The Accountant-May-June 2017

BOOK REVIEW
Reviewed by Angela Mutiso, cananews@gmail.com
Title: The Lucifer Effect – How good people turn evil
Author: Philip Zimbardo
Category: Psychology
Publisher: Random House
This is an intensely entertaining
and thought provoking book.
In the preface of The Lucifer
Effect, highly rated author,
Philip Zimbardo says he
wishes he could say that writing this
book was a labor of love; it was not that
for a single moment of the two years it
took to complete. He says first of all it
was emotionally painful to review all
the videotapes from the Stanford Prison
Experiment (SPE) and to read over and
over the typescripts prepared from them.
”Time had dimmed my memory of the
extent of creative evil in which many of
the guards engaged, the extent of the
suffering of many of the prisoners, and
the extent of my passivity in allowing
the abuses to continue for as long as I
did –an evil of inaction.” He recalls that
he had also forgotten that the first part of
this book was actually begun thirty years
before (the book was published in 2007)
under contract from a different publisher,
however he quit shortly after beginning to
write because he was not ready to relive
the experience while he was still so close
to it.
Excerpts from some editorial Reviews…
In The Lucifer Effect, the award-winning
and internationally respected psychologist,
Philip Zimbardo, examines how the
human mind has the capacity to be
infinitely caring or selfish, kind or cruel,
creative or destructive. He challenges our
conceptions of who we think we are, what
we believe we will never do - and how and
why almost any of us could be initiated
into the ranks of evil doers.
At the same time he describes the
safeguards we can put in place to prevent
ourselves from corrupting - or being
corrupted by - others, and what sets some
people apart as heroes and heroines, able
to resist powerful pressures to go along
with the group, and to refuse to be team
players when personal integrity is at stake.
Using the first in-depth analysis of his
classic Stanford Prison Experiment, and
his personal experiences as an expert
witness for one of the Abu Ghraib
prison guards, Zimbardo’s stimulating
and provocative book raises fundamental
questions about the nature of good and
evil, and how each one of us needs to be
vigilant to prevent becoming trapped
in the ‘Lucifer Effect’, no matter what
kind of character or morality we believe
ourselves to have. Amazon
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. In this penetrating
investigation, he revisits—at great length
and with much hand-wringing—the SPE
study and applies it to historical examples
of injustice and atrocity, especially the Abu
Ghraib outrages by the U.S. military. His
troubling finding is that almost anyone,
given the right “situational” influences, can
be made to abandon moral scruples and
cooperate in violence and oppression. (He
tacks on a feel-good chapter about “the
banality of heroism,” with tips on how to
resist malign situational pressures.) The
author, who was an expert defense witness
at the court-martial of an Abu Ghraib
guard, argues against focusing on the
dispositions of perpetrators of abuse; he
insists that we blame the situation and the
“system” that constructed it, and mounts
an extended indictment of the architects
of the Abu Ghraib system, including
President Bush. Combining a dense but
readable and often engrossing exposition
of social psychology research with an
impassioned moral seriousness, Zimbardo
challenges readers to look beyond glib
denunciations of evil-doers and ponder
our collective responsibility for the world’s
ills. Publishers Weekly
Social psychologist Zimbardo is best
known as the father of the 1971 Stanford
Prison Experiment, which used a simulated
prison populated with student volunteers
to illustrate the extent to which identity
is situated within a social setting; student
volunteers randomly chosen to play
guards became cruel and authoritarian,
while those playing inmates became
rebellious and depressed. With this book,
Zimbardo couples a thorough narrative
of the Stanford Prison Experiment with
an analysis of the social dynamics of the
Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, arguing that
the “experimental dehumanization” of the
former is instructive in understanding the
abusive conduct of guards at the latter.
This comparison, which is the book’s
core insight, is embedded in a sprawling
discussion about situational influences
that cobbles together a discussion of the
psychology of evil, a strong criticism of
the Bush administration, and a chapter
celebrating heroism and calling for greater
social bravery. This account’s Abu Ghraib
focus will generate demand. Brendan
Driscoll- From Booklist
So, how can good people become
evil? How can honest people be induced
to behave illegally, and moral people
seduced to act immorally? The answers
to such questions lie at the heart of this
fascinating exploration of the darker side
of human nature.
The Lucifer Effect, a book that won
the William James Book Award in 2008,
is spell binding from start to finish.
This book is available at amazon.com,
from Prestige bookshop and other leading
bookshops
62 MAY - JUNE 2017