The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

by Philip Zimbardo, Creator of the landmark Stanford Prison Experiment.
Just started this book and am finding it very interesting. I also just posted a you tube under the 'video' tab about the SPE.

"If there has been a more important and compelling book written in the last 25 years, I've not encountered it. Zimbardo's engaging and beautifully written tour de force uncovers the sources of evil. The Lucifer Effect accomplishes more than simply making the darkness visible; it also helps to make the lightness possible. It is crucial reading for everyone." ~ Jon D. Hanson, professor of law, Harvard Law School.

"As one of the senior Criminal Investigation Division agents who saw conditions at Abu Gharib firsthand, it is clear to me that Phil Zimbardo truly understands all the factors that came into play here. His book is a must-read." CW4Marcia Drewey, retired USA CIDC special agent.

Tags: prisons, zimbardo

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Permalink Reply by Michael Brady on January 29, 2008 at 8:03am
This book is really good and highly recommended. It's definitely made me rethink some assumptions about Systems and how influential they are in shaping behavior
Permalink Reply by Kate Crisp (PDN Director) on February 11, 2008 at 5:49pm
thanks for recommending it mike!
Permalink Reply by Janna on February 24, 2008 at 4:16pm
http://ocw.jhsph.edu/courses/AdolescentHealthDevelopment/PDFs/Lectu...
Robert Wm. Blum, John Hopkins School of Public Health 2006 cites Reiss and Roth 2001
A Model for Understanding Juvenile Violence:
Individual Predisposition to Violence -> Situation Predisposing to Violence -> Triggering Event -> Violence

This model seems to me to accord with Buddhist philosophy. While situations predisposing to violence continually arise, the place where we can most effectively affect change is at the individual level. This does not imply that we do not need to transform destructive situations, like prisons, war, etc. While minimizing situations predisposing to violence is a social imperative, individual transformation is the only assurance of coping effectively with all (most) situations as they arise or are encountered, "putting leather soles on the feet," rather than encasing the whole earth with leather, which is of course unfeasible.
Permalink Reply by Kate Crisp (PDN Director) on March 30, 2008 at 12:31pm
One thing that stood out for me in this slide show was the one on 'predicted probablities of violence"
and the scale of protective factors....and then at the bottom this line: "Protective factor: Boys: Connectedness to other adults; Girls: Religiosity" I wonder how they came to this conclusion about gender?

This model seems to present a micro to macro 'solution' rather than just individual though. I'm leery of saying which is actually more effective in the long run. If we didn't have all these systemic problems of racism, poverty, drug issues (which I view sometimes as a systemic reaction)....would we really have all this violence?

I'm sure that teaching kids skills, such as meditation are helpful. I see it all the time... it does create individual shifts in reactivity and ability to make more positive choices or even see that there might be a choice. And am also not sure that as long as all they have to return to is a culture of gangs and violence..will it really be enough?
Permalink Reply by Janna on February 26, 2008 at 4:09pm
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/957536.html
Haaretz editorial: Something bad is happening to us.
(article also posted at: http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=25399)

The Haaretz article cites, without name, Stanford psychologist Phillip Zimbardo and his testimony on Abu Ghraib. From the article, one can see that the Palestinian Occupied Territories are a giant open-air prison.

I would appreciate any and all comments on the "Individual-Situation-Triggering Event" model of violence in my previous comment posted here on this forum.

It seems to me that situations are created by individuals, past or present, and that we as individuals must assume responsibility in and for the situations we have inherited or help create. Zimbardo was responsible for creating, maintaining and allowing (also dismantling and analyzing) the SPE. We are all complicit through inaction for existing injustices, until we take positive action and become part of the solution. In the worst case, we are complicit through negative action. Who are the individuals responsible for the current state of US and other prisons? Who are the individuals responsible for maintaining the Palestinian Occupied Territories prison? How to effectively negotiate change? They are not the guards...
Permalink Reply by Kate Crisp (PDN Director) on March 30, 2008 at 12:58pm
This reminds me of another article i just read yesterday "My Brother is Dead and I Helped Kill Him"
http://e4gr.blogspot.com/2008/03/my-brother-is-dead-and-i-helped-ki...

So yes Janna, I agree with what you say about our complicity in inaction toward injustice and how at the very least we need to stop our own negative actions (and all our dharma practices can address that side of it hopefully).

And like the thread on this forum about 'prison guards'..all systems are not just faceless entities..they are made of people who all have hearts and good intentions... and yet, sometimes when confronted with a systems issue like the Prison Industrial Complex it's hard to see the individuals... since systems, once established, can have such far reaching, powerful and dramatic impact on the world and most times way more impact than one individual. So the question of intention vs impact comes up for me.

And yet, individuals line up together, I suppose with somewhat shared values or intentions and then form groups or gangs and then systems develop and sometimes its almost as if the individual intentions or even values that drove the initial formation.. get a bit lost in the complexity of the system and its impact on the world.

So what to do? Create more systems? With more positive impact? In the case of the prison industrial complex I love to watch someone like Angela Davis (Critical Resistance.org) or Van Jones (See Witness.org for film on Books not Bars) who mobilized a group of teens to stop the building of a prison in California. They did that through group mobilization and group action.

All big questions. Thanks for continuing this discussion.
Permalink Reply by Janna on March 3, 2008 at 7:18am
From "The Lucifer Effect," page 165-6:

"Meanwhile, back in solitary confinement, Clay-416 was coping in a kind of Buddhist style that would have made Paul-5704 proud of him, had he known that Clay was using such a Zen-like tactic for mental survival.

'I meditated constantly. For example, when I was refusing dinner, the guard [Burdan] has all the prisoners out of their cells trying to convince me that visitors' day was going to be canceled and all this shit, which I calculated wouldn't happen. But I wasn't sure; I just had calculated that probability. I then continually stared at the droplet of water from the frankfurter that was glistening on my tin plate. I just stared at that droplet and focused myself horizontally, then vertically. Nobody was then able to bother me. I had a religious experience in the Hole.'

This scrawny kid had found inner peace through passive resistance, taking control over his body and directing himself away from the guards. Clay-416 offered this moving account of how he believed he had won the contest of personal will against institutional power:

'Once I refused food before the dominant evening guard, I became content for the first time here. It pleased me to infuriate [Guard Hellman]. Upon being thrown into the Hole for the night, I was jubilant. Jubilant because I felt all but sure that I had exhausted his resources (to be used against [Clay]). I was astonished to realize too that I had privacy in solitary confinement---it was luxurious. His punishment of others did not concern me. I was gambling on the limits of the situation. I knew, I calculated, that visitors' privileges could not be removed. I prepared myself to stay in the Hole until probably ten the next morning. In the Hole I was furthest from experiencing myself as 'Clay.' I was '416,' willing and proud even to be '416.' The number had an identity to me because 416 had found his own response to the situation. I felt no need to cling to the former manhood I had under my old name. In the Hole, there is a four-inch bar of light extending top to bottom, thrown by the crack between the closet doors. About the third hour there, I was filled with calm in regarding this bar of light. It is the most beautiful thing in the prison. I don't mean that only subjectively. It is, go and look at it. When I was released around 11 p.m. and returned to a bed, I felt that I had won, that my will, so far, was stronger than the will of the situation as a whole. I slept well that night."
Permalink Reply by Kate Crisp (PDN Director) on March 30, 2008 at 11:59am
Thanks for posting this excerpt Janna, I am friends with a prisoner who often tells me he "likes" to be put in the hole so that he can be alone to meditate and do yoga. I don't think he advocates for the behaviors that get him there per se..and is kind of sad that he sometimes does 'act out' to get to a quieter space where he feels safer.

Also, reminds me of the history of prisons and the original idea or experiment that was proposed when penitentiaries were first set up in the U.S. ... "The Walnut Street Prison founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1790 is considered the first American penitentiary, if not the first in the world. The word "penitentiary" came from the Pennsylvania Quakers and their belief in penitence and self-examination as a means to salvation. Thus was made a new and permanent form of combatting crime through the practice of solitary confinement."

Unfortunately in the case of this initial experiment, from what I've read..the results were not great. Since the thin line between 'penitance' and transformation... sensory deprivation and torture is there as well.
Permalink Reply by Erin Ferguson on April 3, 2008 at 3:26pm
I am reading the Lucifer Effect as well. I am nervous about the replication of the Abu Gharib abuses in the Stanford prison experiment. I have been interested in how violence manifests for the last 20 years, and I am fascinated by the role of the "system" in perpetuating violence and abuse. It sounds insurmountable and like there's nothing to blame (or change) if the "system" is at fault. On the other hand, this opens a door for examining the underlying values that create the system.

Then, a particular individual's experience of the system can be seen as behavioral adaptation to existing norms rather than a premeditated acting out.

It's a challenge to go beyond the model of individual responsibility fostered in the US, however I don't see another way to create change unless there is recognition of the system's values and how that impacts the individual. A complicated, thought-provoking question.
erin
Permalink Reply by Janna on April 3, 2008 at 4:51pm
Change the system. People created it, and people can, should and will change it.

I haven't studied Foucault. Re adaptation to existing norms: Yes, for example, roles in a mental hospital will "create" certain behaviors, just as in prisons. People generally don't appreciate being treated as objects.

Many social "values" are unethical, and these "values" provide the basis for existing institutions. Murder, for example, as death penalty, or military actions, i.e., state sanctioned murder. What can be considered ethical and humane confinement, if confinement is deemed necessary? See the Michael Moore video on Norway on my personal page for an example of humane confinement.

To go beyond the model of individual responsibility, in my view, means to (continue to) create effective groups for constructive social change. See avaaz.org, especially the recent petition for Tibet (1.5 million signatures and rising), as an example of individual responsibility en masse.

You are asking important questions.

Happiness to all beings,
Janna
Permalink Reply by Tamon Mark Uttech on November 23, 2010 at 5:44pm
Onegaishimasu, after hearing about this book on this forum (thank you) I went and bought a copy at Barnes/Nobles... As I started reading it, I recalled a recent film I had watched: "The Experiment", so I went and rented the dvd again to re-watch the film. The basic premise of the book and the film are the same. I think it is a film one has to watch carefully, because there are many things going on that give rise to searching questions. I would be interested in what anyone has thought about this film. It stars Adrian Brody and Forest Whitaker.

In gassho,

tamonmark
Permalink Reply by Janna on November 23, 2010 at 11:57pm
What are the searching questions? I looked at the trailer:
http://teaser-trailer.com/2010/07/the-experiment-trailer.html
It's very violent.

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