Zimbardo’s Conditions for Evil

Evil is something that we often ascribe to villainous people: serial killers, rapists, child traffickers, terrorists, and numerous others. However, some of the most average people can commit the most atrocious and vicious of deeds. Many psychology experts tell us that though it may seem difficult to envision how virtuous and “good” people around us get consumed by evil, it should be noted that every person - whether good or evil - has the capability to commit evil acts. The person’s actions are morphed by the circumstances that are present.  For example, an extremely hungry man could be inclined to resort to the means of cannibalism, but for a nourished person, this could be unimaginable. Researchers and psychologists such as Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo are important figures involved in trying to solve this social science phenomenon. After examining all the evidence, it is evident that good people are inclined to unfathomable evil under certain circumstances. 

The investigation into the influences of evil spans back to the Milgram Experiment in 1961. The roots of this experiment go back to the Nuremberg War Criminal trials following World War II. During World War 2, Nazi soldiers committed mass acts of genocide and were later trialed for their felonies during the Nuremberg Trials. The soldiers defended their actions by claiming to simply follow orders from their superiors. This common rationale interested Milgram to investigate further into this issue. Milgram conducted an experiment to evaluate how far people would go in obeying instructions even if it involved people being harmed. The result of the experiment was shocking, as it turned out as much as 65% of the participants obeyed the rules despite knowing they were harming the other person (Cherry). Intrigued by Milgram’s experiment, Phillip Zimbardo, a psychology professor at Stanford University, wanted to expand upon the research. In 1971, Zimbardo conducted the Stanford Prison experiment; this was an experiment in which randomly selected people were assigned to play out the role of a jail guard and they later ended up abusing their prisoners. Zimbardo concluded “that line between good and evil is permeable” and anyone has the ability to cross the line. His research also helped him devise a set of conditions that turn humans evil: mindlessly taking the first small step, uncritical conformity to group norms, dehumanization of others, anonymity, diffusion of personal responsibility, and passive tolerance of evil through inaction or indifference. 

One particular condition that can incline good people to evil is mindlessly taking the first step. When people get exposed to evil, they are tempted to take the first small step toward evil without pondering the consequences. As Zimbardo says, “all evil starts at 15 volts.” (“The Psychology of Evil,” 10:20). They are not able to foresee how evil can be addictive, and so they continue to participate in evil actions for personal benefits, hoping for it to be the last time; unfortunately, evil is a very addictive drug, and the more malevolent one becomes, the harder the path of recovery gets. Though “the next step is another 15 volts,” the problem is that “at the end of the line, it's 450 volts” (10:23). The condition is also present in The Crucible by Arthur Miller, which explains the girl’s behavior. The girls take their first step towards evil when they sneak out of their houses during the night and dance in the forbidden forest: “We did dance, uncle” (10). Though dancing in the forest does not seem as a highly nefarious activity, this opens up the door for future evil by emboldening them to commit more evil. Puritans believed witches conjured spirits in the forest, and since the girls were dancing in the forest, they were subjected to suspicion of witchcraft. Inability to handle this pressure from the townspeople, the girls start fearing a possible punishment. In order to avoid any possible punishments, one of the girls, Abagail, starts to wrongfully accuse lowly women of witchcraft: “I kiss His hand. I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil” (48). Accusing others of being witches is not only keeping them away from punishments, but is also giving them power and influence in society. This keeps them connected to evil and further drowns them into the sea of evil. Suffocated by evil and the greed for power drives the girls to start accusing even one of the noblest and most religious people in society such as Elizabeth Proctor: “The girl, the Williams girl, Abigail Williams, sir. She sat to dinner in Reverend Parris’s house tonight, and without word nor warnin’ she falls to the floor. . . . And demandin’ of her how she come to be so stabbed, she testify it were your wife’s familiar spirit pushed it in” (74). Accusing such noble and moral people of such lowly crimes is one of the evilest things to do. Initially, the girls were good people - they worked in other people’s homes as requested by their elders, wore appropriate clothing, and attended church every weekend. Unfortunately, they inclined to evil when they took the first wrong step, which is going to the forest. The consequence? This led them into a chain of evil in which they ended up doing the most villainous thing: ruining the life of such fine people. 

Furthermore, this condition is also seen in the short story “The Man in the Well'' through the kids who leave the man in the well to die. The first mindless step that inclined the kids towards evil was “when they called down to him[the man]” (Sher 1). By talking to the man in the well they break the golden rule: do not talk to strangers. By talking to this stranger, the kids establish a relationship with him which comes to haunt them towards the end of the story. Because of this established relationship with the man in the well, the kids are compelled to lie to the man in the well that their parents are “coming with the police '' (Sher 3) in order to reassure his safety. By falsely reassuring the man in the well, they provide him with false hope of survival and cause him to die a slow and painful death. If the kids had taken a second thought about talking back to this stranger, then they would not have been inclined to engage in such an evil activity of torturing a poor and feeble person. Hence, once again it is evident that one condition that can incline a man to evil is mindlessly taking the first step towards evil. 

Another condition that can incline people to evil is the dehumanization of others. Dehumanization is when one treats the other person inhumanely as if they are depriving them of their human rights and qualities.  For example, during the 19th century, many Americans owned slaves and treated them inhumanely: they raped them, denied their education, separated them from their families, and brutally whipped them. Slave owners participated in these atrocities because they viewed slaves as objects, rather than humans. Likewise, much of the evil happens when “people are seduced into evil by dehumanizing” (Dittman).   This condition is mentioned in The Lucifer Effect, a book written by Phillip Zimbardo, which aims to uncover the myriad reasons why everyone is susceptible to evil. Zimbardo states “dehumanization stigmatizes others, attributing to them a ‘spoiled identity’ and this makes them “not fully human and thus tainted.” This explains why “it becomes possible for normal, morally upright, and even idealistic people to perform acts of destructive cruelty” (307).  This condition is also present in the Stanford Prison Experiment led by Zimbardo, where the guards are observed to participate in evil by dehumanizing the prisoners. In the documentary, it is apparent that the guards try to assert their authority over the prisoners by stripping them away from their human qualities. They viewed them as inferior beings and thus referred to them by their numbers rather than their actual name. In the documentary, the guards engaged in extremely abusive and humiliating behavior: they forced the prisoners to use their bare hands to clean up the toilets, punished them with rigorous exercises, stripped them naked, and sent them into solitary confinement. The guards also treated the prisoners like animals by verbally taunting them: they called them derogatory names, mocked them, and shamed them in front of other prisoners (McFarling). This reinforced the guards’ notion of the prisoners unworthy of human decency and respect. In the documentary, Zimbardo mentions how all the guards that were selected for the experiment were healthy, normal, intelligent, and had no present psychological problems or a criminal record. These guards were only inclined to participate in evil actions because they dehumanized the prisoners and did not view them as people, and instead as animals and inferior beings. Moreover in the Crucible, Elizabeth Proctor, one of the noblest and most religious people in Salem, is accused of witchcraft based on inappropriate evidence. She is arrested by Cheever for witchcraft after he coincidentally finds a needle in Elizabeth’s poppet the same day as Abigail gets stuck by a needle: “testify it were your wife’s familiar spirit pushed it in. . . . ’Tis hard proof! I find here a poppet Goody Proctor keeps. I have found it, sir. And in the belly of the poppet a needle’s stuck” (75). As seen here, Elizabeth is arrested with insubstantial evidence - a testament from Abigail Wiliams and a poppet stuck with a needle - which is also illogical. Normally, the courts would only order a warrant of arrest after substantial and appropriate evidence has been given to prove someone guilty. But because Elizabeth has been named as a “witch,” the courts are ruling a slight coincidence, which is the occurrence of a poppet being found with a needle stuck into it on the same day as the authority finds a needle stuck into Abigail, as substantial evidence to arrest her. If the court treated her as a human, then they would have questioned the validity of the evidence presented and continued the search for any further concrete evidence; however, Elizabeth is dehumanized and arrested for a crime just over an absurd accusation.

Moreover, dehumanization is further emphasized in the gothic horror story, “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In the “Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator, a perfectly normal narrator, severely dehumanizes the old man and this drives him to murder him. The narrator describes how he “even loved him[the man],” but “it was his eye” which was like the “eye of a vulture” (Poe). The narrator reduces the old man to nothing more than an eye, an eye of the vulture. This dehumanization deprives the old man of the narrator’s humanity and emotions, and now he is viewed as a dangerous object that must be destroyed and discarded. This drives him to inhumanely murder the man towards the end of the story. Therefore, it is evident that dehumanization is one such condition that can incline people to evil. 

Situation is one of the biggest manipulators in the world. Situations can give rise to the cruelest and most vicious beasts in the world, but it can also give birth to the most noblest and virtuous legends. Monsters such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-un, and Fidel Castro were not evil by birth, but only evil by the surrounding circumstances. Normal men and women like us, as unlikely as it seems, are fully capable of participating in evil of large magnitude when we mindlessly take the first step and dehumanize others.

Works Cited:

Cherry, Kendra. “What Was the Milgram Experiment.” Very Well Mind, 14 November 2022, https://www.verywellmind.com/the-milgram-obedience-experiment-2795243#:~:text=Results%20of%20the%20Milgram%20Experiment&text=Milgram's%20results%20showed%20that%2065,before%20reaching%20the%20highest%20levels. Accessed on 7 March 2023. 

Dittman, Melissa. “What makes good people do bad?” American Psychological Association, October 2004, https://www.apa.org/monitor/oct04/goodbad. Accessed on 7 March 2023. 

Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery,” 1948, https://www.cusd200.org/cms/lib/IL01001538/Centricity/Domain/361/jackson_lottery.pd. Accessed on 22 February 2023. 

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible - Internet Archive. https://ia800209.us.archive.org/17/items/TheCrucibleFullText/The%20Crucible%20full%20text.pdf. Accessed on 28 November 2022. 

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Tell-Tale Heart - United States Department of State. 1843, https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/the_tell-tale_heart_0.pdf. Accessed on 19 March 2023. 

Sher, Ira. “The Man in the Well by Ira Sher: CommonLit Library.” CommonLit, https://www.commonlit.org/en/texts/the-man-in-the-well. Accessed on 22 February 2023. 

“The Milgram Experiment 1962 Full Documentary” Youtube, uploaded by Lof Der Zotheid Psychologenpraktijk, 25 April 2016, https://youtu.be/rdrKCilEhC0. Accessed on 27 February 2023. 

Zimbardo, Philip. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Random House, 2007. Accessed on 1 March 2023.

---. “The Psychology of Evil.” Philip Zimbardo: The Psychology of Evil | TED Talk, 2008, https://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_the_psychology_of_evil.  . Accessed on 27 February 2023.

“Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment 11.” Youtube, uploaded by Spencer McFarling, 11 October 2016, https://youtu.be/hIUlBrvqyyo. Accessed on 27 February 2023.