A presentation I gave for university course aptly named "Presentation Skills" – It's mostly based on Phil Zimbardo's insightful book "The Lucifer Effect".
More info on the website: LuciferEffect.org and link to http://www.LuciferEffect.org/
Look for him presenting on TED.com.
24. But not us.
We would never do
anything like this.
It‘s not in us normal people.
25. In the last 100 years
50 million people
were systematically killed.
By government decrees and
people who executed them.
26. Our century of genocides
could not be perpetrated
by psychopaths, sadists,
sociopaths alone.
27. Now what if a monster were
not a monster at all?
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
Political Theorist and Philosopher
28. Adolf Eichmann was in
charge of the mass
deportation and killing
of Jews.
He was responsible for
millions killed.
In 1960 Israel captured
Eichmann and brought
him to trial.
Psychologists concluded
he was mentally healthy.
Adolf Eichmann
29. "He did his duty...; he not
only obeyed orders, he also
obeyed the law."
Adolf Eichmann at his trial
31. "The great evils in history
generally, and the Holocaust
in particular, were not
executed by fanatics or
sociopaths but rather by
ordinary people who
accepted the premises of
their state and therefore
participated with the view
that their actions were
normal."
32. ...did his duty...
Former Austrian President Kurt Waldheim (middle) was SA intellligence officer and must have
Adolf Hitler private
had knowledge about deportations of 40.000 people.
35. From Good to Evil
Understanding transformation of people
✦ Dispositional (Inside of Individual)
✦ Situational (External)
✦ Systemic (Broad influences: political,
economic, legal power, cultural
background)
41. Starts with 15 volt
Learner starts
screaming
Asks to be released
Claims heart
condition
Falls silent
Ends with 450 Volt
Warning: Deadly shock
42. So how many people would
kill the learner?
Colleagues estimated (based on the percentage of people
with violent psychological predispositions) the number
would be around 2 %.
43. Two thirds would torture
and eventually kill.
450 Volt Ended Experiment
35 %
65 %
No difference between men and women.
44. Milgram proved how easy
normal, decent people can be
coerced into sadistic, deadly
behavior.
The experiment was repeated this year in the UK for a
BBC TV documentary. The results were the same.
51. ✦ Experiment took up life of its own
✦ Situation worsened daily
✦ Nervous breakdowns of prisoners
within 36 hours
✦ Sexual abuse (simulated sex) after
5 days
✦ After 6 days the experiment had to
be terminated.
52. Within hours good college
students had turned into
sadistic perpetrators of evil.
53.
54. If the
Stanford Prison Experiment
was the verification by
experiment,
then Abu Ghraib was the
observation in real life.
63. The Road to Evil
✦ Mindlessly taking the first step
✦ Dehumanization
✦ De-Individuation
✦ Diffusion of Personal Responsibility
✦ Blind Obedience to Authority
✦ Uncritical Conformity to Group Norms
✦ Passive Tolerance of Evil Through
Inaction or Indifference
64. Another aspect of
the Lucifer Effect:
The factors not only
lead to evil. Evil Good
We can change
the direction.
Inaction
66. We don‘t need to aspire
being like the traditional
heroes who devoted all
their life to a cause.
67. We don‘t need our fantasy
heroes and their unrealistic
abilities as rolemodels.
68. Banality of Heroism
as counterpoint to the
Banality of Evil.
Ordinary people do
heroic deeds.
69. Christine Maslach
walked into the
Stanford Prison
Experiment and told
Philip Zambardo,
„You have to stop
what you are doing
to these boys.“
She was the only
visitor to say this.