Nothing Ever Happens

I read the interview for Wired (with horror pictures from Abu Ghraib) with Stanford psychology professor emeritus Philip Zimbardo, who’s new book The Lucifer Effect summarizes more than 30 years of research on factors that can create a “perfect storm” which leads good people to engage in evil actions. And then there his hope on how we can educate people to learn to take action:

“To be a hero you have to take action on behalf of someone else or some principle and you have to be deviant in your society, because the group is always saying don’t do it; don’t step out of line. Heroes have to always, at the heroic decisive moment, break from the crowd and do something different.

But a heroic act involves a risk.. Most heroes are more effective when they’re social heroes rather than isolated heroes. A single person or even two can get dismissed by the system. But once you have three people, then it’s the start of an opposition. So what I’m trying to promote is not only the importance of each individual thinking “I’m a hero” and waiting for the right situation to come along in which I will act on behalf of some people or some principle, but also, “I’m going to learn the skills to influence other people to join me in that heroic action.”

Prof. Zimbardo pioneered work on social influences (with his infamous Stanford prison experiment partly inspired by the groundbreaking Milgram experiment).

The Wired Interview
Book Synopsis
www.zimbardo.com
www.lucifereffect.com