From unleashing evil to building up stronger tolerance nets

After my last post I felt the need to post something more encouraging and less depressive. But, I had to leave my office, let me continue with my last post.

After some days I watched the film and commenting with some friends, they tagged it as a dark film ... but when I told them it was based on a real life experiment and that the actual participants of the experiment were not people from the streets but students, then there was a big silence ... reality can be darker. I still do not know what they think, perhaps it is unbelievable or simply too difficult to try to understand.

So, I said or my conclusion was (pretty much based on Dr. Zimbardo´s experiment and theory) that all humans are capable to make evil, in the moment you decide to make feel bad to a third person, in that moment you are being evil, even if what your are doing or "not" doing seems non-evil (compared to other actions).

I am getting blue again ... I wonder if those short-evil trips, we all have, UNLEASH worst evil actions in the persons first affected. Think of a mother tired of a long tedious work day, it is 7.55 pm and the only thing she is thinking is "I want to go home and have a nice warm bath". But She cannot, because She is awaiting for her boss to check a report, when finally her boss calls her, it is only to hear how bad She did in a harsh tone of voice, despite all her efforts and knowing part of her work is wrong due to other´s responsibilities, She decides to remain in silence, thinking "I want to go home and tomorrow will be a better day to solve this" ... her tolerance capability is being tested, that tolerance capability that I see as a net and I think that some of us has it made of stronger strings than others. Later, when She gets home and finds her children right in front of the TV, which She hates, She decides to have a deep breath, hug their children and explain how bad is to watch TV being too close to the screen. Then, after making them go to bed, She has a nice warm bath and think over her day; then She knows exactly what to do tomorrow. But, this mother has a strong tolerance net, someone different would have had at least a strong argument with her boss, go home and batter her children, making not only her night uglier but the one of her children. So, I wonder if her boss (perhaps also stress of the long-work day and decided to meet deadlines) had stopped himself of being harsh (at least), another the story would be.

So my conclusion:

Whatever the difficulties we might encounter, we´d better think twice what our actions can unleash, take a deep breath.

I have the strong conviction that we all can build up stronger tolerance nets day after day and with it a better place to live in.

From good or decent to evil

Well, before I try to answer my last question of how humans can reach communion, let me tell you more of how people become from decent and good to other than that (in Maslow's words).

There is a movie called "The experiment", the first version was released in 2001 a new version was released few weeks ago. It might be interesting to watch it, it is based on a real-life experiment preformed by Dr. Philip Zimbardo in 1971.

Dr. Phillip Zimbardo is a well know psychologist and a Professor emeritus at Stanford University. One of his most famous experiments is the one known by Stanford prison study [1,2 (Parts 6, 7 and 8)].

Stanford prison study was a 6-day experiment exploring how good people can be corrupted by a situation. The participants were volunteer healthy students. A group of them were playing the role of prison guards, who had all the power on a second group of students mocking the prisoners. These students after three days started to "live" their own role, they were not longer ordinary students. After only 36 hours a riot broke out and the guards used fire extinguishers on the prisoners. Punishments scaled up, from doing push-ups to stripping prisoners naked with bagged heads and even worst. Prisoners broke down crying, screaming and being irrational. Guards actions became unpredictable, when guards started to used obscenities, then testosterone raised, in 5 days college students were making other college students horrible sexual things. The experiment initially intended to last for 2 weeks, had to end up on the 6th day.

(Sadly amazed how humans can transform so quickly)


The conclusion of the experiment was that a person's behavior can be more influenced by his/her environment (situational forces in Dr. Zimbardo's words) rather than his/her own human nature. According to Zimbardo we are born neither good nor evil, all people are capable of do both. Moreover, he defines "evil" as:

The exercise of power to intentionally harm psychologically or to hurt physically or to destroy.[video]


Personally, I find the experiment quite disturbing. I do hope this study helps psychologists to understand better human nature and help to heal and/or build better human beings.

After watching all these videos a sea of thoughts came to my mind. On the one hand, we have the quick transformation of the guards, and on the other hand, the damage of the psychological health of the prisoners, which was not really talked about and I wonder which were the posterior effects of of this experiment in every student. Moreover, do a real prisoner can really rehabilitate under similar circumstances? or do they become worst? Previously I mentioned in one of my posts the study of Dorothy Lewis on killers, who observed that most of them had a history of abuse, abuse practiced by their own parents in many cases.

I still have lots of questions ... but for now let me end up this post with following conclusion:


All humans are capable to do evil, and make other people become evil, I do not know what is worst.