The Lucifer Effect - Philip Zimbardo

http://www.lucifereffect.com/ - Dr. Zimbardo is the Stanford psych professor (recently retired) who designed and carried out the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) for a week in the 70s. This book is a look back at that experiment - and a day by day account of what exactly went on. Zimbardo then analyzes what he believes went wrong in an attempt to understand "how good people turn evil." Zimbardo's basic premise (which I think many people believe, but often forget when judging situations) is that people are not inherently "evil" or "bad seeds", but rather each person has the potential for good or evil and it is situations that define/shape actions. Zimbardo does not argue that people are thus not responsible for their evil acts, but rather looks at how people in authority positions must take responsibility for the situations they create (and Zimbardo repeatedly falls on his sword for his part in creating the SPE, how he got sucked into the "experiment," and his short-comings in potentially harming many of the participants), and ensure safeguards that protect against evil. Zimbardo then applies the lessons of the SPE to the abuses/torture at Abu Ghraib - again arguing that this was not, as the government would like us to believe, the result of seven bad actors acting independently and without orders, but rather the result of a system that does not protect against such things. He then ends, on a happier note, with an analysis of heroes and what defines heroism. This is an incredibly fascinating book - I enjoyed reading about the SPE, after hearing so much about it for years. Zimbardo's research is also directly applicable to a lot of the work I do - understanding the situations that caused my clients to do horrible things, and also understanding the prisoner/guard world they live in now. Zimbardo's book often reads like a textbook, which can make for some tough reading (though I felt he went to great lengths to make it understandable by non-psych folks, and it is not filled with jargon, which I appreciated). Overall, though, I think this is a really important book for everyone to read - just a baseline for understanding human behavior, for helping us all to become more sympathetic, and to hopefully help us all avoid becoming evil in certain situations (even if we all think there's no way we ever would). Dr. Zimbardo was nothing less than a cult phenomenon when I was an undergraduate - as a result I couldn't bring myself to jump on the bandwagon and take a class from him. It is one of my biggest regrets about my time at Stanford - so, I am very pleased to be able to enjoy his research now, so many years later.