We can all become torturers. So says the prestigious researcher and psychologist Phillip Zimbardo, it all depends on whether or not the conditions are given for the right people to become bad, a phenomenon known as the Lucifer effect.
To better explain this, Zimbardo’s statement is based on the fact that we all have a good and bad game, the part that we will highlight most will depend on a specific situation that favors one or the other version of ourselves.
- We must eliminate the idea that “evil” is something out of the ordinary and even pathological.
- We are a whole and no one is totally good or totally bad.
- But a grayscale on which white and black sometimes predominate.
“The infinite capacity of the human spirit can make any of us kind or cruel, compassionate or selfish, creative or destructive, and become villains and others heroes. “Phillip Zimbardo
It is interesting to highlight Pope John Paul II’s statement about heaven and hell, he said, heaven and hell are in us and that is why we cannot escape them, we do not have to be Catholic to understand this statement, because it is simply there to allow us to examine the reality that we have not always been good with others.
Darth Vader was the worst monster in the world until we could see that he was, in fact, a normal human being carried away by his emotions and ambitions, becoming a villain where his dark side reigned (An additional detail: the metaphor of Star Wars is ideal for explaining the concepts of good and evil to children).
Let’s go back to the description of the experience that gave rise to the concept of the “Lucifer effect”. It was in 1971 that Phillip Zimbardo and his team decided to implement the experiment, in a prison in a populated area of Stanford University. .
Volunteers working in prison recreation were previously examined to check their psychological, physical and emotional stability, apparently they were all healthy college students, willing to participate in such a unique study and aware of what it meant.
Each of them was granted by lot the role of prisoner or guardian of the prison, in a practice that was to last up to two weeks; however, the experiment had to be cancelled on the sixth day, for everything that was happening in prison. Attic.
The experience became very real: the prisoners quickly became sinking and depressed, and just as quickly, the guards became sadistic, abusive and cruel people.
These people have become so integrated into their role that they have adopted dominant and authoritarian attitudes towards their peers. They had not received any instructions, they were simply told to act in accordance with the “guards” or “prisoners”. But did the Lucifer effect take over?
Like the book of the same name, the Lucifer effect occurs as a result of situations that promote social power, as they facilitate the path of evil.
Most of us would succumb to the dark side if we came up with the conditions for such behavior; in this way, our identity is taken away from us and pushes us, in a way, to exercise violence and oppression.
The film industry wanted to bring this powerful studio to film, producing the film “The Experience”.
There is no doubt that human beings keep in them the most immense goodness and the most terrifying and sinister evil, it is something that we are tired of seeing every day of our lives, without going too far we can see it daily on the news. .
However, only a good person can prevent evil from entering him and thus redirect his way, because by becoming aware of it, is it possible to change and even control the Lucifer effect?