Social psychologist Philip Zimbardo discusses From Genocide to Abu Ghraib: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.Social psychologist Philip Zimbardo discusses From Genocide to Abu Ghraib: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.
To help us understand how good people can be seduced to act immorally, and how it can be prevented, renowned social psychologist Philip Zimbardo joins the Council to discuss his new book The Lucifer Effect.
Drawing on examples from history, current events, and his now-classic Stanford Prison Experiment, Zimbardo's book details how situational forces and group dynamics can work in concert to make people commit organized genocide, torture, and abuse. Seeing key similarities in social circumstances at the Iraqi prison and his mock prison at Stanford, he examines what led U.S. soldiers, who were on a mission to liberate Iraq from a brutal dictator, to torture and abuse detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison.