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The “Lucifer Effect” describes the point in time when an ordinary, normal person first crosses the boundary between good and evil to engage in an evil action.

— Philip Zimbardo

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More quotes by Philip Zimbardo

I summarize more than 30 years of research on factors that can create a "perfect storm" which leads good people to engage in evil actions.

In his introduction to his site on The Lucifer Effect (2007)

Whether we consider Nazi Germany or Abu Ghraib prison, there were many people who observed what was happening and said nothing.

Research has shown that the bystander effect is often motivated by diffusion of responsibility, when different people witnessing an emergency all assume someone else will help.

We're going to take away their individuality in various ways. In general what all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness. That is, in this situation we'll have all the power and they'll have none.

Stanford prison experiment (1971)

All Philip Zimbardo quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Philip Zimbardo (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.