...human behavior is more influenced by things outside of us than inside... There are times when external circumstances can overwhelm us, and we do things we never thought. If you’re not aware that this can happen, you can be seduced by evil. We need inoculations against our own potential for evil. We have to acknowledge it. Then we can change it.
When someone is anonymous, it opens the door to all kinds of antisocial behavior
if you put good apples into a bad situation, you’ll get bad apples.
Boredom is a powerful motive for evil.
Always imagine a future time when today’s deed will be on trial and no one will accept your pleas of only following orders, or everyone else was doing it.*
we all like to think that the line between good and evil is impermeable--that people who do terrible things...are on the evil side of this line and the rest of us could never cross it. But ...[studies have] revealed the permeability of that line. ... This is true not only for perpetrators of torture and other horrible acts, but for people who commit a more common kind of wrong -- the wrong of taking no action when action is called for. Whether we consider Nazi Germany or Abu Ghraib prison, there were many people who observed what was happening and said nothing.
...we have to resist the urge to rationalize inaction and develop justifications that recast evil deeds as acceptable means to supposedly righteous ends.
The banality of heroism concept suggests that we are all potential heroes...
Some of the above quotes are from The Banality of Heroism (pdf, coauthored by Zimbardo)
NYTimes art. on Zimbardo here
No comments:
Post a Comment