Extra Credit Checkpoint on the video,

“Journey From the Psychology of Evil to the Psychology of Heroism” by Phil Zimbardo

One thing that he mentions in the video that I thought was very interesting is when he says he
rephrased it to be “Why do good people turn evil. If an evil person does evil, it’s not a big deal.” I was
kind of shocked by this because it is very interesting to think about a good person and an evil person. Is
the evil deed eviler when a good person does it rather than when a bad person does it? It seems like
they would both be considered very wrong and the same much “evil.” However, when I thought about
it, I thought of someone like a serial killer killing someone and thinking about it being a very evil thing.
When I think of one of my old friends that always got good grades and are very nice killing someone, I
know I would be a lot more shocked if they did its vs a serial killer. I do feel like they are both evil things
to do, but I would be way more surprised and hurt if it was a good friend of mine that did it. Another
thing I thought was interesting is the case study he talked about called Digitally Documented Depravity.
It was very hard to see the pictures and to listen to what the people did to each other. It’s interesting to
hear him say “That’s the bad barrel.” It makes me think about what makes the “bad barrel” occur. He
also says “The Lucifer Effect” is a celebration of the mind’s and that the human mind has the ability to be
anything. We can be nice. We can do bad things. Humans are very complex. One last thing I want to
mention is when he says one of the biggest things, he noticed is that when people don’t feel like they
are responsible for there actions is when they are more likely to hurt someone else because of the
authority over them. Another powerful thing is peer pressure. This is what he is talking about the heroes
is the people who don’t do the evil even when there’s peer pressure and authority. I thought this
experiment was so interesting and these two points he made about people doing evil because of it is not
your responsibility and peer pressure is so true. Thinking about it for myself I would be way more likely
to do a bad thing if someone else was trying to get me to do it especially if I lifted the burden of it being
my fault. People make peace with their past by lifting the burden of doing a bad thing off of them and I
feel like tat is a very real thing for humans.