The Rationale Behind the Idea of Evil Essay

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controversy with regard to the inherent nature of people, as one would often like to prefer that people are inherently good and that it is only in exceptional circumstances that they become evil. Moreover, people like to believe that it would be impossible for themselves to become evil, with an immoral nature only being characteristic to certain individuals that are very different from the rest of the population.

The Lucifer Effect is a theory discussing with regard to seemingly normal people who resort to performing gruesome acts as a consequence of the environment that they have been exposed to. The case of Seargent John M. Russell is a good example of a person who becomes evil due to the circumstances of their environment. While most people would be inclined to believe that the Seargent gave little to no evidence of being mentally deranged prior to the shooting of five American Soldiers, conditions are more complicated than it appears.

Philip Zimbardo discusses with regard to the Lucifer Effect in-depth and makes it possible to understand the forces behind the process influencing good people to take on evil attitudes. Zimbardo created the Stanford Prison Experiment and devised conditions where good people were exposed to bad situations.

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His initial intention was to determine whether or not someone would react against the tendency to do good in conditions where the respective individual is stressed. The good people in his study were provided with the opportunity to become guards and to look after a complex of pretend prisoners. The guards rapidly devised a system where prisoners would be treated with little to no respect and where the simple idea of a guard turned into that of a tyrant. It is intriguing to observe how these people had little contact with the idea of a guard before and yet imposed laws that they considered to be perfectly normal given the circumstances.

In addition to guards becoming increasingly violent and susceptible to engage in immoral acts, prisoners themselves had reportedly become self-oriented in an attempt to ensure their well-being in the prison. These people acknowledged that they had more chances to succeed if they befriended guards and concentrated on doing everything in their power in order to survive. While in this situation it seems clear why people became less interested in their counterparts, conditions are very different when considering guards. They had the resources needed for them to create a non-violent….....

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