The Lucifer Effect

Social psychologist Philip Zimbardo asks how ordinary, decent people come to commit cruel acts. His answer is that situations, institutional systems and pressure from a group shape behavior far more than most people like to admit.

He builds the argument around the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, which he led, and recounts the study in detail. From there he moves to Abu Ghraib, where one of the guards had Zimbardo as an expert witness.

The evidence is not limited to those two cases. Zimbardo draws on social psychology research and on historical examples of obedience, conformity and abuse of power. The book works as an overview of the field as well as one researcher's account of his own work.

The final section turns to resistance. Zimbardo looks at what lets some people hold out against these pressures. He then argues for what he calls the heroic imagination: training can prepare ordinary people to act well even when the circumstances push them toward the opposite.

In 2008 the Society for General Psychology gave the book its William James Book Award. It suits readers curious about why good people do bad things, and whether that can be prevented.