Analysis Of The Lucifer Effect By Zimbardo

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As a population, mankind wants to believe there is a little good in all of us, but there is just as easily a little evil in all of us. No one would know better than Dr. Philip Zimbardo, of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Dr. Zimbardo is an accredited psychologist whose study is one of the most well known today. His main focus in the area of social psychology was on “what turns people bad?” This is also known as the Lucifer Effect. While the Lucifer Effect is known for turning good to evil, Zimbardo argues that it can work in both ways. Good turns to evil, and evil can turn to good. It is within the capacity of the human mind to take the path of evil, the path of inaction, or the path of the hero, but it is up for the person to decide.

In February …show more content…

He uses pathos by showing the pictures of the injustices and talking about the stories of the victims. These play on the audience’s emotions and moral sense of what is right. When he talks about the man who jumped on the subway tracks he uses pathos when mentioning that the man had two small children with him. Zimbardo employs logos by the logical statement that if a bad situation can bring out the worst in people, it can also bring out the best. This also plays into the pathos and the audience’s desire to be the best persons they can be. Logos can also be found in all of the specifics and statistics he gives. When talking about the electrical shock experiment, Zimbardo shows graphs and gives percentages on the findings of the study. This helps to balance his arguments and make them more concrete to the …show more content…

At first he presents the most recent and most pressing example Abu Ghraib. This really draws the audience in as not to bore them with things from the distant past right away. His following arguments follow a chronological order the electric shock experiment then the Stanford Prison Experiment. After that, Zimbardo repeats this structure with the example of heroes starting the man who stopped Abu Ghraib, the woman who stopped the Stanford Prison Experiment, and then the man who jumped on the subway tracks. By starting with all the negative examples first the positive examples leave more of an impact, letting his overall message sink in

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