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the 7 habits of highly devilish people
You can become an evil person without noticing it. It just happens. Gordon B. Hinckley was fond of using stories to describe this process. At the closing of the 1984 April General Conference, he said “As we are about to separate, I should like to emphasize the importance of watching the little things in our lives. Have you ever noticed a large gate in a farm fence? As you open it or close it there appears to be very little movement at the hinge. But there is great movement at the perimeter”.
The world-renowned psychologist Philip George Zimbardo summarizes in his book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (Random House, 2007) more than 30 years of research on factors that can create a “perfect storm” which leads good people to engage in evil actions. This transformation of human character is what he calls the “Lucifer Effect,” named after God’s favorite angel, Lucifer, who fell from grace and ultimately became Satan.
Rather than providing a religious analysis, however, he offers a psychological account of how ordinary people sometimes turn evil and commit unspeakable acts. As part of this account, The Lucifer Effect tells the full story behind the Stanford Prison Experiment, a now-classic study he conducted in 1971. In that study, normal college students were randomly assigned to play the role of guard or inmate for two weeks in a simulated prison, yet the guards quickly became so brutal that the experiment had to be shut down after only six days.
In a recent article entitled “Evil’s seven step seduction scenario”, Zimbardo gives a quick overview of what I personally think are the seven habits of highly devilish people:
1. To stand idle on the sideline
passive tolerance of evil through inaction, or indifference
2. To keep as close as possible to your ideals, but not quite
mindlessly taking the first small step
3. To respect authorities and be obedient to rules
blind obedience to authority
4. To share the blame
diffusion of personal responsibility
5. To be a team player
de-individuation of self (anonymity)
6. To value your tribe and other like-minded people over others
dehumanization of others
7. To justify your actions with appeal to a higher ideology
uncritical conformity to group norms
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