The Psychology of Evil
Monday, November 1, 2004 Posted: 03:44 PM JST
If the killing of Shosei Koda and other innocent people like him, and the events at Abu Ghraib trouble you as much as it does me, Aaran Swartz has an excellent article on his blog that describes research that has been done on the origin of evil. He describes the well-known experiments by Philip Zimbardo and Stanley Milgram. Zimbardo is famous for the Stanford Prison Experiment, Milgram for his now classic experiments on obedience to authority. There are no new revelations on the blog, but it is helpful to see all the relevant information organized in one place. Recommended reading in these troubling times.
Recommended books:
Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing by James Waller
Understanding Genocide: The Social Psychology of the Holocaust by Leonard S. Newman, Ralph Erber
Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram
The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram by Thomas Blass
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