In 1971 one of the most famous psychological studies was cut short after only a few days. In the basement of Stanford University, professor Philip Zimbardo administered an experiment that had ordinary volunteers get segmented into prisoners and prison guards. Over the course of this period, the prison guards increasingly wielded their power with recklessness and sadism. Before long, physical abuse caused Zimbardo to shut everything down.
What became known as the Stanford prison experiment was the basis for Zimbardo's work as a consultant on Abu Ghraib prison in the Iraq war among numerous books and lectures.
From his research, it is clear that one is not born evil, but rather circumstances create an environment where evil acts are possible. According to Zimbardo's logic, anyone can do evil at any time if the circumstances are right.
Avoiding Our Inner Nature
While sadism and the experiences of rape and murder are the worst atrocities we can dream of, more common evil (and certainly less intense) is part of our every day lives. Given certain circumstances we are all able to commit daily evils that we would rather not. According to Rick Console Jr "...ordinary people have been the source of 98% of my legal cases. These were not evil people, but they did evil things..." Nobody is safe from committing acts of evil if we do not take the necessary precautions.
1. Care with wording - One thing that we can do to prevent the spread of evil from within ourselves is to simply be careful with how we word things. The most troublesome and evil acts of the 20th century have come from a process of dehumanization. In Nazi Germany the Jews were often dehumanized, the same was true in Communist China, Rwanda, and a host of other places.
The way we speak about an ethnic group, race, or gender influences and shows how we act towards them. By ensuring that we do not create an us vs. them mentality, we will prevent evil from happening on a large scale. This might be with regard to entire nations, as we have described, or with regard to your co-workers at the office.
2. Celebrate heroism - The second important thing that we can do to prevent the rise of evil in our daily lives is to celebrate acts of heroism. Most news media outlets focus on only the evil, which creates a world in which we think evil is constantly surrounding us.
When someone goes into a shopping mall to shoot victims before killing himself, the person is often seeking significance that can be achieved through media coverage after death. This is the type of behavior we must dissuade by celebrating heroism as opposed to the evils perpetrated by these individuals.