Pennsylvania prison guards accused of arranging fights between inmates | The Raw Story

A perfect example of the Zimbardo Prison Study (1973), in which Zimbardo was interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards or had more to do with the prison environment. Or specifically what Zimbardo called the "Lucifer Effect" in his 2007 book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil,,,

Zimbardo's book, The Lucifer Effect,gets its title from the metamorphosis of Lucifer into Satan. According to Christian theology, Lucifer was once God's favorite angel until he challenged God's authority and was cast into Hell with all the other fallen angels. Thus, Zimbardo derives this title to explain how good people turn evil. Zimbardo's main assumption on why good people do awful things is due to situational influences and power given from authority.

The Lucifer Effect was written in response to his findings in the Stanford Prison Experiment. Zimbardo believes that personality characteristics could play a role in how violent or submissive actions are manifested. In the book, Zimbardo says that humans cannot be defined as "good" or "evil" because we have the ability to act as both especially at the hand of the situation. According to Zimbardo, "Good people can be induced, seduced, and initiated into behaving in evil ways. They can also be led to act in irrational, stupid, self-destructive, antisocial, and mindless ways when they are immersed in 'total situations' that impact human nature in ways that challenge our sense of the stability and consistency of individual personality, of character, and of morality."

This "incident" highlights a point made by Steve Hassan, the importance of understanding the Asch Conformity Study, the Milgram Experiment on Obedience to Authority Figures and the above mentioned Stanford Prison Experiment.

Pennsylvania prison guards accused of arranging fights between inmates | The Raw Story