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Ally Harper
Eric Ekstrand
WRI 111
13 November 2013
Why Evil?: An Examination of the Causes of Evil through an Analysis of Philip Zimbardo’s The
Lucifer Effect, David Eagleman’s Incognito, and Jeffery Rosen’s The Brain on the Stand
As a freshman, because I hope to study business, I had one goal in my course selections for the
fall semester: take calculus. Other than that I was clueless on what classes to take, however when
I stumbled on Writing 111: We are our own Evil, I was immediately intrigued. I found myself
wondering what the class was going to be like and already posing hypothetical class discussion
questions such as: Are we all good people? Or are we all evil? Can we be both? What defines the
line between evil and good? Who defines that line? After most of the semester, I have finally
found some answers to my questions. However, through class discussion of our readings, I have
new thoughts. This is my new question: Are those who commit “evil acts” people with serious
character defects and brain irregularities, or are they ordinary people responding to an
extraordinary situation?
I first examined that of Philip Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect in hopes of answering my
question. In his essay, Zimbardo answers, what makes previously moral individuals act
immorally, by attributing such immorality to environment. In order to understand Zimbardo’s
perspective, we must examine his definition of evil. He says, “Evil consists in intentionally
behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, or destroy innocent others- or using
one’s authority and systematic power to encourage or permit others to do so on your behalf.” In
his description, he dismisses the argument of character traits causing evil quickly by saying that
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evil must be intentional. He expresses his agreement with John Steiner who explores why Nazi’s
embraced such unspeakable evils. Steiner discovered that some people have certain traits that are
latent and may never be activated, except when specific situations trigger violent episodes and
Zimbardo agrees. By using Steiner as an example, Zimbardo expresses his belief that evil
becomes present not because of character traits, but because of the situations that stimulate them.
We then go to the second part of Zimbardo’s definition of evil that states that evil is comprised
of harming innocents or using one’s power to incite others to do so. To clarify his argument here
Zimbardo talks about the overpowering affects of authority. To show this he conducted the
Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971. In the experiment, he assigned seemingly peaceful
volunteers randomly to be either a guard or a prisoner. Prisoners were then “captured” by local
police, handcuffed, and sent to prison thinking their arrest reality and guards were given
uniforms. While the experiment’s original purpose was to show the causes of conflict between
military guards and prisons, it instead revealed the affects of authority. During the six days the
experiment lasted, guards were shown dehumanizing their prisoners through tactics of abuse
because they believed they had the authority to do so. Zimbardo commented that the once
passive volunteers became violent monsters within the span of six days. He now wanted to
understand how it was possible for his young volunteers to transform so much in such a short
time to the point where they could preform unthinkable acts of evil. Zimbardo observed that not
only did his volunteers internalize their assigned roles but underwent major characteristic
transformations and wanted to know if the changes were in response to the social forces and the
appointed power or inactivated characteristic traits. He nevertheless discovered that changes of
personality occur when people are faced with powerful situational forces: “human beings are
capable of totally abandoning their humanity for a mindless ideology, to follow and then exceed
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orders of charismatic authorities to destroy everyone they label the enemy.” Zimbardo attests that
when dehumanization occurs it reduces those in authority’s sense of personal accountability and
creates a potential for evil action. He proves this in his Stanford Prison Experiment.
Unlike Zimbardo, in David Eagleman’s, Incognito, he argues that true evil is a result of
brain deficiencies. His first example is that of Charles Whitman, who at the age of 25 took an
elevator to the top floor of the University of Texas Tower in Austin and shot thirteen people. One
would assume that Whitman had a motive, however as Eagleman explains, the interesting part of
the story, is that Whitman recorded his violent impulses for many months before the event
explaining that he was experiencing violent impulses and cannot rationally pinpoint any specific
reason for the genocide. After Whitman’s brain was examined, it was revealed that he had a
brain tumor on his amygdala, which involves emotional regulation causing his social disturbance,
fear and aggression. Eagleman questions if Whitman was culpable and to what extent is he at
fault for his damaged brain when he appeared to have no choice. To answer his many questions,
Eagleman researched and discovered that patients with a loss of brain tissue such as Whitman
lose the ability to control their inactive impulses. Therefore, Eagleman disagrees with Zimbardo
and argues that situation is irrelevant if one’s brain is already damaged. Eagleman explains that
“we are not the ones driving the boat of our behavior, at least not as much as we believe . . . we
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are a product of our inaccessible, microscopic history” (157). He argues that because of the way
our brain works, free will does not exist and evil arises when brain abnormalities are present.
Even though Eagleman mentions the idea of free will, to get a better explanation, I
examined Jeffrey Rosen’s The Brain on the Stand. While Zimbardo reflects on the problem of
evil as being caused by situational forces and Eagleman argues that brain deficiencies cause
abnormal violent behavior, Rosen questions that if free will doesn't exist and we are all a product
of our past, can we be held accountable for our actions? He poses both perspectives and
concludes regardless of blame, we do not have the technology to determine how defining causes
of evil can prevent further immoral acts. Nevertheless, through an exploration of Rosen’s
synthesis, we can further explore the origins of immorality. In agreement with Eagleman, Rosen
introduces Joshua D. Greene, an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard who says that
“even someone who has the illusion of making a free and rational choice between soup and salad
may be deluding himself, since the choice of salad over soup is ultimately predestined by forces
hard-wired in his brain” (5). He supports Greene’s argument for the purpose of supporting to
idea of increased rehabilitation instead of imprisonment. However, the question is still debatable;
Rosen therefore presents Stephen J. Morse as a representative of the opposing perspective.
Morse questions in relation to Greene’s argument that regardless of the causes of evil, how can
we measure our actions against others if indeed, we are all different? Rosen answers this by
saying that we cannot, but through deeper understanding of the criminal brain, federal sentencing
guidelines can be revised.