Introduction
People typically adopt the rules of the organization where they work as a guide for their actions, which allows them to feel that they are not responsible for many things around them. For example, an individual might prefer to follow the corporate rules instead of showing humanism and empathy because they are at the workplace. From the perspective of corporate ethics, this approach is justified and logical (Goodman et al., 1994).
However, sociological experiments, such as the Stanford Prison Experiment, have shown that people can lose their humanity when they feel they represent the organization’s will. The conditions can turn moral and good people into evil ones who can torment others without remorse. Numerous examples in everyday reality demonstrate how human nature can change depending on the situation and the effects of higher-order systems.
Description of the Lucifer Effect
The Stanford Prison Experiment illustrates the power of an organization to influence an individual. In “The Lucifer Effect,” Zimbardo discusses his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment and its relevance to the 2003 Abu Ghraib prison abuses. It tells how ordinary, average students were transformed into hostile, sadistic guards or submissive, helpless, and emotionally traumatized captives performing the roles in the fake prison set up in the Stanford University dungeon (Zimbardo, 2008). Therefore, the book illustrates how a typically good person becomes brutally evil, or Lucifer changes into Satan.
At the same time, Zimbardo demonstrates how this metamorphosis is feasible and how systemically maintained group dynamics and environmental circumstances impact human behavior to produce monsters out of otherwise decent individuals. The author gives examples from history when the entire nation participated in the genocide, and they believed they were doing the right thing when they killed others (Zimbardo, 2008). People who believe they follow their ideology can torment others easily (Scott-Bottoms, 2020). It is possible to say that in such situations, the person’s inner nature is altered, and the individual becomes more brutal than they were in everyday contexts. Higher orders become the excuse for people when they torment or kill others, allowing them to preserve their feeling of righteousness.
Since they are unwilling to acknowledge how easily situational circumstances could sway them, people frequently underestimate the influence of external factors. This phenomenon can be referred to as a fundamental attribution error (Zimbardo, 2008). Institutional aggression, mass murders, and genocides have shown that violence results from a context rather than being caused by dispositional variables. The finding that factors outside of human self-perception influence their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is a significant contribution of social psychology to the understanding of human nature (Goodman et al., 1994). It states that the strength of the social environment is one of these powerful forces.
Conclusion
Anyone can be persuaded to act against their best interests, especially if they obtain official approval. The Holocaust was not carried out by extremists but by everyday citizens who followed the law and were seen acting generally (Zimbardo, 2008). This idea is refuted by the Lucifer Effect, which contends that people behave inhumanely because outside forces influence them, the circumstances of a given scenario, and often by a flawed system that supports pathological conduct.
The Stanford Prison Experiment shows that most people can become evil if the situation demands it. Receiving orders from the authorities, believing in the ideological necessity of cruelty, makes people forget about humanism and their inclinations. The examples from corporate behavior and history found in the texts by Goodman et al. and Zimbardo illustrate these assumptions regarding the forces influencing human conduct and morality.
References
Goodman, M., Kemeny, J., & Roberts, C. (1994). The language of systems thinking: “Links” and “loops.” In P. M. Senge (Eds.), The fifth discipline fieldbook: Strategies and tools for building a learning organization (pp. 113-148). Currency.
Scott-Bottoms, S. (2020). The dirty work of the Stanford Prison Experiment: Re-reading the dramaturgy of coercion. Incarceration, 1(1).
Zimbardo, P. (2008). The Lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. Random House Trade Paperbacks.