The Lucifer effect can appear in any of our most everyday contexts, this refers to a process of transformation. Thanks to him, a seemingly normal, good and righteous person is able to commit heinous acts, cases in which, far from having a disorder or traumatic past, what really exists is the powerful influence of a situational factor capable of dehumanizing us.
Any good criminologist with knowledge of sociology will tell us that evil is not a kind of universal truth that exists as a mere antagonism to “goodness”. Evil comes from a context, a social situation and a number of psychological mechanisms related to the moment in which we live. Thus, an example that they usually give in many bibliographies on the subject is that of the Salem trials, with the famous witch hunt.
- “The human mind has an infinite ability to make any of us kind or cruel.
- Compassionate or selfish.
- Creative or destructive.
- And turn some of the villains and others into heroes.
- “Phillip Zimbardo?.
It was a historic moment demarcated in time and reduced to a community still rooted in religious fanaticism, Puritanism, collective hysteria, etc. Another good example of the Lucifer effect is in the classic television character Walter White, from the series “Breaking Bad”. .
In this case, anthropologists Alan Page Fiske and Tage Shakti point out that we have someone who initiates a series of violent acts based on a perception of truthfulness, that is, who performs the action, however heinous, is more than justified by his complex personal character. situation and social context. However, we must bear in mind that no violence is “virtuous”.
It may be that at some point, and under certain social and structural circumstances, someone feels the need or obligation to cross the line of cruelty, which explains the Lucifer effect, but above all, it must be morality. This incorruptible dimension that acts as an attraction to remembrance: beyond the pressure of the environment or despair, there is logic and integrity.
It’s April 28 night 2004. La american people finish dinner and sit in front of the TV to watch the show “60 minutes. “Something changed that day. The television network invited them to discover something many were not ready to see: they began broadcasting images of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where a group of American soldiers (men and women) torture and rape Iraqi prisoners in the most heinous and humiliating manner. .
One of the people who saw these scenes, with immense fear, was the renowned psychologist Philip Zimbardo, however, it must be said that for him these facts were not new, nor inexplicable and much less strange. In turn, he saw a classic pattern in his mentality as vulnerable. So whom did you consider: the good and the saviors?They became, almost not knowing how, the wicked and the torturers.
Following the publication of the photographs, these seven American guards were charged and brought to justice, however, Dr. Philip Zimbardo deemed it necessary to participate in the process as an expert to explain all this.
He made a very clear point: the evil that had sprung up in this prison was the effect of the Bush administration and a policy that clearly facilitated the Lucifer effect.
One of the reasons he felt compelled to cooperate in the trial was that he had already experienced a situation very similar to that of Abu Ghraib prison. In 1971, he conducted an experiment at Stanford University in California, where he divided two groups of American students. “police” and “prisoners. “
What happened at Stanford University with this experience certainly seemed to be a premonition of what would happen years later in Abu Ghraib prison. Zimbardo did not seek to excuse or justify the actions of the accused soldiers, nor to turn them into victims, but rather to provide a scientific explanation of how specific circumstances can completely transform our actions.
These would be the psychological processes associated with what Zimbardo called the Lucifer effect:
However, this perverse side can be countered by the force of determination and integrity capable of setting limits and encouraging us to leave certain oppressive contexts so as not to forget who we are, and to pass each of our actions through the sieve of our values. .
Zimbardo explained in his book “The Lucifer Effect?” that the process of dehumanization was inevitable. Situational factors, the social dynamics of a specific context, and psychological pressure can cause evil in us to grow and grow.