How dehumanization plays a role in The Lucifer Effect

Inhumanity in the Stanford Prison Experiment
Introduction
According to Philip Zimbardo, dehumanization is the act of marginalizing another human being to the point where that person is seen to be less than human, outside the moral order—i.e., an animal. The moral order suggests that people should respect the lives of other human beings. When that order is ignored, dehumanization occurs. This paper will look at what dehumanization is, why it is so important to “The Lucifer Effect,” and how it is pursued in “The Lucifer Effect” that Zimbardo describes as he recounts his own past experience with the Stanford Prison Experiment and in the context of the Abu Ghraib scandal.
What is Dehumanization?
Dehumanization is one of the most horrific experiences that can occur to a human being. Every human being has a sense of self-worth, a sense of pride, a sense of self, and even an ideal self, as Carl Rogers explains in his psychological theory on human motivation. Even the most miserable of human beings, the most depressed and suicidal, want love, respect, approval and esteem, as the memoirs of Dean Unkefer indicate. The need for esteem, love, friendship and social support is part of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and human motivation model as well.
The reason dehumanization occurs is still something of a mystery for some researchers, though dehumanization is not really a modern phenomenon at all. Individuals have acted inhumanely towards one another since the beginning of time, and one need only look to the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, to read about the first instance of fratricide—the murder of Abel by his brother Cain. That is a clear instance of dehumanization by Cain, who, acting out of hatred and jealousy, slew his brother when his brother’s offering to God was deemed more acceptable than Cain’s. That such stories appear again and again throughout human history suggests that there is something fallen in human nature, something prone to evil that can live and exist just below the surface of human politeness, waiting like a virus for the time to attack—that time when the better virtues and habits of the human being begin to wear thin and weaken, making the person vulnerable to his baser nature.
Stress, deprivation, abuse—all of these are factors that can lead to dehumanization, as Zimbardo points out. Power, control, authority, pride, and hatred—these are factors as well. In Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, he showed how normal, everyday college students could become cruel and abusive towards their peers when engaging in an experiment on power. College students were selected to participate in an experiment wherein half of them would act as prisoners and half of them would act as prison guards. Though everyone knew the roles were not real, something astonishing happened as Zimbardo observed the effects of this role playing experiment on the participants. The students acting as guards became, in general, vicious and abusive, power-hungry and intolerant. The students acting as prisoners became submissive, frightened, and abject. What Zimbardo had been attempting to understand was how ordinary people go from being non-violent individuals who for the most part respect life to being abusive killers who dehumanize others. The motivation for his experiment was WW2 and the stories that circulated about Germans running death camps. Zimbardo wondered how, if true, could ordinary Germans become so inhumane. And if it could happen to them, could it happen to anyone? His Stanford Prison Experiment indicated to him that, yes, it could. Inhumanity is present in every human being like a switch waiting to be thrown. The wiring is already in place, the lines connected. All it takes is an impetus, a motivation from one’s bad angels. There is something fallen in human nature, in other words—and that is what Zimbardo discusses in The Lucifer Effect. If pushed or prodded to a certain point, most people will indeed give in to the Luciferian impulse that runs like a subterranean current below the surface of the self.
The Importance of Dehumanization to The Lucifer Effect
Dehumanization is an important concept in Zimbardo’s Lucifer Effect because it is the process that allows one to morally disengage. The Golden Rule is reversed and instead of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, it becomes, “Do unto others so that they don’t do unto you, first.” There is a nefarious, guilty impulse underlying it, which indicates that those who enter into the dehumanization process suspect others of being inhumane as well. One first has to lose touch with one’s own humanity, however—that is the key.
As Zimbardo shows, one can lose touch with one’s own humanity by either being oppressed and brutalized or by being filled with an aggrandized sense of power over others, exalting oneself and beating those one deems inferior and subhuman. The Lucifer Effect occurs when one loses one’s sense of one’s own humanity—for it is this sense that makes one mindful of the morality, the ethical terms, by which individuals should conduct themselves. A morally-focused mind will be aware of one’s own humanity—one’s own sense of self—both the real and the ideal self—as well as the weaknesses and flaws that one has. It is this internal sense of self that keeps one grounded and humble, that acts as a constraint against the wild undercurrent of viciousness and spite that can rise like the devil if given ground.
The connection between the Stanford Prison Experiment and the atrocities that took place in Abu Ghraib is based here in the Lucifer Effect, the loss of humanity by those in power and the dehumanization of those under their control. It was the same at the Abu Ghraib base as it was in the Stanford Prison Experiment.
How Dehumanization is Pursued in The Lucifer Effect
Zimbardo pursues the subject of dehumanization by exploring the ways in which it occurs. For instance, Zimbardo states that “dehumanization typically facilitates abusive and destructive actions toward those so objectified” (60). The point that he makes is that humanity and dehumanization are both impacted by culture. Zimbardo calls it the ecology of the environment and he refers to the inhumane ecology that erupted both in the Stanford Prison Experiment and at Abu Ghraib. He notes that this ecology was toxic to the morale of the individuals involved in both places and that it reduced their ability to see themselves and their prisoners as human. Everything became in a sense unreal or surreal and in that environment rules did not apply. One could be an animal and one could treat others like animals.
By focusing on the way negativity impacts a person’s psyche and moral judgment, Zimbardo pursues the issue of dehumanization both in terms of the ecology in which one operates and the internal dynamic that results from interaction with one’s surroundings. In short, it is culture that plays a part in how well one maintains one’s own sense of humanity—but it is also environment that plays a part in determining how one reacts.
The other factor that Zimbardo considers is the role of leadership in all of this. When individuals perceive that their leaders are sanctioning inhumane behavior they are less likely to question it. That is the analysis that Hong gives as well, in his review of The Lucifer Effect. In discussing the abuses at Abu Ghraib, Hong states, “the abuse at Abu Ghraib was sanctioned at the highest levels” (58). Zimbardo also found this to be true in his own Stanford Prison Experiment, wherein he realized that he was partly to blame for the way the experiment spiraled out of control. The participants trusted him to control it and to control the environment, and they perceived that if he, the authority, was not going to intervene then they must not be doing anything wrong. It is the same way people act with respect to violating the moral law in general. The reason that if what they were doing was bad, God would intervene to punish them.
Conclusion
The problem of dehumanization is one that every society ultimately has to deal with, and that is Zimbardo’s overall point. In the end, it comes down to society’s leaders to set the stage, set the moral tone, and establish expectations. It is also their duty to oversee the conduct of society in general because as the authorities they are the ones that people will look to in order to make sure that their behavior is acceptable. If the authorities do not object then all of society can very easily become like Abu Ghraib prison, where inhumanity was allowed to go on because the ecology was toxic, the guards had surrendered their own humanity, and the leaders did nothing to intervene or stop the abusive practices. Just as happened in the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Lucifer Effect was taking place.
Works Cited
Hong, J. K. “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding how good people turn evil.” Army Lawyer, (2012), 55-58.
Maslow, Abraham. “A theory of human motivation.” Psychological Review, 50.4 (1943), 370.
Rogers, Carl. Client-Centered Therapy. MA: Riverside Press, 1951.
Unkefer, Dean. 90 Church.
Zimbardo, Philip. The Lucifer Effect. Random House, 2007.