trail and he comes up with a reason that psychology has explanation for such complex , wild behavior. For people who just saw the Prisoners who were abused by the US military with shock and awe , Phil comes up with a simple and solid psychological reasoning for such drastic behavioral shifts even in the most noble of men.
The report said the military police within that site were part of a unit that was not properly trained for internment operations, lacked discipline and standard operating procedures, had been on duty in Iraq for far longer than its members had expected and were under constant threat of random attack by insurgents outside the prison walls. The soldiers lacked even the minimal luxuries of Army life in Iraq — like a barbershop — and were grossly understaffed. The lapses of discipline that occurred as their morale plummeted.
Kind of heavy at the outset when you just look at prison abuse, defunct morality, psychology , evil etc but from a purely medical, social and psychological perspective even such wild, weird complex, erratic, behavior have an explanation. The positive aspect of this comprehensive research is that new guards are being trained with the prison experiment videos. Every class room in psychology department uses this study to come up with logic behind why we have child killers, juvenile jihadists etc. Hopefully it would lead to some kind of a conclusion and early detection of such psychological patterns is highly helpful in preventing the evil winning over good scenario.
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