Maverick academic Philip Zimbardo says we are all capable of evil

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Professor Zimbardo was recently interviewed by The Independent outlining the parallels between his Stanford Prison study and incidents at Abu Ghraib. In the article (and his book The Lucifer Effect) Zimbardo provides interesting insights into the original study and the effect it has had on his life. “[Stanford] was a little week-long study,” he says, “but it has affected my whole life.” His thoughts are not all doom and gloom about human nature; where there are villains there are also heroes and his current interest lies in bringing out the good in all of us. Even Lucifer had the potential to be good as he was a fallen angel.