The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

On April 28, 2004, Zimbardo observes on television images of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses and tortures, sure that the torture was inflicted by “only a few ‘bad apples’” (325). He says that he was troubled by General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who proclaimed that Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident before he conducted any investigation of the system of military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Cuba. The general’s statement absolved the system and placed blame solely on individual actors. By 2006, more than 400 investigations were opened into such allegations. Zimbardo views the Abu Ghraib prison abuses as an example of “what could happen when all the constraints that operated in our experimental setting were removed” (329) and notes the powerful situational forces at play in such a place.

A 24-year-old Army Reservist named Joe Darby blew the whistle on the prisoner abuses by submitting evidence to the Criminal Investigation Division. His decision was an enormous act of courage, and he committed a heroic act in defense of persons he was trained to deindividuate and dehumanize at a time when systemic and situational forces were having the opposite effect on his compatriots.