SEPT. 4, 2007

SCIENCE
The science of evil: “bad barrels” or “bad apples”?

The issue was brought into fresh focus last week when an Army officer was acquitted of failing to properly supervise soldiers who abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Eleven soldiers were convicted in the scandal, but Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan was the only officer to stand trial on charges related to the abuses. He was found guilty of a lesser offense, disobeying an order to refrain from discussing the case.

Zimbardo’s recent book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, draws a compelling parallel between abuse at Abu Ghraib and during the Stanford Prison Experiment, a famous 1971 simulation study headed by Zimbardo that randomly assigned ordinary American college students to portray either guards or prisoners in a mock prison located in a campus building. Within days “guards” began treating “inmates” with sadistic cruelty—much like the abuse visited on the inmates of Abu Ghraib—that forced Zimbardo to end the project, originally planned to run for two weeks, a week early. Psychological tests administered before the experiment had revealed no mental problems among the students, nor any differences among those assigned as guards or prisoners. Rather, the situational factors and social dynamics within the fake prison released the capacity for evil inherent in all human beings, leading to behavior ordinarily considered abhorrent, Zimbardo says. This, he maintains, also happened at Abu Ghraib.

Zimbardo calls the transformation of normal individuals into perpetrators of evil against powerless victims the “Lucifer Effect.” after the fallen angel who changes from God’s favorite into Satan. Zimbardo uses this Christian image metaphorically. Many Christians, however, take a different view of evil from Zimbardo’s, believing it to have an existence as a distinct entity. Some believe in Satan’s literal existence and ability to influence human beings. In this view, evil actions arise out of the evil inherent in individual “bad apples.”

Zimbardo, however, does not consider evil as a metaphysical or spiritual entity but rather as a category of behavior arising largely from psychological and social forces. He rejects the view that evil behavior necessarily arises from the inner qualities of individual perpetrators. Instead, he takes a situational view of evil behavior, ascribing it in large measure to outer forces and circumstances that allow or encourage actions that would ordinarily violate individuals’ views of appropriate behavior. He does not absolve individuals of moral responsibility for performing these actions, but he argues that the leaders of systems and institutions—including the Spanish Inquisition, the Nazi state, the Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Ghraib prison—bear great culpability for creating the social forces and situations that allow or encourage ordinary people to tolerate, condone and even perpetrate evil acts that in other circumstances would be entirely foreign to their experience.

Despite the apparently pessimistic finding of the Stanford Prison Experiment that ordinary people can, in the right—or, more accurately, the wrong—circumstances behave in evil ways, for Zimbardo the situational perspective also leads to an optimistic conclusion: that a “good barrel” can induce ordinary people to behave generously, courageously, even heroically, for the benefit of others and that situational circumstances and social dynamics created by properly designed systems and institutions can foster and encourage such behavior. Human nature contains the possibility of both evil and good, he says, and with proper training, people can learn to resist the influences that lead to evil actions and will respond to influences and situations that call on them to act altruistically and courageously.

If situational and systemic factors rather than the inherent qualities of individuals are largely responsible for determining whether individuals or groups do evil or good, then responsibility for the behavior of people within systems and organization in large measure rests with those who design, lead and administer them. According to this view, the source of wrongdoing therefore cannot be sought only in the depravity or weakness of individuals or in the separate essence or force of evil. Nor can guilt be ascribed solely to the immediate perpetrators of evil actions. According to this view, the solution to the problem of evil action lies not only in correcting the behavior of individuals but in redesigning systems. Leadership at all levels must therefore be held to account for the behavior throughout organizations. In cases such as the Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Ghraib, for example, Zimbardo apportions a large measure of blame to the leaders (himself included) who designed abusive systems, established their rules, and provided inadequate supervision to the individuals who ultimately carried out evil acts. This conception of evil shifts attention away from the inherent qualities of individuals or the actions to Satan to the analysis of systems and institutions.

Why it matters

The social psychologists’ view that “bad barrels” are often to blame for individual actions challenges people’s perceptions – as well as theological concepts of evil. In an era of when scandals are not uncommon in government, military, corporate and religious institutions, this view also raises questions about who should be held responsible and what changes need to take place to prevent future scandals and crimes.

National sources

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For more sources, see a ReligionLink issue about how psychiatrists have developed a scale of evil that measures degrees of heinousness.

• Philip Zimbardo is emeritus professor of psychology at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., and author of The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, published in March 2007. He was director of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Contact 415-776-4748, zim@stanford.edu.
• Guy B. Adams is professor of public affairs in the Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs and an affiliated faculty member of the Center on Religion & the Professions at the University of Missouri in Columbia. He is co-author of Unmasking Administrative Evil and of “Abu Ghraib, Administrative Evil, and Moral Inversion: The Value of ‘Putting Cruelty First’ ” in the September/October 2006 issue of Public Administration Review. Contact 573-882-5443, Adams@missouri.edu.
• Danny L. Balfour is a professor and past director of the School of Public and Nonprofit Administration at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Mich. He is co-author of Unmasking Administrative Evil and of “Abu Ghraib, Administrative Evil, and Moral Inversion: The Value of 'Putting Cruelty First’ ” in the September/October 2006 issue of Public Administration Review Contact 616-331-6594, BalfourD@gvsu.edu.
• Roy F. Baumeister is a professor and Francis Eppes Eminent Scholar in Social Psychology at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He is the author of Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty. Contact 850-644-4200, baumeister@psy.fsu.edu.
• David R. Blumenthal is Jay and Leslie Cohen Professor of Judaic Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. He wrote The Banality of Good and Evil: Moral Lessons From the Shoah and Jewish Tradition. Contact 404-727-7545, reldrb@emory.edu.
• Martha K. Huggins is Charles A. and Leo M. Favrot Professor of Human Relations at Tulane University in New Orleans and co-author of Violence Workers: Police Torturers and Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities. Contact 504-865-5820, mhuggins@tulane.edu.
• Dr. Steven Miles is a professor in the Center for Bioethics and the department of medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis and author of Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity and the War on Terror. Contact 612-624-8456, miles001@umn.edu.
• James E. Waller is a professor and holds the Lindaman Chair of Psychology at Whitworth University in Spokane, Wash. He wrote Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. Contact 509-777-4424, jwaller@whitworth.edu.
• Ervin Staub is a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and founding director emeritus of its doctoral program on the psychology of peace and the prevention of violence. He is the author of The Psychology of Good and Evil: Why Children, Adults and Groups Help and Harm Others and The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Contact 413-545-0071, estaub@psych.umass.edu.
• Arthur G. Miller is a psychology professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and editor of The Social Psychology of Good and Evil. Contact 513-529-2402, millerag@muohio.edu.
• Herbert Kelman is Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Emeritus, in the psychology department at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and co-author of Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility. Contact 617-495-3816, hck@wjh.harvard.edu.

Background

• Read an Aug. 28, 2007, Associated Press story about an Army officer acquitted of failing to control U.S. soldiers who abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
• Read a May 18, 2007, Time magazine article, “Shell-Shocked at Abu Ghraib?,” about Zimbardo’s role in the Abu Ghraib story.
• Read an April 3, 2007, New York Times interview with Philip Zimbardo.
• Read an article by Philip Zimbardo, “The Psychology of Power and Evil: All Power to the Person? To the Situation? To the System?” posted on the Stanford Prison Experiment Web site.
• Read the official Defense Department report (“the Schlesinger Report”) on the Abu Ghraib abuses, published in August 2004, particularly Appendix G on the social psychology of abusive behavior and the predictability of abuse in the right social circumstance.
• Read a May 14, 2004, article by Robert Parham in EthicsDaily.com, a publication of the Baptist Center for Ethics. It examines the “bad apples” explanation of the Abu Ghraib abuses in a Christian religious context.
• Read a May 2004 American Psychological Association fact sheet, “Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners.”
• Read a May 10, 2004, New Yorker article on responsibility at Abu Ghraib.
• Read a May 8, 2004, San Francisco Chronicle story on how the Stanford Prison Experiment foretold Abu Ghraib.
• Read an April 8, 1973, New York Times Magazine article on the Stanford Prison Experiment.