Why do good people do bad things? How can moral people be tempted to engage in immoral conduct?

Where is the line between good and evil, and who is in danger of crossing it?

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Renowned social psychologist Philip Zimbardo has the answer

and explains why and how in the Lucifer Effect we are all vulnerable to the temptation of the

“dark side.” Building on his historical examples and his own pioneering research,

Zimbardo details how situational forces and group dynamics can work together to turn decent men and women into monsters.

Zimbardo is best known as the founder of the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Here, he details, for the first time, the full story of this groundbreaking study, in which a group of college student volunteers were randomly divided into

“jailers” and “inmates” and then placed in simulated prison settings.

Within a week, the study was halted when an ordinary college student turned into a brutal,

sadistic guard or emotionally wounded prisoner.

Illuminating the psychological causes behind these chaotic changes,

Zimbardo discusses a range of horrific phenomena,

from corporate illicit behavior to systematic genocide to how the once powerful US military abused and tortured Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib.

Write. He replaced the old concept of “bad apple” with “rotten barrel”.

In other words, the idea that the environment

and social systems pollute the individual is neither vice versa nor vice versa.

This book dares to raise the mirror of humanity and show that we may not be what we think we are.

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It forces us to reconsider what we can do when we fall into the crucible of behavioral dynamics,

but Zimbardo also offers hope. He asserts that we can resist evil and teach ourselves to be heroes.

Like Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and Steven Pinker’s Blank Slate,

the lucifer effect is a shocking and immersive study

that will change the way we view human behavior.