The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

leader and conforming to the norms of the gang

A large body of evidence in social psychology supports the concept that situational power triumphs over individual power in given contexts

situational forces are more powerful than we think, or that we acknowledge, in shaping our behavior in many contexts.

“It’s the way of the world, and there’s not much that can be done to change it, certainly not by me.”

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

—John Milton, Paradise Lost

Milton’s Paradise Lost

rings, they will know that it rings for them. It sounds a call to uphold what is best in human nature that rises above the powerful pressures of Situation and System as the profound assertion of human dignity opposing evil.

The Lucifer Effect journey ends on a positive note by celebrating the ordinary hero who lives within each of us. In contrast to the “banality of evil,” which posits that ordinary people can be responsible for the most despicable acts of cruelty and degradation of their fellows, I posit the “banality of heroism,” which unfurls the banner of the heroic Everyman and Everywoman who heed the call to service to humanity when their time comes to act. When that bell

We have come to think of our heroes as special, set apart from us ordinary mortals by their daring deeds or lifelong sacrifices. Here we recognize that such special individuals do exist, but that they are the exception among the ranks of heroes, the few who make such sacrifices. They are a special breed who organize their lives around a humanitarian cause,

It is time for some good news about human nature, about what we as individuals can do to challenge situational and systemic power.