The Lucifer Effect
As you may recall, that’s the experiment where people were split into prisoners, prison guards, and wardens to study how prisoners form their identities. Planned to run for two weeks, it ran only six days before Zimbardo shut it down because of the abuse the “prisoners” were suffering at the “guards’” hands.
In this book, Zimbardo describes the experiment in detail, with photos and dialog from the transcripts, and talks about how anonymity and other structural situations encourage people to commit acts they’d never commit if they thought they’d be recognized or held accountable. He relates what happened in the experiment to real-life horrors like neighbors killing each other in Rwanda and American soldiers turning torturer in Abu Ghraib. I’m only a few chapters in, but I can tell that this promises to be a fascinating exposition of what went on during the experiment — photos are included — and a frightening commentary on how easy it is for us all to commit atrocities. Which relates well to my novel The King’s Monster, which is based in part on the riots in Paris during the French Revolution, and how easily respectable citizens can be turned into a mob of bloodthirsty butchers.
drupagliassotti @ June 20, 2007