Books : The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil
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by: Philip Zimbardo
List Price: $18.00Amazon.com's Price: $12.24 You Save: $5.76 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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: 5289
Studio: Random House Trade Paperbacks
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Editorial Review:
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:  - 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? ... 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 ... Read More
Rating: - "Men are accomplices to that which leaves them indifferent " -George Steiner
The beginning of the book wasn't very encouraging, as Zimbardo describes in graphic details the "rape of Rwanda" in 1994, when the Tutsis were slaughtered by their former neighbors, the Hutus. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, a former social worker, who was supposed to be the only hope left for the Tutsi village of Butare, had promised food and shelter sent by the Red Cross to the people of the village. Instead, Pauline arranged for Hutu thugs to rape and kill the Tutsis. Pauline ordered the rape of the women ... Read More
Rating: - Evil and heroism
Zimbardo, P. (2008). The Lucifer Effect: Understanding how good people turn evil
I may call this book "the book of Evil and Heroism," but whatever the title, `The Lucifer Effect', is an excellent insightful piece of research in a very needed subject. "The Lucifer Effect' is sceientific, analytical and practical book that give us insights about the roots of evil, namely why, how, and what makes normal people, just like you and me, to act wickedly, maliciously and can easily align with the systems ... Read More
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