desertjarhead505 's review for:

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

5.0

---

A valuable book - it's too easy for us to fall into the trap of looking at people who commit evil acts and thinking we would never do the same. That kind of complacency and denial of one's own shadow side opens the door to many kinds of terrible abuses, often carried out with smug self-righteousness. Most of the worst episodes of organized cruelty and evil in history - genocides, pogroms, witch-burnings, the Inquisition, and others - have been perpetrated by people who were convinced they were doing good and never seriously considered the idea that they were wrong.