Ordinary Heroes and the Science of Good and Evil

In framing the Lucifer Effect Zimbardo points to three ways to help understand what makes a bad apple: dispositional, situational and systemic.

Dispositional understanding is hardwired into each individual. What makes us bad is part of who we are.

Situational understanding means, essentially, that an apple goes bad in a bad barrel. So if someone is doing something evil, they require a change of situation.

Systemic understanding is required in order to change the situation. It starts with the individual, but then looks at where the true power for change resides. Is it in the individual, their situation, or the legal, political, and economic systems?

Understanding heroism is a bit different. We have superheroes with supernatural abilities as the icons of our culture: The athletes, the movie stars, and the statesmen. But this sends the wrong message, says Zimbardo. What we need is a way of promoting ordinary heroes, people like Wesley Autrey. What we want, he suggests, is for “our kids to realize most heroes are everyday people, and the heroic act is unusual.”

Zimbardo contends that situations have power, but what one situation does can cause evil or good in a person. Consider the case of Joe Darby. He was the private who revealed the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. He was forced to remain in hiding for three years because of the death threats he received for bringing the issue to a senior officer.

He wasn’t invited on the Letterman show.

Dr. Michael Wilkins, the man who exposed the Willowbrook evils and provided Geraldo Rivera with the key to building 6 (where the news footage was shot), was fired for speaking up about the maltreatment.

He wasn’t invited to the State of the Union address.

Heroes are never going to conform to group norms. This highlights the two core principles of heroism:

1. Heroes act when others are passive.
2. Heroes act sociocentrically, not egocentrically.

They act alone, and for the good of others.

Phil Zimbardo’s latest endeavor involves fostering heroic imagination. He contends that we can respond to a new situation by taking one of three paths. Two of the three are active or inactive roads to evil. Path One begins with a mindless action. We shock a person with 15 volts, we exert our power or cheat on something we don’t believe is a big deal. We choose Path Two when we passively allow a crime, or bullying, or mistreatment of others to continue. These two paths take us into the seven social processes on the slippery slope toward evil. But the third path involves a unique type of courage that we are just starting to understand.

Dr. Zimbardo calls it Heroes — in-Waiting, and we need to be prepared. In his own words, we need to be “waiting for the right situation to come along, to put heroic imagination into action. Because it may only happen once in your life, and when you pass it by you’ll always know, I could have been a hero and I let it pass me by. So the point is thinking it and then doing it.”

Developing a heroic imagination means being prepared to act in a way that differs from the crowd — to take responsibility and be mindful, rather than mindless, of your actions.

How do we do this? Wesley Autrey has an idea.

Following a media interview about his heroism he got into a car and summed up what needs to be done to actualize becoming a hero-in-waiting. His advice?

“All New Yorkers! If you see somebody in distress, go for it!”

Zimbardo would agree.

Be mindful of your path. Become a hero-in-waiting.

Do this, and maybe someday you’ll be lucky enough to have some grease on your cap.