The Lucifer Effect
Understanding How Good People turn Evil

Publisher:  Rider Books
Resource Type:  Book
Cx Number:  CX8108

Philip Zimbardo as a young psychologist at Stanford conducted the seminal experiment on undergratuate students dividing them into "guards" and "prisoners". After the release of the Abu Graib tapes he revisits the question of the nature of evil and the systems and circumstances that foster it. While the focus of the book is on Abu Graib he begins with an examination of some of the 20th century's worst examples of man's inhumanity to man. He chronicles the dehumanization of the guards at Abu Graib and the policies of Rumsfeld, the CIA and US military to facilitate the serious and widespread violations of the law. He argues that all of us are capable of monstrous acts when we are "caught up in the crucible of social forces".