Philip G. Zimbardo

Discusses why people are susceptible to the power of evil, the ability of group dynamics and situational pressures to transform human behavior, the significance of disobedience, and the true nature of heroism.

Understanding how Good People Turn Evil

The Lucifer Effect

High Fidelity

Malleus Maleficarum, or “The Witches’ Hammer.”8 It was required reading for the Inquisition judges. It begins with a conundrum to be solved: How can evil continue to exist in a world governed by an all-good, all-powerful God? One answer: God allows it as a test of men’s souls. Yield to its temptations, go to Hell; resist its temptations, and be invited into Heaven. However, God restricted the Devil’s direct influence over people because of his earlier corruption of Adam and Eve. The Devil’s solution was to have intermediaries do his evil bidding by using witches as his indirect link to people they would corrupt. To reduce the spread of evil in Catholic countries, the proposed solution was to find and eliminate witches. What was required was a means to identify witches, get them to confess to heresy, and then destroy them.

It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable. —Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind

Japanese soldiers butchered between 260,000 and 350,000 Chinese civilians in just a few bloody months of 1937.

Stanford University in the summer of 1971 were mirrored in the real guards and real prison in the Iraq of 2003.

“Another way of looking at it is, you’re putting good people in an evil situation to see who or what wins.”

The Lucifer Effect quotes

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