Lucifer Effect and the Stanford Prison Experiment

I might suggest this book to people, but in many ways it's a handbook on how to become evil, not simply how good people become bad. It documents the events of torture and genocide, the events at Abu Graib, but centers on the Stanford prison experiment which several great movies have been made about. As a psychology test a group of students were selected from many who answered an add, they were divided by a quarter into guards and prisoners, this started amusing enough, until a revolt on day two of a two week stay ended with the guards becoming just that, everyone involved lost their perspective, and the experiment had to be canceled on day 6 because the prisoners were literally breaking down and the guards were becoming ever more sadistic, especially at night when they thought they were being unobserved. Over my life I have wondered what makes people bad, heredity, genetics, psychological development Ect. This book is written by a social psychologist studies looking into just that. I was very much looking forward to how Lucas was going to explain how that cute little boy became Darth Vader, I was disappointed to find he hadn't a clue. It's a tough read as he looks stories from Rwanda that are simply horrifying. So if the human mind, or evil are of interest to you, especially of your curious about what can make a good person do or allow bad things to happen this book is for you, be prepared for the nightmares though. What is important is that the final chapter is designed to help people learn the skills to protect themselves from the kind of psychological mechanations which are used to turn people into accessories of evil. These mental self defense skills should be taught in school, agian the book is called the lucifer effect, look it up online, and I believe it will be featured this season on Dark Matters, a show on the science network detailing incidents where science might have crossed the line hosted by the actor from the series Fringe.