1. Evil

2. In this lecture… The nature of evil (邪惡) The banality of evil (平庸之惡)
The Milgram experiment (米爾格倫實驗)
The Stanford prison experiment (史丹佛監獄實驗)
The power of the situation

3. The nature of evil
What is evil? What causes people to do evil? Is there a clear dividing line between good people and bad people? Is it possible for a good person to do evil?

4. The nature of evil
‘Evil’ can sometimes be defined as ‘knowingly inflicting undeserved suffering upon other people’ (有意識地傷害無辜者).
There is a clear difference, for example, between unknowingly passing on a virus to other passengers on a bus, and knowingly injecting (注射) a passenger with a needle filled with virus.

5. The nature of evil
Stealing from a supermarket is wrong, but it cannot be regarded as evil because it does not directly inflict suffering on anyone.
Punishing a criminal for wrongdoing is not an act of evil if the criminal really deserves to be punished.

6. The nature of evil
Some Christian thinkers argue that God created human beings with ‘free will’ (自由意志) and allowed them to make choices.
According to this view, human beings do evil because they choose to do so, i.e. evil intentions (意圖) or evil motives (動機) lead to evil actions.

7. The nature of evil
Immanuel Kant thought that a good will (i.e. good intention) is always good .
A moral person, motivated by good will, always acts from duty. Such a person can never do evil.

8. The nature of evil
People do bad or wrong things, according to Kant, because they put self-interest before duty (把私利放於道德責任之上).
For Kant, humans have free will. They can freely choose between good and evil actions (i.e. between ‘duty’ and ‘self-interest’). 8

9. The nature of evil
The trouble with Kant’s view is that actions intended to be good can sometimes lead to unintended (意料之外的) evil consequences.

10. The nature of evil
For example, the Catholic Church once believed that evil could be eliminated (清除) by killing witches (女巫).
Between 1450 and 1750, up to 200,000 people were tried (受審), found guilty (定罪), and either hanged from the gallows (吊死) or burned at the stake (燒死).

11. The nature of evil
Who were the victims of the witch hunt (狩獵女巫)? Most of them were old women who lived alone or acted ‘strangely’, such as using herbs (草本植物) as medicine.
As it turned out, the attempt to combat (對抗) evil had actually caused evil on a massive scale.

12. The nature of evil
People perform violent, harmful, and cruel acts all over the world, and they have done so throughout history.
The Nazis (納粹黨人) killed millions of Jews (猶太人). Stalin’s government (斯大林政府) murdered 20 million Russians. More than 30 million Chinese died due to political reasons during the rule of Chairman Mao.

13. The nature of evil
The Communist Khmer Rouge regime (赤柬政權) killed off 1.7 million local people in Cambodia (柬埔寨). In 1994, more than 800,000 Rwandans (盧旺達人) were murdered in just 3 months.
Do you think all of those who participated in these acts of violence were evil people?

14. The banality of evil
The Holocaust (納粹大屠殺) refers to the planned killing of millions of Jews (猶太人) during the Second World War at the Nazi concentration camps (納粹集中營).

15. The banality of evil
The Holocaust would not have occurred without the authorization (授權) of Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi government officials.
However, hundreds of thousands of ordinary German people also participated or co-operated in the murder of the Jews.

16. The banality of evil
At the postwar Nuremburg trials (紐倫堡審判) the Nazis believed to have been responsible for the Holocaust were charged with ‘crimes against humanity’.
Most of the accused (被告) offered the defense: ‘I was merely following orders’.

17. The banality of evil
Hannah Arendt 鄂蘭 ( ) proposed the concept of ‘the banality of evil’ (平庸之惡) to explain the atrocities (暴行) that took place during the Holocaust.

18. The banality of evil
Before the Holocaust, it was believed that evil acts were committed by individuals with evil motives who intentionally harm others.
Arendt, however, argued that the horrible things that happened during the Holocaust could not be explained in terms of ‘evil intentions’ or motives such as ‘self-interest’.

19. The banality of evil
Adolf Eichmann (艾克曼) was a Nazi bureaucrat (官僚) who received orders from Hitler. During the Second World War, he was responsible for arranging the transportation of the Jews to concentration camps.
Adolf Eichmann
( )

20. The banality of evil
Although Eichmann did not directly kill anyone, there was no question that he understood the fate (命運) of the Jews that was sent by him to the concentration camps. This, however, did not stop him from carrying out his job.

21. The banality of evil
Eichmann fled (出走) to Argentina (阿根廷) after the war, but in 1960, he was captured by Israeli agents (以色列特工) and was taken to Israel, where he was put on trial (受審) for crimes against the Jewish people. He was sentenced to death and executed (處決) by the Israeli government.

22. The banality of evil
The Israeli government sent six psychologists (心理學家) to examine Eichmann during his imprisonment before his trial. They found no trace (跡象) of mental illness, and no evidence of abnormal personality (病態人格). Eichmann also showed no trace of anti-Semitism (反猶太思想).

23. The banality of evil
Arendt, who attended the trial, was surprised to find that Eichmann was completely ordinary and normal.
She concluded that Eichmann was clearly not an evil person, nor was he motivated by evil intentions to harm the Jews.

24. The banality of evil
The problem with Eichmann, in Arendt’s view, was that he was unable to think about the nature and consequences of his actions.
He did not consider any moral questions when he was doing his job. The only thing on his mind was to do his best to carry out his duties.

25. The banality of evil
Like other Nazi bureaucrats (官僚), Eichmann followed orders from above without thinking about whether what he was doing was right or wrong.
He thought of himself as a ‘small cog (齒輪) in a big machine’. For him, carrying out his duty was an act of loyalty (忠誠、效忠) to Hitler and his country.

26. The banality of evil
In Arendt’s view, the Nazi government organization had effectively destroyed the individuality (個性) and personality (性格) of people like Eichmann.
Eichmann was so accustomed to (習以為常) following orders to the point that he was unable to make independent (獨立的) moral judgments anymore.

27. The banality of evil
The evil committed by Eichmann, as Arendt put it, was ‘banal’ (平庸的) because it was the result of:
blind obedience to authority (盲目服從權威), and
‘thoughtlessness’ or inability to think about the nature and consequences of one’s actions

28. The banality of evil
The ‘banality of evil’ (平庸之惡) is the idea that even evil on a massive scale, such as the Holocaust, can be carried out by ordinary people like Eichmann.
Neither evil intentions, nor exceptional (異常的) human qualities are required for evil to happen. Anyone in the same bad situation might have done the same horrible things that Eichmann did.

29. The banality of evil
Do you agree with Arendt that evil actions are more often the result of ‘obedience to authority’ and ‘thoughtlessness’ rather than ‘evil intentions’?

30. The banality of evil
As we will see, the Milgram Experiment, conducted by Stanley Milgram, and the Stanford prison experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo, both lend support to Arendt’s views on the origin (起源) and nature of human evil. These experiments show, in particular, how much social situations can influence individuals’ behavior.

31. The Milgram experiment
Stanley Milgram 米爾格倫 ( ) was a social psychologist (社會心理學家) who tried to investigate why people obeyed immoral orders in the Holocaust.

32. The Milgram experiment
The Milgram experiment was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of participants (參與者) to obey an authority figure (權威人物) who instructed (指示) them to perform acts that might conflict with their personal conscience (良知).

33. The Milgram experiment
Social psychology (社會心理學) studies the way our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are affected, directly or indirectly, by other people.
Milgram’s research question is simple: How far would ordinary people go in inflicting serious harm on a perfectly innocent stranger if they were told to do so by an authority figure?

34. The Milgram experiment
To see whether ordinary people could be induced to commit cruel acts, Milgram set up an experiment in which participants were ordered to inflict painful electrical shocks on innocent people.
Milgram wanted to find out whether people would cause harm to others because of ‘obedience to authority’.

35. The Milgram experiment
Milgram showed that many people who participated in a bogus (假的) memory experiment were willing to deliver harmful electric shocks to another person who posed as (假裝成) a ‘learner’.
Only about a third of the participants were able to resist authority (抗拒權威).

36. The Milgram experiment
Almost two-thirds of people were willing to administer shocks to others – even to the point of a lethal (致命的) 450 volts – simply because they were ordered to do so by a scientist in a white lab coat.

37. The Milgram experiment
Many participants believed that the moral standards of their personal lives were entirely irrelevant or inappropriate when they were taking part in an experiment.
They thought that they were not personally responsible for their actions because they were only following orders from an authority figure (i.e. the scientist).

38. The Milgram experiment
Milgram drew attention to the social and situational pressures that might lead ordinary people to commit extraordinary (不尋常的) evil.
In short, Milgram’s experiment shows that evil can occur as a result of obedience to authority.

39. The Milgram experiment
Do you think that the findings of Milgram’s obedience experiments provide a good explanation for the evil deeds (行為) committed by Eichmann and other Nazi bureaucrats? Why or why not?

40. The Stanford prison experiment
Philip Zimbardo ( )
Philip Zimbardo (津巴多) wanted to study the effects of the prison environment on human behavior. His famous Stanford Prison Experiment argues a strong case for ‘the power of the situation.’

41. The Stanford prison experiment
While Stanley Milgram was interested in ‘obedience to authority’, Philip Zimbardo was more interested in the dynamics (動態) of group behavior, i.e. factors that are likely to have significant effects on people’s behavior in ‘bad situations’ (e.g. in prisons).

42. The Stanford prison experiment
The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard.
In the experiment, groups of volunteer university students were randomly assigned to be ‘prisoners’ and ‘guards’ in a simulated (模擬的) prison.

43. The Stanford prison experiment
Both groups wore uniforms throughout the experiment, and the prisoners’ names were replaced by numbers. Their sense of individuality was weakened as a result.
Zimbardo found that about one third of the ‘guards’ became increasingly cruel as the experiment continued.

44. The Stanford prison experiment
Video recordings showed that the guards abused their authority (濫用權力) over the ‘prisoners’, for example, by humiliating (侮辱) the prisoners or making up additional punishment for them.
The experiment had to be ended after 6 days because of the escalation of violence (暴力升級).

45. The Stanford prison experiment
What Zimbardo discovered was how easily normal people could be led to commit acts of cruelty in a bad situation.
Evil, for Zimbardo, is in the system, not the individual. The prison system alone was a sufficient condition (充分條件) to produce violent behavior even in the absence of brutal (殘酷的) leaders.

46. The Stanford prison experiment
Zimbardo argued that people commit acts of cruelty not only because of ‘obedience to authority’ but also because of other situational factors such as role-playing (角色扮演), social modeling (互相仿傚), and group dynamics (群組動態).

47. The Stanford prison experiment
In role-playing, individuals adjust (調節) their beliefs and values to fit their roles. In the Stanford prison experiment, the participants behaved as if they had become prisoners or guards. Some of them were no longer able to clearly differentiate (區分) between the role they played and their real selves (自我).

48. The Stanford prison experiment
In some situations, we are not sure what to do because we do not have enough knowledge or information to make decisions. As a result of our uncertainty (不確定性), we believe that others’ interpretation (解讀) of the situation is better than our own, so we ‘copy’ what they do. This is called ‘social modeling’.

49. The Stanford prison experiment
Zimbardo also identified 3 mechanisms (機制) in ‘group dynamics’ (群組動態):
diffusion of responsibility (責任感被分散)
deindividuation (非個人化)
conformity to peer pressure (順從群眾壓力)

50. The Stanford prison experiment
In a large group or complex organization, responsibility can be divided up in such a way that no one is to be blamed (負責) even if when something bad has happened. ‘Diffusion of responsibility’ (責任感被分散) refers to a situation in which individuals no longer feel personally responsible for the group’s actions.

51. The Stanford prison experiment
‘Deindividuation’ (非個人化) can be understood as a psychological condition in which people, as a result of joining a group, no longer think of themselves as individuals. They have lost their individuality (個性) and personality (性格) to such an extent that they are unable to make independent (獨立的) moral judgments anymore.

52. The Stanford prison experiment
Most people want to be accepted by others. They fear rejection (害怕被排斥) and thus have a tendency to ‘conform to peer pressure’ (順從群眾壓力). As a result, they are likely to act in accordance with group norms (常規) and group expectations.

53. The Stanford prison experiment
To sum up, Zimbardo’s conclusions are:
people acting in groups may do things that they would not do when acting as individuals
a bad system can produce bad situations in which individuals behave badly

54. The power of the situation
What do the experiments conducted by Milgram and Zimbardo tell us about the nature of evil?

55. The power of the situation
We often overestimate (高估) the power of personal choice and underestimate (低估) the power of situational forces.
We often assume that individuals are always in control of their behavior, act from free will and rational choice, and thus personally responsible for their actions.

56. The power of the situation
After the publication of the results of Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s experiments, however, discussion of evil changed its focus from personal factors (character, moral choice, individual freedom and responsibility, etc.) to social and ‘situational’ factors.

57. The power of the situation
For Milgram and Zimbardo, situational forces are much more powerful than personal factors in influencing behavior.
In other words, we could find ourselves in situations where social pressures may lead us to do things that are unethical or immoral.

58. The power of the situation
Morality – the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil – is to a very large extent defined by the group to which individuals belong.
When the group redraws the line between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, some people may start doing things that would have been regarded in the past as ‘evil’.

59. The power of the situation
A bad system produces bad situations in which people behave badly. Nazi Germany under the rule of Hitler was an example of such a system.
Systems, however, are designed and created by individuals. Does it mean that we can put the blame on the architects of bad systems, i.e. individuals such as Adolf Eichmann?

60. The power of the situation
In the Milgram experiment and the Stanford Prison experiment, some individuals were able to resist (抗拒) the power of the situation or influence of the system.
Why are some people able to make correct moral choices in spite of the power of situational forces? Why do others fail to do so?