Creating Evil

Question 1

What is Evil?

Answer 1

• Evil, according to Philip Zimbardo, involves intentional actions causing harm, abuse, or dehumanization of others.
• It extends to using authority and systemic power to encourage individuals to engage in such evil actions
• The essence of evil lies in knowing better but choosing to behave in morally harmful ways.

Question 2

Social Dynamics – The Need to Belong (Maikovich, 2005)

Answer 2

• Asserts that people’s behavior can be greatly influenced by the strong need to fit in, sometimes leading them to commit evil deeds in order to achieve acceptance.
• A person’s sense of identity, privilege and status are reinforced by belonging in a group, which leads individuals to engage in evil deeds in an effort to win acceptance from others.
• Teenagers are particularly vulnerable to these kinds of behaviors.
• Hazing rituals in sororities and fraternities are blatant instances of evil behavior.

Question 3

Dispositional Factors

Answer 3

• In order to understand human behavior, one must first explore the factors that influence our decisions and behaviors.
• Individuals tend to assume that we would make moral decisions due to egocentric bias, however, widespread evil is a complex notion.
• People are sometimes reduced to simple black-and-white categories, with either inherent goodness or evilness.
• These categories fail to adequately convey the complexity of human behavior.
• Zimbardo criticizes these classifications by challenging that any individual can be influenced to act evilly.
• His perspective emphasizes that individuals can learn to become evil based on past experiences, practice, or external factors.

Question 4

Dispositional, Situational and Systemic Causes of Behavior

Answer 4

• Dispositional causes of behavior involve personal qualities like genetic makeup, personality traits, character, and free will.
• The traditional approach tends to attribute evil actions to sadistic personality traits, ignoring situational variables.
• The Fundamental Attribution Error occurs when behavior is explained by dispositions, neglecting the impact of situational factors.
• Psychiatry and clinical psychology often use the dispositional argument, placing culpability within the individual.
• Social psychologists take a different approach, focusing on situational factors and exploring conditions contributing to behavior.
• Understanding the unique setting and environmental factors helps explain unusual behavior from the actor’s perspective.

Question 5

Stanley Milgram’s Experiment

Answer 5

• Blind obedience to authority is a social dynamic where individuals follow commands directly without subtle influence.
• Stanley Milgram conducted a study (1974) to explore the extent to which situational forces could override individuals’ resistance to harmful actions.
• The setup involved a learner (confederate) and a teacher (participant). The learner, strapped to a chair with electrodes, was given word pairs to study and tested by the teacher.
• The teacher would reward correct responses and administer electric shocks for incorrect ones using a machine with 30 switches, each increasing by 15 volts.
• The shocks ranged from mild to intense, and the learner’s distress was simulated. The participant always played the role of the teacher.
• A test shock of 45 volts was given to the teacher before the experiment began to gauge intensity. The experimenter stood next to the teacher.
• As the experiment unfolded, the learner made mistakes, prompting the teacher to administer shocks. The learner complained about pain and begged for the shocks to stop.
• Despite the learner’s distress, the researcher urged the teacher to continue, emphasizing the contractual agreement to participate until the end and take responsibility for consequences.
• The learner’s pleas intensified, reaching a point where they seemed to pass out. The researcher instructed the teacher that no response in 5 seconds should be treated as a wrong answer, pushing participants to administer all 30 shocks.
• Milgram consulted psychiatrists regarding the likelihood of participants administering all 30 shocks in his study.
• The psychiatrists estimated less than 1% of people would carry out such harm, considering it required someone of a truly sinister nature.
• However, the actual results contradicted their expectations, with 65% of participants administering all shocks.

Question 6

Bystander Effect

Answer 6

• Inaction can be a form of evil when assistance, dissent, or disobedience is needed.
• The case of Kitty Genovese illustrates this, where 39 people heard her screams during an attack but did nothing to help.
• Latane and Darley (1970) introduced bystander intervention, revealing that people are less likely to help in a group, especially when others are perceived as available to assist.
• The presence of other people diffuses the sense of personal responsibility in individuals.
• Latane and Darley demonstrated that people are less likely to help a crime victim when there are other witnesses.
• Darley and Batson (1974) conducted a study to explore conditions affecting people’s willingness to help strangers in distress.
• Participants were Princeton Theological Seminary students randomly assigned to three conditions, varying the perceived time available to complete experimental steps.
• The experiment involved participants moving from one building to another and encountering a man slumped in an alleyway.
• The study aimed to understand if time constraints influenced participants’ likelihood of stopping to help the man in distress.
• The study by Darley and Batson revealed that individuals in a hurry were ironically less likely to help, even when aware of the parable of the Good Samaritan.
• Some participants even stepped over a victim on their way to the next building, suggesting a lack of action despite knowledge of ethical norms.
• The results imply that the speed of daily lives may compromise ethical behavior, and people may fail to act on their knowledge of norms.
• In addition to those directly perpetrating evil, there are individuals who, through inaction, enable evil to persist, as seen in cases like the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse.

Question 7

Bystander Effect

Reasons for Apathy

Answer 7

• Diffusion of responsibility occurs when individuals are less likely to take action or feel a reduced sense of personal responsibility in a group setting.
• This is because they believe that someone else in the group will intervene or take charge.
• The Milgram experiment entailed participants administering shocks while under the authority of the experimenter.
• In cases where participants hesitated to administer shocks, the experimenter reassured them by stating that he would assume responsibility for any harm caused.
• This reassurance led to a diffusion of responsibility, relieving participants from personal accountability for the harmful actions they were instructed to carry out.

Question 8

Conditions Which Cause Good People to Engage in Evil Behavior

Answer 8

• Presenting an acceptable justification or rationale for engaging in the undesirable action, such as wanting to help people improve their memory by judicious use of punishment strategies.
• Arranging some form of contractual obligation, verbal or written, to enact the behaviour.
• Giving participants meaningful roles to play (e.g., teacher, student) that reinforce previously learned positive values.
• Presenting basic rules to be followed, which seem
  to make sense prior to their actual use but then can be arbitrarily used to justify mindless compliance. Making the rules vague and changing them as necessary.
• Altering the semantics of the act, the actor and the action and replace reality with desirable rhetoric. For example: redefining the shocks as not hurting the person but helping them the experimenter. Mask the reality of what is happening.
• Creating opportunities for diffusion of responsibility for negative
  outcomes; others will be responsible, or it would not be evident that the actor will be held liable. For example: where the experimenter states that he would be responsible for the consequences of the shock.
• Start the path towards the ultimate evil act with a small,
  insignificant first step. This is the foot in the door technique. Starting with only 15 volts is easy but opens the door for subsequent greater compliance pressures. It’s the same approach used to get young persons hooked on drugs. One hit or one sniff is all that’s needed.
• Successively increasing steps so the pathway is gradual; actions should not be noticeably different from the most recent prior action. So that eventually administering a shock to a passed out person using a higher voltage doesn’t seem to be much different from the effect of the
  previous slightly less intense voltage. The increments must be just small enough so as to not notice the difference.
• Changing the nature of the influence authority from initially “just” and
  reasonable to “unjust” and demanding, even irrational. This initially elicits compliance and later confusion, but it maintains continued obedience.
• Making the “exit costs” high, and make
  the process of exiting difficult by allowing usual forms of verbal dissent (that make people feel good about themselves), while insisting on behavioural compliance. (“I know you are not that kind of person, just keep doing as I tell you”)