The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

Methodology and Conclusions

In his book «The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil», Philip Zimbardo uses a methodology based on the famous Stanford prison experiment he conducted in 1971. In this experiment, volunteers were divided into two groups: guards and prisoners, and placed in an artificially created prison environment. The experiment was planned for two weeks but was terminated after six days due to the extreme cruelty and dehumanization exhibited by the participants. Zimbardo analyzes how social roles, group dynamics, and institutional structures can influence behavior, turning ordinary, moral individuals into those capable of cruel and immoral acts. The main conclusion of the book is that context and situation can significantly influence people's behavior, and that evil often arises not from individual character traits but from external factors and circumstances.