The genius is on the left, the lunatic is on the right

Chapter 14 The Lucifer Effect

"Good guy", "bad guy", "good" and "evil", don't these words with opposite meanings have a clear distinction in your mind?For example, it is difficult for good and evil to coexist in the same person; for example, it is not easy for a good person to become a bad person, and it is even more difficult for a bad person to become a good person?
In people's moral concepts, fixed thinking is just like this, just like we all hope that the world is black and white, but the famous American psychologist Philip Zimbardo has severely poured water on the heads of all people who believe in the distinction between good and evil. A basin of cold water, his famous "Stanford Prison Experiment" not only pushed the title of "good guy" to the abyss, but also overturned many people's belief in kindness.

1971 8 Month 14 Day.

It was a Sunday, people who slept late were still dreaming, a burst of alarm bells pierced the tranquility of the morning, the police car drove to the door of Tommy's house, the police knocked on the door and showed Tommy an arrest warrant.College student Tommy has been arrested for a serious crime!Arriving at the police station, after completing the relevant procedures, Tommy was blindfolded and sent to Stanford Prison. At this time, he was still a little half asleep.

What Tommy didn't know was that at this time, there were eight other college students who were in the same situation as him. They were also brought to the prison in the early morning. They were forced to strip naked, sprayed with disinfectant, and then turned into A "prisoner" with no name, no characteristics, and only a number as the code.

What crime did Tommy and eight others commit?

In fact, they just signed up to participate in the prison life experiment designed and hosted by Stanford University professor Philip Zimbardo. Before that, they didn't know how the experiment was going to be carried out. two weeks.

For this experiment, Zimbardo also recruited other personnel. In order to more realistically reflect the scene of prison life, he designed nine prisoners, nine prison guards, and six alternate personnel.

When the other nine college students who played prison guards were in place, the "Stanford Prison Experiment" officially began.

Nine "prisoners" were put in prison. They wore prison uniforms with numbers on the back and shackles on their feet, which made them look more realistic and it was easier for the subjects to enter the role.

The nine prison guards were all dressed up, complete with batons and handcuffs.Before "on duty", they did not receive any professional guidance on the work of prison guards, and all their knowledge came from film and television programs and books.Zimbardo's request to them is: "What they do is as close to the truth as possible, to maintain the law and order of the prison, but it cannot be enforced through violence, and of course there is no need to pay too much attention to the 'nonsense' of the prisoners. "

This day is spent in the process of allocating cells and adapting to roles.There was no problem between the two groups of subjects.

After waking up in the morning, the prison guard found that some prisoners had not folded their quilts. He immediately punished the prisoners by doing 30 push-ups on the spot, and the atmosphere suddenly became tense.Perhaps because they couldn't adapt to themselves and had become "prisoners", the nine subjects shrank in their cells, unwilling to accept corporal punishment.

However, the silent protest obviously had no practical effect. Instead, it angered the prison guards. To show their authority, the prison guards picked up fire extinguishers and sprayed them on the criminals, then rushed into the cells and handcuffed the prisoners' feet to the legs of the beds.Another prisoner was dragged directly into the confinement room...

After the prison guards finished punishing him, a prisoner collapsed. He cried loudly, shouting "I can't take it anymore, I want to get out", and banged his head on the door of the cell desperately.

Zimbardo also had no way of judging whether the subject was acting or really had a mental breakdown, but in order to ensure the safety of the subject, he decided to replace the subject and continue the experiment with a substitute.

Because the prisoners did not cooperate, the prison guards implemented a new punishment method: the prisoners were not allowed to go to the toilet.So the whole prison became a pigsty, filled with stench.All the prisoners huddled listlessly in their cell, including the newly replaced subject.At this time, the experimenter let out the wind, saying that the subject who was replaced would take extraordinary measures to help the inmates escape from prison, which made the prison guards very nervous, and even a little panicked.

Three inmates developed stress symptoms, babbling and becoming agitated, while another developed a rash when he heard that his parole application had been rejected.

The bored prison guards began to torture the prisoners in different ways. They forced the prisoners who only wore prison uniforms but no underwear to play the game of "jumping goat", and made the prisoners carry two people on their backs to do push-ups.These punishments are not only about physical torture, but also about dignity.

Another prisoner developed hysterical symptoms and was substituted.Within these three days, five subjects had been replaced.

These subjects playing the role of prison guards seem to have been "guided by God". They have come up with many amazing ways to punish the prisoners. In order to maintain order, it is just to make the prison guards happy and pass the boring time.

Zimbardo did not expect all this. He was under great pressure and was very worried about the psychological state of the subjects who played the role of prisoners.At this time, his girlfriend came to visit him. When the girlfriend saw the behavior of the prison guards in the surveillance, she was very emotional. She said angrily to Zimbardo: "God, what are you doing? You will destroy these boys. .”

This added to Zimbardo's anxiety.But he was very reluctant to suspend the experiment. After all, it contained his years of hard work in research.However, there was an unbearable scene in the monitoring screen at this time. The prison guards even forced the prisoners to imitate the mating movements of animals.Seeing these prison guards waving batons with unfamiliar and hideous expressions, Zimbardo finally decided to give up.

Early in the morning, Zimbardo announced the end of the experiment.All subjects were released from prison and returned to their normal identities.

This experiment ended nine days earlier than expected.Although not all the steps designed for the experiment were completed, many incidents have actually explained the problem very well. The performance of the subjects confirmed Zimbardo's inner theory, but it was the last thing he wanted or wanted to see.

The brain-burning logic of a genius or a madman
Professor Zimbardo's experiments are shocking, even a bit chilling. However, it is he who really brought this originally unknown or unacknowledged psychological secret to the stage of scientific research.

Professor Zimbardo revealed an important fact from this experiment, good people can also become bad people, and the transformation speed is very fast and the change is very thorough.He believes that this change has nothing to do with our innate personality, but is closely related to the environment at that time.

When a "good person" becomes a "bad person", it is impossible to completely subvert one's moral judgment and bottom line in an instant, but the behavior of "becoming bad" is intensifying, and in the end, these "becoming bad" People" often don't think of themselves as "bad people" and can come up with many reasons to support their own ideas.

So, how did "evil" invade?And how does the individual slowly accept this evil, and finally turn black into white?

When the Nazis brutally slaughtered the Jews, there was a special occupation in the Nazi barracks called "Nazi doctor".This is a particularly subversive profession. Doctors who usually work hard to save people come to concentration camps to kill people with poisonous gas and poisonous needles.

At the beginning, when the Nazi doctors entered the concentration camp to perform their tasks, they were also very confused. Why they were sent here, instead of saving the wounded, seriously ill, and infected lingering lives in the concentration camp, let them die in pain one by one. Woolen cloth?How could the person who ordered them do such a cruel thing?
However, when they started killing people, they began to slowly give themselves some "reasonable" reasons. To put it bluntly, this is self-deception and self-paralysis. They comforted themselves: "Anyway, once you enter the concentration camp, it will no longer be possible. If I had the opportunity to go out, I saw them living in it worse than livestock, letting them die should be a relief for them, and when they reach heaven, they should be happy."

Reassurances like these kept circling in the minds of the Nazi doctors and gradually became reasonable, so the massacre was no longer a massacre, but a moral task.But this rationality is not continuous. Every time they perform a task, they will still be tortured by their inner morality, and then use self-comfort to overcome morality. This is actually a kind of division.

Use constant splits to maintain psychological balance, because splits cannot be healed, so you need to pull more "reasonable explanations" to comfort yourself, and slowly, a normal person with a sense of right and wrong and morality will lose free will.

Borrowing from the story of the devil Satan, the effect of this psychological change is named "Lucifer effect".

(End of this chapter)