Looking at the Stanford Prison Experiment this week was interesting but perplexing. I had heard many details about the experiment previously, but it was interesting to hear it from Zimbardo himself, and the way he saw this experiment. Putting aside the shocking lack of proper ethics used in this experiment, there seems to be one issue in the way the experiment was set up. Zimbardo hints that he expected the guards in his study to abuse their position of power to oppress and harass the prisoners. The idea of demand characteristics was brought up in our class discussion, and it had been something I had wondered when reading about the experiment. Did the orientation that the guards received when entering the experiment shape the way the guards mistreated the prisoners? Despite the ambiguity that was supposed to be created in the role of the guards, there may have been just enough of a suggestion that the guards could harass and demean the prisoners in order to create a sense of authority and order among the prisoners.

A series of studies by Bartels (2019) examined the effects of a prison guard orientation on the expected behavior of participants who were assigned as guards in a hypothetical recreation of the Stanford Prison Experiment. For each study, a group of men were recruited and told that they were assigned to be guards in the study and were given one of two orientations. The first orientation, referred to as the Stanford group, were told some of the expectations for guards and prisoners, such that guards can create boredom, frustration, and fear, and the prisoners would not take things seriously. In comparison, the control group was told about the provision such as the food given to prisoners, and the living arrangements of the guards and prisoners. When asked about the expected behavior of the guards, those in the Stanford group expected more negative behavior, such as oppression and hostility from both themselves and from other guards, and expected less positive behavior, such as being friendly or fair. They also reported that the experimenters expected more negative behavior from the guards. These results were replicated in a second, identical study. In the last study, they added more information about the prisoners to each group, such as the smocks and nylon caps they would wear, and that they would be placed in cells with chains on their ankles. They were also showed a scenario where prisoners were provoking the guards and laughing when they were supposed to be reciting the rules, as occurred in the actual Stanford experiment, and asked how they would respond. Those in the Stanford group were more likely to respond with hostility or anger than those in the control group. This study shows the importance of removing the expectations of the experimenters to prevent influencing the behavior of the participants. This also questions the validity of the Stanford Prison Experiment.

               If demand characteristics were not involved in the way that the guards acted, then where did they get this idea of an abusive prison guard? Out of those locked up in prison and those ensuring their detainment, how are the guards the ones who were the perpetrators of abuse, and the prisoners became the victim. Shows like Orange is The New Black show that there are prison guards who go mad with power, but there are those who see the prisoners as people and treat them as such, despite the pressure to maintain authority, such as. Has the media created a hostile image of prison guards, did the ‘guards’ take advantage of their position of power, were they just bored and used the prisoners for their entertainment, or were they acting according to what they thought Zimbardo expected from them? There are multiple factors that could have led to such a concerning conclusion to the experiment.

Bartels, J. (2019). Revisiting the stanford prison experiment, again: Examining demand characteristics in the guard orientation. The Journal of Social Psychology, 159(6), 780-790. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy1.lib.trentu.ca/10.1080/00224545.2019.1596058

               This week we covered a lot of topics both in our readings, presentations, and our discussion. The question that stood out to me is how hate escalates within a group to the point of mass violence such as Ku Klux Klan or even the Nazi Party. According to Baumeister, there are many factors. A group can start out small and relatively harmless, for example, the KKK started out as something like a fraternity that played pranks on black citizens. These acts somehow escalated until they were responsible for violence and murders due to racism and extremist views. Baumeister explains that when in a group of relatively like-minded people, the ideas and opinions in the group can become amplified in a particular direction when there is overall outward agreement due to the need to fit in and agree with others. This may not fit with each individual’s thoughts within the group, but individuals who disagree are less likely to share their thoughts out of fear of rejection or punishment, so even when there are multiple people who disagree, they will continue to outwardly show support to fit in.

               A construct that addresses this phenomenon is the groupthink model that Baumeister briefly mentions attempts to explain the widespread obedience and agreement within a group. An older study by Ahlfinger and Esser examined the role of leadership in groupthink and conformity. Groupthink is defined as a need for unanimous agreement within a group when making decisions and planning actions. Symptoms of groupthink are an overestimation of the group and its strengths, closemindedness, and pressure to conform to the group. They ran an experiment where they categorized members and grouped them based on high or low levels of conformity predisposition. They assigned one participant from each group as a the leader, and the leader was trained to either be promotional, where they openly share their opinion and strongly encourage a unanimous decision, or they were trained to be nonpromotional, where they withheld their own opinion and encouraged everyone to give their own opinion. The groups were then given a problem-solving task with a hypothetical scenario and were observed and timed by the researchers who coded for different symptoms of groupthink. They found that the level of conformity predisposition was not related to groupthink symptoms, but leadership style was. Those who had a promotional leader reported more self-censorship, brought up fewer facts, and made a decision faster. This could explain why such large groups can make drastic and sometimes violent decisions during conflict. The members of the group, regardless of their conformity predisposition, may be pressured by a leader to conform and outwardly agree with the leader’s thoughts despite their own thoughts and opinions. The group believes then that everyone must agree, causing the group to make quicker decisions with less information due to the silence of group members who oppose these decisions.

Outside influences also lead to this escalation, because bystanders and authorities who do not interfere act as a catalyst for these groups or people to continue because they know they won’t be confronted until it’s too late to make a difference. Something that stood out to me was when Baumeister explained that during the Holocaust, after each escalating step the Nazis took with their plans for genocide, they paused to gauge the reaction of the rest of the world. When there was no backlash or confrontation from the rest of the world, they took this as confirmation that they weren’t doing anything wrong, or that they would at least not face opposition from others. When our conversation turned to the idea of eugenics, around the possibility of removing evil as a gene or disorder, and the lines that we should or should not cross, I thought about this. The line between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is not a line crossed in a single step, doing something ‘evil’ is the often the result of a continuous escalation of increasingly horrible deeds. When people fail to stop someone at the earlier steps, they are encouraged to keep going with their acts because they know they won’t be opposed or stopped.

               A show that reminds me of this is You, which shows a gradual escalation of increasingly horrible deeds (spoilers ahead for the first season). Joe starts out as creepy and somewhat questionable at the beginning of the show but would not be characterized as “pure evil”, using social media to stalk a girl he likes. From there, his acts become more and more questionable. He breaks into people’s houses, then escalates to kidnapping the girl’s boyfriend which eventually leads to murder, and after this he continues with a string of escalating murders. There was no single step for Joe between being a decent, if somewhat creepy, guy to committing multiple murders, it was series of gradually increasing steps. As he realizes that he is getting away with each act, his actions become more and more bold and horrible, and he continues to see himself as being justified in his actions because of the slow increase in his questionable acts. Bystanders may not see all of these steps, or they may witness them but claim that they didn’t know when to step in because it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment that someone has crossed the line. This shows the importance of knowing when to stop groups or individuals early before they begin to cause great harm or violence.

Ahlfinger, N. R., & Esser, J. K. (2001). Testing the groupthink model: Effects of promotional leadership and conformity predisposition. Social Behavior and Personality, 29(1), 31-42. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy1.lib.trentu.ca/10.2224/sbp.2001.29.1.31

               The readings and discussion this week covered a lot of different topics surrounding evil. One of the ones that stood out to me is the topic of revenge. Baumeister covers a lot of other reasons that people commit evil acts without believing themselves to be evil, and revenge is one of the more understandable reasons for evil. There’s a question of how whether revenge is evil if it’s a retaliation to an evil act that’s already been committed, and according to Baumeister, the answer is often ‘yes’. Because of the magnitude gap, victims believe that the act committed against them is more serious than the perpetrator would think it was. Because of this an act of revenge may seem to be less than or equal to the original act according the person seeking revenge, but to the recipient and even witnesses, it can be considered overkill. This in turn can lead to the original perpetrator seeking revenge to “even the score”, leading to a downward spiral of increasingly ‘evil’ acts. Other times an act of revenge can be drastic but not give the satisfaction that the victim was hoping to receive.

               A study on revenge was done to compare real life examples of revenge to lab-based experiments where participants are given the opportunity to exact revenge on someone – usually a confederate – immediately after they’re wronged. The study asked a large group of participants if they had ever exacted revenge and included only those who had done so. About 37% of the participants admitted to having committed acts of revenge on others. They asked these people how severe the initial act and the act of revenge was. They also recorded what domain the original act was in, and what domain the act of revenge was in, such as social exclusion, lying, violence, and infidelity. They also asked how planned the act of revenge was, and how long the gap was between the initial act and the act of revenge. They found that only 14% of people exacted revenge immediately after the act, while 64% waited for more than a day, and 48% waited longer than a week. Those who took longer did more planning with their act of revenge. The majority of participants rated their act of revenge as less severe than the initial act against them, which only supports the magnitude gap, since these accounts are self-report of the person seeking revenge and is therefore biased. They also found that only 28% of participants committed an act of revenge in the same domain as the initial act. This is important because it’s hard to consider whether an act of revenge is equal when it occurs in a different domain or context than the original act, making it more likely that the other person will see this as unfair.

It’s interesting that revenge usually ends so badly, but much of our culture and media centers around the idea of revenge. So many movies, tv shows, books and even songs center around revenge. For example, a good portion of action movies are based on revenge. John Wick is an entire movie series that focus on revenge or punishment, even if it means killing people indirectly involved, and many characters in popular TV shows like Game of Thrones are motivated by revenge. Arya is one such example, who spends most of the show either getting revenge or training so that she can seek vengeance more efficiently. She’s seen as a strong female character and even a hero even when she does finally cross one of the names off her ever-growing list of enemies to seek vengeance against, usually through violence. It’s questionable why we’re able to root for characters even when they kill or harm others in a way that would give them the label of ‘evil’ if the act was done in isolation. We use our empathy to condone this revenge even when it turns the target of revenge into an “other” who is unforgivable and falls into our idea of pure evil. The media seems to love revenge, even if the facts behind revenge show that it’s rarely ever the proper solution.

Elshout, M.E. Nelissen R.M.A., van Beest, I., Elshout, S., & can Djik, W.W. (2019). Real-life revenge may not effectively deter norm violations. The Journal of Social Psychology.

The focus this week on empathy was an interesting and gave some answers surrounding the role of empathy in evil. Baron-Cohen highlighted that there were different outcomes when a person has no empathy based on the type of empathy they’re lacking as well as the social and biological factors that lead to this lack of empathy. I always considered psychopathy as the only result of a lack of empathy, but never considered borderline personality disorder, Asperger syndrome, or narcissistic personality disorders as connected to empathy. Class discussion also touched on the question of how empathy relates to evil. Given the different disorders or traits that stem from a lack of empathy, it seems to be that a lack of empathy doesn’t guarantee that the person is evil or will commit evil acts, but it makes it easier for people to commit evil acts. It’s obvious that people with Asperger syndrome are not evil because of their difficulty with cognitive empathy but instead tend to be hyper-moral due to their high levels of systemizing. I did however question the relationship between borderline personality disorder and lack of empathy or evil. I don’t believe that Borderline personality means a person is evil or cruel, I think that they’re struggling with their own emotions to the point where they can’t focus on anything but themselves. When it comes to narcissism, I was surprised that Baron-Cohen related this to a lack of empathy, because I always saw this as a grandiose sense of self, so I looked into this relationship.

               A study by Chukwuorji, Uzuegbu, Agbo, Ifeagwazi, and Ebulum (2018) examined the relationship between different forms of empathy, narcissism and gender. They examined four different types of empathy. Empathic concern is the ability to show emotional sympathy for others and is related to affective empathy. Fantasy is the ability to identify with fictional characters and understand their emotions, which is related to cognitive empathy. Personal distress is related to affective empathy, specifically in the level of distress that one feels when others are upset or distressed. Perspective taking is cognitive empathy, specifically their ability to see the world through another’s perspective. On average they found that men were higher in narcissism than women, but the effect size for this was small. They also found that gender moderated the relationship between empathic concern, fantasy, perspective taking, and narcissism. Women who were low in these types of empathy were more likely to be high in narcissism, but there was no significant relationship between narcissism and these forms of empathy in men. The researchers believed that this was due to social differences between men and women. Women are expected to have high empathy, so they could be more impacted by a lack of empathy than men. Men are also more likely to be in positions of power where narcissistic traits are acceptable and beneficial to their career, which can promote narcissistic traits in men. This study is interesting because it shows a different type of social influence on the outcome of low empathy, since gender plays a role in the way empathy and self-concept is shaped.

               I also found a YouTube video where a psychotherapist discusses the difference between narcissistic traits and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He highlights that lower or moderate levels narcissistic traits lead to higher self-esteem and a positive self-concept, which is healthy. However, high narcissistic traits often lead to people believing that they possess only positive traits, even when those around them show contradictory information. When one’s own self-concept is disconnected from their own reality in an overly positive manner this can cause them to become upset or angry when their self-concept is questioned. They also can lose the ability to see others as good in comparison.

               Through the different studies and characterizations of narcissism and empathy it’s obvious that empathy is one of many reasons why this personality disorder occurs. Along with the biological roles and individual parental experiences mentioned by Baron-Cohen, societal roles such as gender constructs and expectations also contribute to the development of narcissism. This also falls in line with the idea of empathy as a spectrum rather than an all-or-none construct that Baron-Cohen highlights in his book.

Chukwuorji, J.K., Uzuegbu, C.N., Agbo, F., Ifeagwazi, C.M. & Ebulum, GC. (2018). Different slopes for different folks: Gender moderates the relationship between empathy and narcissism. Current Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-9881-z

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihu3k_j3KQk

Our discussion this week was interesting yet frustrating due to the surrounding questions regarding the definition of evil and the complexity of evil. The narrow definition of “pure evil” that make us think of evil and good as dualities is not as definitive or as simple as we’d like. Many people believe that evil is easily identified and that people who commit “evil” acts are the embodiment of this, inflicting harm on innocent others for the joy of it, without any remorse or empathy for their victims is an overly simplistic viewpoint that. This idea makes it easier on witnesses because it allows us to think that people who commit evil acts can be easily written off as terrible people who deserve any repercussions they may face. This idea also makes us think that we ourselves are not capable of committing acts, and that we ourselves will never deserve any misfortune we face at the hands of “evil”. The reality of evil is so much more complex, as we see from the perspectives of those who committed evil acts that were present in Baumeister’s book. One example brought up in our discussion was the Korean women who planted a bomb on the plane. From her perspective, she was following orders and would receive respect and rewards from her superiors for pulling this off. She was showing her patriotism and thought that it would benefit her country. This forces us to face the reality that evil is not a defining quality of people who commit atrocities but is more of a role that people step into under certain circumstances, suggesting that the average person may be capable of evil. But by believing this myth of pure evil we label anyone who opposes us or are unknown and potentially dangerous to us as evil, leading to quick and harsh judgements that have been seen during wars, where people rationalize killing others by labelling them this way to absolve themselves of any empathy or guilt over harming them.

A study by Webster and Saucier (2018) created terms based on Baumeister’s model of the “myth of pure evil”. From this they created a measurable construct called the Belief in Pure Evil (BPE), where people believe that evil is the infliction of harm on innocent people, lacks empathy, and promotes chaos. An opposite construct, called Belief in Pure Good (BPG), is the belief that pure good exists and is about intentional help of others, which is motivated by pure altruism with no expectations in return. Through several studies, they found that these measures were reliable and stable across time. The two measures are not correlated with each other and predicted opposite traits and worldviews. People who believed in pure evil were more likely to be high in aggression and pessimism. They were more likely to believe in a just world and were less generous in their attributions of the actions of others. When it came to social issues, they were more likely to support the death penalty for criminals and oppose criminal rehabilitation. They also found that people high in BPE were more likely to see the world as dangerous, to be pro-violence and pro-military in international affairs, to be prejudiced towards Muslims and Iranians, and to be pro-torture. On the other side, those who were high in a belief of pure good were more likely to be optimistic, to make more generous attributes towards other’s actions, to oppose the death penalty and support criminal rehabilitation, to be high in empathy and to promote diplomatic solutions in international affairs. People who were religious were more likely to believe in pure good, but not pure evil. This study is important because it shows that the belief of pure evil could be linked to harsher ideas of the world, which promotes harsher attributions of others, and the idea of “othering” people who are in opposition to them, which, as we’ve discussed in class, lowers their empathy towards them and allows them to commit atrocious acts towards these “others”. While this is correlation and we can’t say whether one causes the other, the chance that these beliefs result in such different views of the world and of people and result in drastically different reactions to ‘evil’ warrants a deeper look into these beliefs and the potential of changing people’s pessimistic and prejudiced views by dispelling the myth of pure evil.  

A recent news story made headlines due to Pasco County Sherriff Chris Nocco’s label of a murder as “pure evil”. A 21-year old man was driving in his car when he saw a 75-year-old man with a walking stick walking down the side of the road. After passing the man he did a U-turn and accelerated to hit the man with his car at high speed, killing him. The driver was later caught after he ran in to an electric pole, which caused his car to break down. When questioned, he admitted that he went for a drive for the purpose of finding a pedestrian to kill. He told police that he was smiling and laughing when he hit the man and recalled the look of terror on the man’s face before he hit him. Nocco said “There are some cases we hear about that absolutely, even for us in law enforcement, make us just realize and remind us that there is pure evil in this world. This headline of this story supports that people believe in the concept of “pure evil” and that certain people may fall close to this construct. However, we know that this belief is connected to some rigid and aggressive ways of thinking that could lead to quick judgements and a lack of perspective taking, which ultimately leads to a lack of empathy for those classified as “evil”. In this specific case it seems that the man who committed this act classifies as a remorseless killer, but we should at least question the possibility of the news sensationalizing this. We should see this as an extremely rare case of a person with poor morals rather than a support for the idea of pure evil. Even if there are a few people who fall under the definition of ‘pure evil’, assuming that everyone who commits harmful acts is an example of this is a shallow way of thinking.

Webster, R. J. & Saucier, D.A. (2013). Angels and demons are among us: Assessing individual differences in belief in pure evil and belief in pure good. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39(11), 1455.

White, D. A. L. (2020, January 14). Sheriff Calls 75-Year-Old Hudson Man’s Killing Act Of ‘Pure Evil’. Retrieved January 19, 2020, from https://patch.com/florida/newportrichey/sheriff-calls-murder-75-year-old-hudson-man-act-pure-evil

I’m Hailey B. I’m a psychology major, so I’m very excited for this course because I love social psychology and how it relates to studying and explaining human behaviour in a social context. I’m excited to examine the reasons why people commit ‘evil’ acts and the contributing social and cognitive factors that increase the chance that people will commit these acts. It’s interesting to consider the thought processes that lead to justifying these acts.

Our discussion in our first seminar was interesting because it really showed that the term ‘evil’ is not easily defined, making it difficult to study. The fact that few people would actually label themselves as evil even after causing harm to others shows that ideas of good and evil are subjective based on who is telling the story. Evil is truly in the eye of the beholder, and whether something can be defined as evil can vary based on context and perspective. Two identical actions can be seen as completely opposite in terms of good and evil based on the context within which they occur. Even acts that are done based on good intentions can be considered evil based on the schema and ideals of the people it effects or the people that witness it. It makes me appreciate the difficulty of studying evil when the term is so subjective and varies based on individual, social, and contextual factors.