Philip Zimbardo wants to tell you how to be good.
You may not believe you need any advice. Not from a psychology prof who had his own infamous fall from grace. You tell yourself, if you'd lived during slavery days, you would have been a Harriet Tubman. Under the Nazis, a Sophie Scholl. One of the bad Germans? Not you.
That's what we all say.
All the more reason to devour Zimbardo's three-decades-later autopsy of the rot he fermented in the basement of the Psychology Building at Stanford University. As if it was a concrete form, each of us pours our selves, our talents and values, prejudices and blind spots, into a role. Teachers, mothers, fathers, cops, bankers: if we're lucky, the outfits highlight our virtues and hide our faults. Our roles and our selves are aligned; we live with integrity. If not -- well, compartmentalization is the last redoubt of the ego; with it, notes Zimbardo, "a good husband can then be a guiltless adulterer... a kindly farmer can be a heartless slave master." That was one of the lessons of the
Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment: our roles become us, even when they aren't becoming.
Exhibit A: an 18-year-old college sophomore, a musician, "a scientist at heart," he said of himself, possessing "a great love for my fellow human beings."
He volunteered for the two-week project in the basement of the Palo Alto college in August, 1971, and was randomly assigned to guard duty -- not his preference, he'd written before it began, "because people resent guards."
But heck, it's just for two weeks.
So he dons the reflective sunglasses and the thrift store uniform. He grasps the nightstick. Exit the smart, normal young man; enter the sadistic guard prisoners came to call John Wayne, notorious for his namecalling and sexual humiliation of the prisoners -- what he called afterward his "little experiments."
Zimbardo, head of the big experiment, does not intervene; the psychologist's responsibility for his subject's welfare and the correctional supervisor's concern for his institution's security are not mixing. Though anyone can leave when he wants, Zimbardo offers one distraught prisoner a deal: stay and inform on the others, and the guards will give you special treatment. By Day Five (when his girlfriend pulls him to his senses and he calls off the two-week study), he's moving the prisoners at odd hours, putting on a good face for visitors, and indulging in a paranoiac's counterinsurgency fantasies. In other words, being a good warden.
On paper, personal transformations like these are not quite credible. The great power of our roles to mold our actions has to be felt to be believed, writes Zimbardo. "Abstract knowledge of the situation, even when detailed, does not capture the affective tone of the place, its nonverbal features, its emergent norms, or the ego involvement and arousal of being a participant." Think how this happens all the time, in less extraordinary circumstances. A new job, a blind date: "The old you might not work as expected when the ground rules change."
How to keep the best you in working order? Zimbardo imagines a reverse-Milgram experiment (which tested participants willingness to obey authority), wherein requests for small favors are gradually ramped up into major acts of random kindness in the same way as sales pitches or cult indoctrinations. One: start with a small request (the "foot in the door"). Two: offer a role model. Three: reward good behavior.
And what's good behavior? The Lucifer Effect suggests a kind of hodgepodge of "heroic" traits to keep us more like Nelson Mandela than Abu Ghraib torturer Lynndie England. Admit your mistakes. Listen to others. Realize you're responsible: think toward "a future time when today's deed will be on trial and no one will accept your pleas of 'only following orders' or 'everyone else was doing it.'" Don't allow others to put a number on you: "Anonymity and secrecy conceal wrongdoing and undermine the human connection." Resist. "In every situation, work to distinguish between those in authority who, because of their expertise, wisdom, seniority, or special status, deserve respect, and the unjust authority figures who demand our obedience without having any substance." Join others: the ethics of the company you keep matters.
The Lucifer Effect makes a compelling case that bad actors are by and large products of crappy environments. From the boys' desert isle in Lord of the Flies to the night shift at Abu Ghraib, trouble isn't a condition, but a place.