Good People Can Do Evil Things

Throughout the history of humanity, humans have different behaviors that change depending on what situations they are in. Psychologist Philip Zimbardo spent many years exploring human nature and has developed many theories about human behavior. One of Zimbardo’s ideas is about situational factors that states “one’s behavior is assumed to be dependent upon their current circumstances, situation or the environment that they are in.” He concluded the concept of situational factors after his Stanford Prison Experiment, in which he gave authority to regular people and observed any changes. The experiment proved that people’s behavior will change when they are in different situations. Zimbardo also believes that evilness is the exercise of power to harm people in anyway possible, so a five year old who teases others to Adolf Hitler would be classified as perpetrators of evil.

In the Stanford prison experiment, Zimbardo analyzes how human behavior can change based one’s surroundings and what they are told to do. Normal college students are given roles to play in a mock prison. In this experiment, people are assigned jobs as prison guards and prisoners. The prison guards quickly adapted to their roles. They saw no problem treating the prisoners with no respect. These students use violence against the other students to show their leadership and dominance. The prisoners quickly got accustomed to their parts as well.The prisoners believed that they deserved the punishment. “The experiment shows that good people under the wrong circumstances can behave just like those that we vilify” (Zimbardo). With this experiment, Zimbardo studies the Lucifer Effect. The Lucifer Effect is understanding how good people become evil. He uses his data from this experiment to further develop the Lucifer Effect theory and find out why the Nazis treated the Jews with such cruelty. His results show that when given the opportunity and in the right environment, humans will dehumanize other

The Psychology of Good and Evil in contrast to Ferguson Unrest and Race in America

A straightforward question. Are humans naturally good or evil? A simple question that has many of different answers and a question that may require deep thinking. For me, both sides I was drawn to. My household is christian, so I thought of the religious answer, but I also thought that people are born good and their environment and decisions can cause them to be evil. This is what I came up with.

In most of the countries, there will always be two types of people: people with power, which are people that have more hierarchy than others and that will tend to have some type of power so they can make others do what they want in order to please them; and people that will do anything in order to obey the orders of those with power. When someone has some or a lot of power, eventually, they will only care for their power to increase; it is not a matter of culture, religion, ethnicity or any other aspect that some individuals may have. A few examples of this could be whenever someone obeys another person because they are eternally grateful to them, or just because they have some type of respect towards that person, finally it could be just to

Social psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, has lead one of the most infamous experiments in the modern history with the Stanford Prison Experiment. The immense popularity of the experimental research on situational power, although having cultivated great recognition, has overshadowed the multiple contributions and accomplishments that Zimbardo continues to assume in his lifetime. Many of Zimbardo’s recognitions have been brought upon due to the Stanford Prison Experiment, yet in this paper will extensively examine Zimbardo’s psychological career from the beginning to the current date to recognize his notable influence in the field of Psychology, specifically the field of Social Psychology. This brief review of Zimbardo’s lengthy career will include various facts and personal accounts of Zimbardo’s regarding his life and work. Zimbardo’s lifetime of work has mainly focused and researched the multiple flaws of human’s beings, and it’s through his findings that society is truly able to progress forward positively. Zimbardo’s long career exemplifies that of an unrestricted devotion; he has and still works to better society through its various flaws, making him undoubtably impactful.

Thanks Alicia, I appreciate your thoughtful and informative response to my post. I'm sorry if you found the term “mid level provider” offensive. I honestly, hadn't viewed the term as derogatory until you shed light on the origin and true meaning. I also, believe most people are inherently good, however as you stated there are those few that discredit this notion. Yes, I have dealt with situations in my nursing career that made me question another individual’s integrity. I have no issue confronting another provider or peer if I discovered unsafe or unethical practices within the

Relating to evil is what is known as the “Lucifer Effect”, discovered and studied over

Good people do bad things. Doing a bad thing does not make someone a monster. For example, if a young boy was raised in the ghetto where he and his family never had enough to eat he might have to steal to get for his family. Even though he has done something illegal and immoral that does not make him a bad person. He was just doing what he had to do to get his family food to eat. Even if he kills someone in the process of sealing the food it does not make him a monster. This kid just made a bad choice in an awful situation but he made the choice for the right reason, to feed his family. Victor Frankenstein’s creation, the “monster”, was not all bad. The made some bad choices because of how he was created and how he was treated by Victor after he was created.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the lucifer effect can be applied as a whole as the movie takes place in a state mental facility. The main idea behind the whole movie is about a man by the name of Randle McMurphy who served a short sentence in a prison farm for statutory rape of a 15 year old girl later being moved to the local mental institution while not actually being mentally ill in the first place. To identity the lucifer effect in the film one must many of the important roles many of the characters have within. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the character named Nurse Ratched who is the head nurse of the block for all the patients started out as fairly normal, but as time went on the

There are different types of people in the world, as they all have different behavior, personality, and culture. Everyone has a different view of what makes good people do bad things. It is amazing how such calm and nice people turn into such a bad people. There must be a psychology reason in order for them to turn like this. There are some factors I would like to know and also discuss of why people behave this way. Therefore, a person with different behavior makes them act different and hence, that impacts on a person’s personality which makes them turn from good person to bad person.

Within the twisted, chilling ideas of Phillip Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect, this central idea. I personally liked this quote because I think that the human brain is very underexplored and susceptible to situational manipulation. Many people, such as I, know that depending on the situation and/or people they hang out with majorly determines their behavior. Zimbardo hits this on the nail within The Lucifer Effect, when he proposes that humans naturally will revert to ‘evil’ deeds because of situational factors, rather based on character or personality. This quote reminds me of MK-ULTRA (the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects, at times illegal, designed and undertaken by the CIA in order to weaken the individual to

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once said, “The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Every indivdual has the decision between good and evil. Not every person will choose the right side of the line. When an indivdual crosses over the line to the evil side this is known as The Lucifer Effect. Philip Zimbardo, the individual that coined the idea, presented the ideas behind why people change and turn evil even if though their whole life they were not known as an evil person. According to Zimbardo, people turn evil for one of two reasons; The Lucifer Effect and the seven social processes that grease the slippery slope of evil (TED Talks).

Sometimes we wonder why people do things. Is it because they were forced to? Maybe they were pressured into it, or maybe they thought it was the right thing to do. In the book The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo he studies the psychological motives of humans and situational personalities. Zimbardo produced an experiment called the “Stanford prison experiment” which put one group of students as guards and another as the prisoners. The main point of the experiment was to watch the prisoners and see how they reacted to being detained; however, when the experiment was conducted it was the guards who were more interesting to study.

What makes a person good or evil? Why are some people labeled as good and some evil? Why do some people have traits or characteristics of both good and evil? Are people truly evil or do they just make bad choices? Throughout our lives we are faced with making decisions about our lives and often the choices we make can determine the path we follow. Depending on our life choices we can be labeled as either good or evil. Good and evil are relative; one person can be good while another evil. Some people can possess a combination of both good and bad traits. But even those who are considered bad can be rehabilitated to display good qualities such as empathy or kindness.