The Psychology of Evil: The Lucifer Effect in Action

Prof. Philip Zimbardo, the conductor of the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, has become a leading authority on the psychology of evil.

Julian Sanchez

Julian Sanchez is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and studies issues at the busy intersection of technology, privacy, and civil liberties, with a particular focus on national security and intelligence surveillance. Before joining Cato, Sanchez served as the Washington editor for the technology news site Ars Technica, where he covered surveillance, intellectual property, and telecom policy.

Philip Zimbardo
Will Wilkinson

Will Wilkinson is a Canadian American libertarian writer and former research fellow and managing editor at the Cato Institute. His political philosophy is described by The American Conservative magazine as “Rawlsekian,” a mixture of John Rawls’s principles and Friedrich von Hayek’s methods.

Featuring the author, Philip Zimbardo, Stanford University, with comments by Julian Sanchez, Reason, and Will Wilkinson, Cato Institute. Prof. Philip Zimbardo, the conductor of the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, has become a leading authority on the psychology of evil: How is it that people are induced to commit evil, even when they consider themselves "good" people? What social dynamics encourage—or discourage—cruelty toward other human beings? The Lucifer Effect offers a full reconstruction of the 1971 experiment based on archival video, subject diaries, exit interviews, and other contemporary material. It then gives an introduction to the psychology of social morality as it has developed over the years. The book culminates with an examination of the prisoner abuse scandals of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere, challenging accounts that would hold individual soldiers solely responsible for their actions, and indicting the chain of command for knowingly creating conditions that would lead to degrading treatment and torture.