The Lucifer Effect

[applejack]

I have recently started reading a book called The Lucifer Effect. It talks mainly about a psychologist’s experiment to find what changes a prisoners personality while imprisoned, but had an unexpected effect. The mock guards for the prison began to verbally and emotionally beat the college students who had volunteered to be prisoners. The experiment was cut short a week and a half early to spare the students/prisoners from further torture.
These results were reflected in the recent Abu Ghraib prison torture stories nearly thirty years later.
The book talks about one’s possible descent into a different person when in unusual surroundings, how the setting can morph and distort a person’s character.

My question is which do you consider has a greater effect in society, the strength and sincerity of the character, or the situation that one is found in? Which has a bigger impact on your reaction?

Also, is there a true evil? Some have the idea that evil is a thing that others have and others could never be susceptible to, the book raises the possibility that anyone can do inhuman things if they find themselves in a different society without the former ties to their self.

I think that no matter the individual's character, the setting they find themselves in will have an impact on how they act and think.

I think that anyone is capable is evil, especially once they start viewing people whom they have power over has something less than human.

 

[SkylerOcon]

Looking at it from a logical standpoint, it's the settings that people find themselves in. If you are put in a position of true power, you can either do good, or do bad (though in this case, there can be no 'true' evil because its not based off of ones character). A CEO of a major coporation can start donating to charities or give relief to starving civilizations to name examples of good. As for bad, he could start dealing under the table to terrorist organizations or maybe start swiping money away from corporate funds to build a pool in his backyard.

From a more human standpoint however, it comes from a persons character. This is an instance in which somebody could be truly evil . If somebody really is not a good person, then they could do more bad than a person in power ever could. Though I personally belive that everybody is evil at heart (though we are capable of good because selfishness is a form of evil and if we depend on others to thrive, then that selfishness will drive us to help them), we could drive ourselves to do good if we were needed to. But, it's still much easier to just watch and laugh as that poor teenager writhes on the ground in pain after popping a testicle due to a skateboard trick gone wrong.

We love to laugh at peoples misfortunes, yet hate it when we're put in the position ourself.

So, to answer the question of the OP, both have some influence. However, to determine which has more, you have to figure out if you're in a seat of power. If you are, you would most likely be more influenced by surrounding. If not, you will most likely be more influenced by character.

 

[Ørion]

This brings to mind an experiment I have heard of. A group of Psychologists wanted to test how pressure from others affected people. So they took a group of people and told them that they would be the testers of a new torture technique using electricity. They were given a dial with numbers from 10 - 200 which went up in increments of 10. In the next room , there was an actor to make the sounds of someone being shocked by the electricity, however the people twisting the dial did not know that. The first group did not have a professional doctor in the room, and they stopped around 20 after hearing the shrieks from the next room. However, the group that had a doctor telling them to keep increasing the voltage brought it up to about 160 (By the way, these values are the best I can remember but are probably not accurate).

If you can consider other people as part of your environment, I would say that it can influence how people act. However, I also believe that part of it comes from the person. I think that a person who is not as morally principled as another would start to do worse things in an environment that is not as extreme as another morally principled person in a more extreme environment.

 

[Dr. James Rustles]

This brings to mind an experiment I have heard of.

http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm

I think on a general level that you can assume that people are more susceptible to being influenced by situation than character. However, there are in fact people who reject a situation and opt for a better solution than the one they are told to do.

 

[RBinator]

And to think about a week ago or so I was reading into this stuff a bit, how someone can suddenly carry out certain actions that they otherwise wouldn't have. I say behavior is very situational based. Before going more into people doing "evil", even throughout daily life we act different depending on the situation. Do you act the same to your brothers and sisters, parents, friends, children, teachers, and more? Mostly likely your behavior will be different to those various people. How many people act exactly the same regardless of the usual group of people they may be around with daily?

So getting into the "evil" stuff, examples like the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse case certainly shows how "just following orders" can lead people to doing things that they otherwise would object too. What is it about authority that it can lead people into these kinds of behaviors? Is it respect and trust? Is it a case of following orders simply to avoid trouble? From what I understand, this doesn't seem to be a rare case like how it is with someone committing a crime after being exposed to it by the media. Looking at Charles Graner, one of the guys behind the Abu Ghraib abuse, he seemed to have other things going on with him before that, like it doesn't seem that surprising that he would do it. Despite the "just following orders" claim, he really seemed to be enjoying himself during the prisoner abuse. Lynndie England seemed to have went along with it for "I trusted him [Graner] and didn't want to lose him".

Another thing I read up on is a series of prank calls to fast food places where a guy basically role played as a cop and tricked managers into strip searching people. The last case of it seemed to have been in 2004 with a prank call to a McDonald's in Mount Washington, Kentucky. Basically, the manager got tricked into strip searching one of the female workers, then later bringing in her [now ex] boyfriend who followed orders leading to sexual abuse and other crimes. Before the manager's boyfriend came in, she asked another worker to follow the "cop's" orders, but he refused. Anyway, not only another case of "just following orders", but I would say stupidly. I heard the manager manual warned against prank calls like that, not to mention a non-crooked cop would never ask you to do those things that the abuser did. I wonder if the abuser simply wanted an excuse to act the way he did.

I do have a belief that everyone has a dark side to them. Events like the above seem to have ways of bringing it out, for reasons like trust, fear, stupidly, and possibly more. Of course it's easy to say "what were they thinking?" when you haven't been in such situations yourself and not quite understand how it can affect your mind. It's not like people are always at peak control of their thoughts and reasoning. That's not to say they shouldn't be blamed for their own actions.

I guess character is another factor that plays into this after all. I would think strong enough character would stop you from acting "evil" during times like this, like the guy who refused to go another with the manager's request during that strip search case. Well, that's basically all I can seem to handle to come up with at the moment.

 

[slartibartfast42]

I think everyone has a certain strength of character, based on their conscience and the morals that have been put into them by society. People will always have a breaking point where they will commit any act given enough pressure. I don't think that either strength of character or severity of the situation have a greater effect on ones actions, I think it's more of a thing where your character will protect you from committing certain actions up to a certain point.

to put it into sort of an equation (for all you math people like me), you will perform an evil act when the following condition is met:

P/S > C

where
P = Pressure to commit the act
C = Strength of character
S = Perceived severity of the action