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Humans are intricate and complex creatures, capable of great things like landing on the moon with advancing technology but also capable of disastrous and horrible things such as committing genocide against a minority group. There’s a thin line between the great things humanity can achieve to the very horrifying tragedies that we can inflict on others. To study human behavior we use social psychology which is an interesting subject especially when experiments defy expectations and reveal shocking things about humans as we know them. At the very core of humanity is either the need of being good or the desire to do evil. But this brings the age-long question: are people born predisposed to being bad or good? The topic of sociopaths and psychopaths is of a different discussion, the main matter here at hand is seeing if otherwise normal people are capable of evil and horrifying deeds. Using the thought process of Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist, and professor at Stanford University, and the conclusions from several experiments such as the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram Experiment we can see how in history and in literature certain characters and relatively average people can do evil actions consciously.
Zimbardo revolutionized the way psychology is perceived. Although his Stanford Prison Experiment turned unethical in its practice, it provided insight into how otherwise good people can do bad things. The experiment entailed finding college students who were normal in every sense. They were randomly assigned either to be a guard or a prisoner and they were stuck in a makeshift prison at Stanford University. The guards who were the authority figure, took advantage of their power and started degrading, humiliating, and tormenting the prisoners to no end—well, that is until the experiment prematurely ended. However, it gave Zimbardo the information he needed to draw conclusions about human characterization and social dynamics. Power, conformity, obedience, deindividuation, and dehumanization were all words Zimbardo used to identify the conditions which lead to particularly evil behavior (The Lucifer Effect). Moreover, a person’s aggression can “increase when they feel anonymous” and a great example of this is when “they wear a uniform, hood or mask” (Dittman). Like how in the Stanford Prison Experiment the guards were given sunglasses and a uniform which strengthened and unifies them together. This anonymity goes both ways though, the prisoners from the beginning were dehumanized and instead became numbers who lost all sense of themselves. They were objected to being stripped naked, deloused with a spray, and then forced to wear a smock with no undergarments underneath. On the actual website for this experiment, they are keen to point out that “real male prisoners don't wear dresses, but real male prisoners do feel humiliated and do feel emasculated,” which is what Zimbardo wanted the prisoners to feel (Stanford Prison Experiment). This experiment ended up scarring some of the prisoners and in interviews after the fact they admit how they became a shell of who they were obeying the guard members. The sense of anonymity gives power to authorities and simultaneously strips the identity of the people who are being abused.
Zimbardo was not the only social psychologist dabbling with this intricate study of human behavior. There was Stanley Milgram and his widely-known Milgram Experiment. His aim was to see how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. In some historical context, this was just after Adolf Eichmann’s trial so it was trying to see if accomplices of the Holocaust were simply following orders from their superiors or had malicious intent throughout. Of course, this was not to excuse the actions of the Nazi party in any way. His experiment was to see if a person would electrocute another person on the basis of them getting an incorrect answer. Different variations of this experiment were conducted coming out with very perspicacious conclusions. At the root of this experiment, the participant was given the role of the teacher, who had to see if the “learner” (an actor) was memorizing words correctly. And for each wrong answer, the volts of electrocution would increase and halfway through the actor would voice discomfort and plead to be let out. Though this offset many people, the results were somewhat outstanding. Psychiatrists predicted only 1 percent of people would go all the way to 450 volts, however, 65 percent of the participants went all the way up. Shocking right? Many discerning outcomes came of this, even with the variations which included changing the authority figure, changing the location, adding another teacher, etc… For example, in the original study, the experimenter wore a gray lab coat and was unexpectedly taken away but was replaced with an “ordinary member of the public” in everyday clothes rather than the lab coat, and “the obedience level dropped to 20%” (McLeod). This goes on the prove Zimbardo’s earlier point of authority and anonymity. Another important lesson that was learned was the abdication of responsibility. This is seen when the authority figure made sure to point out that the participant would not be held responsible and that the authority figure would be held liable. People inherently feel less moral responsibility when following orders. The Milgram Experiment along with the Stanford Prison Experiment helped provide the different conditions as to why some people would lean into doing some awful deeds and intentionally harm others.
The lack of supervision and having a sense of anonymity is one of the factors as to why people take the power they have and start to abuse it. One clear example of this is the horrors that took place in Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib was the prison that introduced the world to the violent reality of torture in the war on terror. In 2004, when photos came out revealing how “prisoners [were] on leashes” and the “bodies [were] piled atop each other in pyramid structure” along with “prisoners standing in crucifixion-like postures” it was a wake-up call to the brutality they suffered (Hilal). The entire world was shocked at how vicious and how severely the prisoners were tormented. To go into further details, the military on-site at Abu Ghraib wore masks which indicated a sense of relinquishing responsibility—one of the aforementioned pictures included a prison guard with a clown painted on his face. Another picture showed how the prisoners were dehumanized by being herded together and stripped down. Sound familiar? Zimbardo delves deep into this incident and tries to break down what made the soldiers treat the prisoners the way they did. There’s no denying there are bad apples, in this case, the soldiers who took their abuse to the extreme. In particular U.S. Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick is now “serving eight years in prison” for charges of abuse “including dereliction of duty, assault, and committing an indecent act” (Mbugua). Though he was a “bad apple” Zimbardo argues the “power is in the system” and that unless “systemic forces [...] like those that existed in Abu Ghraib are recognized and changed, imprisonment alone will never eliminate the problem of evil behavior and there will always be a bad apple at the bottom of the barrel” (“The Psychology of Evil”; Mbugua). There is also no ignoring how the external factors made it so that everyone was turning an eye to this atrocity; however, the supervision and unchecked power in the system that “create[d] the situation that corrupt[ed] the individuals” (“The Psychology of Evil”). Another, less horrific example of this condition can be seen in the dark-romantic novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Mr. Prynne creates an identity for himself that is not only respectable but also gives him the power of staying anonymous. He wants to stay anonymous and goes around introducing himself as Roger Chillingworth who has no introduction other than “the learning and intelligence” that he “possessed more than a common measure” and he continues on to become a trusted doctor of the town (Hawthorne 106). Not only that, but he also ends up living with the troubled minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, who secretly spies and keeps tabs on him. And since no one knows of his true being (apart from Hester) there is the power of anonymity and knowing the fact that his reputation as Mr. Prynne is still intact. His lust for vengeance and finding the truth of Dimmesdale and Hester’s affair put him in conditions where he psychologically torments and awaits his physical demise. His goal was that “all th[e] guilty sorrow” that Dimmesdale had was “to be revealed to him,” not to mention the fact he reveled in being the “one trusted friend” of his as this allowed him to violate Dimmesdale’s innermost dark thoughts (Hawthorne 125). In both cases, the power of staying anonymous, being “just an undifferentiated other” and having the opportunity for the “diffusion of responsibility [...] for negative outcomes” are reasons why seemingly normal people can be put in conditions where they act horrifically (Lucifer Effect 301, 274).
Authority plays a key role in why people behave the way they do. When there is an authoritative presence, it dictates the circumstances and conditions of the situation. In American history, the 50s and 60s were extraordinary times. Especially with how advanced we were becoming but also how we continued to stay the same in some respects. The McCarthy era, a popular name for the decade had people in hysteria and accusing others of being communists. It all began when Senator Joseph McCarthy made baseless claims that more than two hundred members of the Communist party had crept into the US government. “He had no proof” and yet this led to many claims that “ruined lives and led to increased hostility” (Lorcher). High-level Hollywood actors, directors, and filmmakers were being deported out of the country due to the simple mention of their supposed connection to the Communist party. “The word socialism was all but taboo,” Arthur Miller states; Miller was a prominent playwright who was called out before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was then ostracized (Are You Now Or Were You Ever). He says that the “anti-communist rage” eventually “threatened to reach hysterical proportion” which was a concerning observation to make at a time when the world should have been advancing (Are You Now Or Were You Ever). In short, Communism was a poison that infected the country and spread like wildfire thanks to people who did not stand up to McCarthy and believed the baseless claims. Likewise, in Miller’s play The Crucible a mendacious group of girls pointed accusatory fingers at many important figures in their puritan society. The girls lead many to imprisonment and eventual hangings on the unsubstantiated claim that some were practicing witchcraft. The court inherently allowed the power to get to the girls since they in a sense had power over everyone else. The presiding judge, Judge Danforth, comes into a dilemma; he could either continue to believe the girls or on the off chance that they’re lying, admit that these trials were based on a personal vendetta. It is hard for Danforth to come to the latter conclusion seeing as he says “I should hang ten thousand that dared to rise against the law, and an ocean of salt tears could not melt the resolution of the statutes” (The Crucible 129). This proves insight into how the court had to be strict on any accusation made since witchcraft was a major sin in their strict Puritan beliefs. Similarly, the US government was very harsh on the people with any relation with the Soviet and any link to communism. This draws back to the Milgram Experiment and what Milgram had to say about obedience and authority. He said that “ordinary people are likely to follow authority even to the extent of killing an innocent human being” (McLeod). And as we saw in the Stanford Experiment, people are likely to take things to the next level in the right conditions.
Scarlet Letter and The Crucible are literary pieces of historical fiction that have polarizing characters, some of which cross a line and become evil of some sort. The social science research of Zimbardo and Milgram can help explain why these seemingly normal characters do such terrible deeds. Moreover, apart from literature, we can see these patterns in history itself. The Abu Ghraib horrors paralleled with Zimbardo’s prison experiment in which the power lay with the authority who took it too far with their prisoners. Sergeant Ivan Frederick paralleled with Chillingworth in their similar way of using anonymity to abuse others. The McCarthy era paralleled with the Salem Witch Trials where a community in hysteria is willing to sentence others to death on baseless claims. Polarizing characters such as Judge Danforth with his proceedings can also be understood through the conditions set forth by the various experiments. Milgram and Zimbardo have done immense work and have helped shed light on this complex matter of humanity. If people are capable of evil actions, they also have it in them to do extremely good, selfless, and pure-intentioned actions.
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