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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 150
EAN: 9780812974447
ISBN: 0812974441
Label: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 576
Publication Date: January 22, 2008
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Release Date: January 22, 2008
Sales Rank: 2568
Studio: Random House Trade Paperbacks
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Product Description:
What makes good people do bad things? How can moral people be seduced to act immorally? Where is the line separating good from evil, and who is in danger of crossing it?
Renowned social psychologist Philip Zimbardo has the answers, and in The Lucifer Effect he explains how–and the myriad reasons why–we are all susceptible to the lure of “the dark side.” Drawing on examples from history as well as his own trailblazing research, Zimbardo details how situational forces and group dynamics can work in concert to make monsters out of decent men and women.
Zimbardo is perhaps best known as the creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Here, for the first time and in detail, he tells the full story of this landmark study, in which a group of college-student volunteers was randomly divided into “guards” and “inmates” and then placed in a mock prison environment. Within a week the study was abandoned, as ordinary college students were transformed into either brutal, sadistic guards or emotionally broken prisoners.
By illuminating the psychological causes behind such disturbing metamorphoses, Zimbardo enables us to better understand a variety of harrowing phenomena, from corporate malfeasance to organized genocide to how once upstanding American soldiers came to abuse and torture Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. He replaces the long-held notion of the “bad apple” with that of the “bad barrel”–the idea that the social setting and the system contaminate the individual, rather than the other way around.
This is a book that dares to hold a mirror up to mankind, showing us that we might not be who we think we are. While forcing us to reexamine what we are capable of doing when caught up in the crucible of behavioral dynamics, though, Zimbardo also offers hope. We are capable of resisting evil, he argues, and can even teach ourselves to act heroically. Like Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate, The Lucifer Effect is a shocking, engrossing study that will change the way we view human behavior.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Long and appreciated
I guess the plethora of reviews testifies to the importance of this book. And I'll assume that my response is directly related to the number of years I taught social psychology. While others found it boring or tedious, I was grateful to have the full description of the prisoner/guard research. While others found that he strayed from his theme, I found it well-developed and appropriately sequential. Most of all, it brought back memories of my colleague emerging ashen-faced from his 75 minute class where he had done a quick replication of the Zimbardo study. "I'll never do that again," was his message as he reeled from the observation that his class had so quickly fallen into the roles. Deny it, vilify it, accuse it of failing to meet standards of experimental rigor. Even suggest that the subjects were war protesters (if that's true) which indeed makes the effect even more powerful. But I hope readers don't allow themselves to fall into denial of the potential for cruelty in us all. If we really want to solve the problems that face us, then we need to face ourselves.
Rating: - Fascinating
If you ever wanted to know why people can stand idly by while someone commits a crime, commits an act of cruely against a child or animal, or motivates the populace into mass homicide, then this book is for you.
It covers the spectrum from every day occurances and seemingly innocent acts of "minding my own business" to how this can be used as an excuse for ignoring some of the world's injustices. A big part of this is the abu graib instances, but you could probably as easily apply it to Nazi Germany or Jonestown.
His idea of what a "hero" truly is in our society, someone who stands up against what they are told and does what they believe is right, is amazing.
If, like me, you like to delve into how your fellow humans think and what motivates them to do the things they do, then this book is for you.
Rating: - The Yahweh effect
As noted on the jacket, "Psychologist Zimbardo masterminded the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, in which college students randomly assigned to be guards or inmates found themselves enacting sadistic abuse or abject submissiveness."
Prof. Zimbardo's lab subjects were American college students--your ordinary, beer-drinking, fun-loving, fornicating liberal humanists. What possessed them to enter into Dr. Zimbardo's laboratory and suddenly start acting like evangelical Christians? These were not bad kids! But under the direction of an authoritative patriarchal figure, many of the kids quickly consented to the torture of those subjects who believed the wrong way, or who could not remember the right answer.
My one beef with this book is that Prof. Zimbardo has taken my name in vain: "The Lucifer Effect." Seriously: Zimbardo's title annoys the hell out of me. When have I ever taken pleasure in the suffering, or starvation, or military defeat, or disease, or damnation, of a culture different from my own? If I EVER behave myself like an evangelical Christian, especially an American one, bind me in adamantine chains and lock me up in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay. I've gotten some bad press over the years, but I'm basically a good guy, and I am the same yesterday, today, and forever.
God, on the other hand, is...
No, the less said about God the better. If I tell you the truth, He will hurt me, and for a very long time. But you can look it up: it's ... Read More
Rating: - good
its a good book to read especially if your into psychology it is also a good ethics review(i used it in that class).if ur a casual reader it still a good buy.
Rating:  - Excellent
Everyone has their biases, but the thing that distinguishes a real intellectual from a phony is recognizing the bias and moving on. This thought struck me as I read social psychologist Dr. Philip Zimbardo's 2007 book, The Lucifer Effect. I received the book gratis, from the publisher, because I will be interviewing Zimbardo at a later date, and immediately I thought of the book The Lucifer Principle, by Howard Bloom, a man I'd interviewed a few years ago. That earlier book, while a good read, was in no way a book that used hard science, nor the scientific method, to approach the subject of humans and evil. Bloom's book was, in many ways, a modern echo of the Thomas Hobbesian view of mankind as an evil agent just waiting to bust loose, even if leavened by claims that `evil,' or the propensity toward violence, is a natural outcome of evolutionary selection. Zimbardo resists both supernaturalism and philosophic psychobabble when he claims that evil is merely a system of intentional harm, abuse, and dehumanization of innocents, whether by direct or indirect means.
Zimbardo's book, by contrast, is more grounded in experimentation, documentation, and less malleable and subjective than Bloom's book; despite Zimbardo's critics often railing against his methods as `unscientific.' Yet, perhaps because of Zimbardo's book's title's similarity with Bloom's, I was preparing for another metaphysical trip into pop culture's tangential nod with science. I was, admittedly biased to be skeptical about the ... Read More
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