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From such studies, Zimbardo said, we can learn important principles about how to create obedience. He listed several, including the importance of a legitimate-sounding cover story (e.g., a memory study, or “national security”), a legitimate-seeming authority figure, and rules that are vague enough that they are hard to understand or remember. You also, he said, need a model of compliance that, ironically enough, allows room for dissent (“‘Yes, I can understand. Yeah, cry, go ahead and cry. Just keep pressing the button’”). Showing slides of the mass suicide/execution of 912 People’s Temple cult members in Guyana in 1978, Zimbardo added that it is also important to “make exiting difficult. This is one of the big things all cults do: They literally create a barrier to leaving [by saying] ‘If you exit, you’re going to end up mentally impaired.’ Literally a lot of people in practicing cults are there because they don’t know how to exit.”

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we consider the conceptual contributions and research findings from many domains that validate the assertion of situational power over individual dispositions. I review classic and some new research on, conformity, obedience to authority, role-playing, dehumanization, deindividuation and moral disengagement. We consider the �evil of inaction� as a new form of evil that supports those who are the perpetrators of evil...


Although most people succumb to the power of situational forces, not all do. How do they resist social influence? What kinds of strategies might help the reader to become inoculated against unwanted attempts to get him or her to conform, comply, obey, and yield? I outline a 10-step generic program to build resistance to mind control strategies and tactics. There is also a unique presentation of a thought experiment to involve people in engaging in progressively greater degrees of altruistic deeds that promote civic virtue.

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LGATs similarly claim that we create our own reality and that the ego is evil. The ego is not evil,

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The ego mediates between the pleasurable desires of the id and the moral imperatives of the superego. The mature ego embodies the reality principle as it works to protect the individual from the oppression of society and to find a means for healthy self-expression in society.

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complex within the psyche which constitutes the center of a person’s field of consciousness and which appears to possess a high degree of continuity and identity.

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part of the mental apparatus that is present at the interface of the perceptual and internal demand systems. It controls voluntary thoughts and actions, and, at an unconscious level, defense mechanisms.

In other words, the ego keeps us in touch with reality and our own identity. It is the part of us that the lgats wish to damage, so that we are more suggestible and easy to control and influence.

It may be true that the society as a whole creates society which is part of reality but the terminology "creating reality" is LGAT standard.

The idea that humans are naturally evil leads to another LGAT standard - the need for rituals or processes to cleanse and clear and purify.

As someone recovering from destructive LGAT influence I would rather not read yet another book telling me that reality does not exist, that I am evil and need to be cleared and that my ego is something I should get rid of.

I apologise if you are only being friendly and offering an alternative view but I've had the alternative view drummed into me overtly and covertly for the past few years; I don't come to this board for an lgat life-view and I don't need an lgat-viewpoint for "balance" - I've already been so unbalanced by that view that my see-saw has drilled into earth and I'm trying to dig it out, not roll in the mud.

The Lucifer [i:5d10d4dd14]Effect[/i:5d10d4dd14] offers specific information on how systemic influences and techniques induce people to behave [i:5d10d4dd14]out of character[/i:5d10d4dd14], and it also contains information, based on 30 years of experiment and research, on how to resist mind control. It doesn't seem to have much in common with the Lucifer Principal.

When I have had a chance to buy and read the Lucifer effect I will post an analysis of how my lgat used techniques and control of the environment described by Zimbargo.

One simple interesting concept he lists is deindividuation. In a military or prison environment giving peoples numbers instead of names is one method of deindividuation. In Inquest (lgat) trainees are given numbers, as well as "bad" name-tags eg "slut", "boring", "impotent" etc. I think that is a method of deindividuation and contributes to breaking down the normal sense of empathy that would prevent trainees from attacking each other in the feedback exercises.

Then there is also the "cover story" that we have to insult our fellow trainees to "support" them because they can't learn about themselves and grow if they don't know "the truth". The same cover story is used to justify insults and abuse from the trainers. So the cover-story for lgat abuse is "personal growth by facing yourself".

And the "model of compliance that allows for dissent" is, I think, closely linked to the illusion of choice that is set up from the first "agreement" over ground rules on the first day of basic training, and used throughout other trainings.

That's just for starters. It will be interesting if other people here could analyse and identify techniques used in their lgats based on the techniques and systemic influences The Lucifer Effect describes.

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[i:92a5684574]Evil consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, or destroy innocent others - or using one's authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to so on your behalf.[/i:92a5684574] In short, it is "knowing better but doing worse".

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The idea that an unbridgeable chasm separates good people from bad people is a source of comfort for at least two reasons. First, it creates a binary logic, in which Evil is [i:3522cd0f86]essentialized. [/i:3522cd0f86] Most of us perceive Evil as an entity, a quality that is inherent in some people and not in others....

Upholding a Good-Evil dichotomy also takes "good people" off the responsibility hook. They are freed from even considering their possible roles in creating, sustaining, perpetuating or conceding to the conditions that contribute to delinquency, crime, vandalism, bullying, rape, torture, terror, and violence...

An alternative conception treats evil in [i:3522cd0f86]incrementalist [/i:3522cd0f86]terms, as something of which we are all capable, depending on circumstances. People may at any time possess a particular attribute (say intelligence, pride, honesty, or evil) to a greater or lesser degree. Our nature can be changed, whether toward the good or the bad side of human nature. The incrementalist view implies an acquisition of qualities through expererience or concentrated practice, or by means of an external intervention, such as being offered a special opportunity. in short, we can learn to become good or evil regardless of our genetic inheritance, personality or family legacy.

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Running parallel to this pairing of essentialist and incremental conceptions is the contrast between [i:3522cd0f86]dispositional[/i:3522cd0f86] and [i:3522cd0f86]situational[/i:3522cd0f86] causes of behaviour. When faced with some unusual behaviour, some unexpected event, some anomaly that doesn't make sense, how do we go about trying to understand it? The traditional approach has been to identify inherent personal qualities that lead to the action: genetic makeup, personality traits, character, free will, and other dispositions. Given violent behaviour, one searches for sadistic personality traits. Given heroic deeds, the search is on for genes that predispose toward altruism...

Modern psychiatry is dispositionally oriented. So are clinical psychology and personality and assessment psychology. Mmost of our institutions are founded on such a perspective, including law, medicine, and religion. Culpability, illness, and sin, they assume, are to be be found within the guilty party, the sick person, and the sinner. They begin their quest for understanding with the "Who questions": Who is responsible? Who caused it? Who gets the blame? and Who gets the credit?

Social psychologists (such as myself) tend to avoid this rush to dispositional judgment when trying to understand the causes of unusual behaviors. They prefer to begin their search for meaning by asking the "What questions": What conditions could be contributing to certain reactions? What circumstances might be involved in generating behavior? What was the situation like from the perspective of the actors? Social psychologists ask: To what extent can an individual's actions be traced to factors outside the actor, to situational variables and environmental processes unique to a given setting?

The dispositional approach is to the situational as a medical model of health is to a public model...

The significance of such anayses extends to all of us who, as intuitive psychologists, go about our daily lives trying to figure out why people do what they do and how they may be changed to do better. But it is the rare person in an individualist culture who is not infected with a dispositional bias, always looking first to motives, traits, genes, and personal pathologies. Most of us have a tendency to overestimate the importance of dispositional qualities and to underestimate the importance of situational qualities when trying to understand the causes of other people's behavior...

[b:3522cd0f86]Power Systems Exert Pervasive Top-Down Dominance[/b:3522cd0f86]

...my focus has widened considerably through a fuller appreciation of the ways in which situational conditions are created and shaped by higher-order factors - [i:3522cd0f86]systems [/i:3522cd0f86]of power. Systems, not just dispositions and situations, must be taken into account in order to understand complex behaviour patterns.

Aberrant, illegal or immoral behaviour by individuals in service professions, such as policemen, corrections officers and soldiers, is typically labelled the misdeeds of "a few bad apples". They implication is that they are a rare exception and must be set on one side of the impermeable line between good and evil, with the majority of good apples set on the other side. But who is making the distinction? Usually it is the guardians of the system, who want to isolate the problem in order to deflect attention and blame away from those at the top who may be responsible for creating untenable working conditions or for a lack of oversight or supervision. Again the bad apple - dispositional view ignores the apple barrel and its potentially corrupting situational impact on those within it. A systems analysis focuses on the barrel makers, on those with the power to design the barrel.

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1. Do not maintain an illusion of “personal invulnerability” – If it can happen to them, then it can happen to you too.

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2. Be modest in self-estimates – it is better to perceive yourself as vulnerable and take necessary precautions than to go “where angels fear to tread.”

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3. Engage in life as fully as possible, yet be mindful and aware, attuned to the moment, and prepared to disengage and think critically when necessary – people are generally good and trustworthy, but others make their careers as “influence professionals” who try to get you to do what they want.