Reviews

The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip G. Zimbardo

annab123's review

challenging dark informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.5

dannybailey's review against another edition

This is a very dense volume of very niche information from a very niche social experiment that I currently do not have time to focus on or the money to keep/borrow, so I'm afraid I'll probably drop this until I've encountered a time in the future where this book becomes more relevant to my life and studies.

reading_one_more_book's review

challenging dark informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

The edition I've read and couldn't find here is 715 pages long. And even though it was informative, at some point it got a little bit repetitive. Nonetheless it was a good reading, like I said, informative, education and makes you think about our human behavior.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Torture, Bullying, and Body shaming

ptothelo's review

3.0

he was one of my favorite professors and taught my pysch one class...

i can't wait to read this book

aspiring_learner's review

5.0

A deep exploration of how and why good people do bad things. Essentially, this is an exploration of what people generally call "evil" and how it is rooted in a combination of genetic predispositions (in humans in general) along with social structures that evoke the worst in us. This is a dark mirror of a book. I think it's profoundly important that more people understand these ideas. This book helped reshape my understanding of humanity.

usernamemustbeunique's review

5.0

This is such a well-written book that is detailed and accessible. It’s important to note that it is not written to be popular science even though it can function that way for people who enjoy a more academic approach to research stories. I really appreciated the amount of data presented and the analysis. It was an unexpected vacation read that I would recommend to someone looking for something as serious as it is fascinating.

alexandrabree's review

5.0

This is a book that should be more widely read. It is up on my yearly read list (at least in segments particularly chapters 10-16, which move away from the SPE and into the psychological motives and other related studies).

Additionally, just about the reading experience, it is a very approachable read, the language is not to technical, jargon-y or tedious. It is organized and while the book is long it is also concise. Offering up tons of information, citations and alternative sources but without dragging on too much in any one place.

I think the best companion novel to this would be Ordinary Men, by Christopher Browning.

I did listen to this on audiobook but I plan on also acquiring a paper copy for better notes and slower more focused reading

amrabad's review against another edition

informative slow-paced

3.5

I didn’t need this much book to tell me science says humanity kinda sucks. Interesting though. 

polkadotgirl's review

3.0

3.5/5 stars:

I picked up this book because this is a subject matter I am very interested in and it's related to what I've studied and what I want to keep studying in the future.

I enjoyed reading the book but I felt like in terms of the more theoretical aspects of it I didn't learn quite as much as I hoped I would. However I feel like this book isn't as accessible for people with no background in psychology/sociology/etc as other similar books I have read in the past.

desert_side_notched's review against another edition

informative

4.0