PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENTS
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EVIL
for more information, note the subpages
INTRODUCTION
Humans have been raised to recognize and obey authority and conform to their situations, but to what extent? Could a mentally stable human become drunk on power? Can an everyday John Doe kill another human under the orders of an authoritative figure? What leads a person to become evil? These questions were answered by the Stanford Prison Experiment, and the Milgram Experiment.
THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIEMENT
The Stanford Prison Experiment was created by Philip Zimbardo in 1971, held in the basement of Yale University’s psychology department building. Zimbardo wanted to see how well individuals could conform into their situation. The experiment consisted of 18 male, mentally stable, college age participants who were split up into two groups: prisoners and guards. The findings of the experiment were troubling, as several of the guards began exhibiting sadistic and abusive behavior. The prisoners were dehumanized, and had begun to really believe that they were in a prison. Five were so emotionally distressed that they had to leave the experiment early, and the originally planned two-week experiment was ended at six days.
THE MILGRAM EXPERIMENT
The Milgram Experiment was conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1961, who wanted to view the reluctance of standing up to authority'. The experiment required a learner (a confederate/actor), a teacher (the participant), and an experimenter (a confederate who accompanied, and gave orders, to the participant). The participant was always the teacher. The learner was taken into a separate room and was attached to electrodes. The teacher was placed in a room next door which contained an electric shock generator, accompanied by the experimenter. The electric shock generator was labeled from 15 volts (slight shock), to 375 (Danger: severe shock), to 450 volts (XXX). The learner was asked to memorize a list of word pairs. The teacher and learner communicated using an intercom. The participant gave a word from the list, and the learner would have to recall the word’s partner. For each incorrect answer, the teacher had to administer a shock, each one a greater voltage than the last. The results were shocking; 65% of participants continued to the highest voltage. Many went on to this extent because they had assumed that the experimenter would take responsibility, as they were “just doing what [they were] told (Milgram, 1974, p.8).”
EVIL
A common thread between the Milgram experiment and Stanford prison study was the display of the Lucifer Effect. The Lucifer Effect focuses on how decent, normal people can become evil.
Evil, as defined by Dr. Philip Zimbardo (founder of the Lucifer Effect), is the act of intentionally inflicting harm. Under certain circumstances, good people can be led to do bad things. Things like diffusion of responsibility, anonymity, and de-individualization, help a person become more willing to do horrible things. Even indifference or inaction in situations of evil displayed by others is considered to be a form of evil.
An example of this is provided in the Stanford Prison Experiment. A guard reported to having over exaggerated his performance as a guard: “I was kind of running my own experiment in there, by saying, "How far can I push these things and how much abuse will these people take before they say, 'knock it off?'" But the other guards didn't stop me. They seemed to join in. They were taking my lead.” . This guard’s actions inspired the other guards to be abusive; to become evil. Throughout the experiment, none of the guards stood up to the sadistic guards, displaying the evil of inaction/indifference.
EVIL
The Milgram experiment participants also displayed this sort of behavior. Milgram reported that “...subjects become immersed in the procedures, reading the word pairs with exquisite articulation and pressing the switches with great care. They want to put on a competent performance, but they show an accompanying narrowing of moral concern. The subject entrusts the broader tasks of setting goals and assessing morality to the experimental authority he is serving (Milgram, 1974, p.8).” The participants felt a decrease in responsibility, and chose to continue on with the experiment, at the will of others, despite the irrationality of the situation.
As an outsider, it is easy to say that we would've done the right thing, or acted differently, but how can we be so sure? The people used in this experiment were perfectly ordinary, why shouldn’t we be capable of the same sort of things?