Ten Steps to Creating Evil Traps for Good People

From “The Psychology of Power and Evil”, by Dr. Philip Zimbardo

1. Offering an Ideology so that a big lie provides justification for any means to be used to achieve the seemingly desirable, essential goal.

An ideology is something that we can believe in, whether it is religion, country, or philosophy. Ideologies are not necessarily evil by themselves, but can be used to manipulate people.

Example: “A better Germany”, “We need meet”, etc.

2. Arranging some form of contractual obligation, verbal or written, to enact the behavior.

Contracts aren’t just written on paper! Any time we are made to feel obligated to carry through with something (peer pressure, for example), we are feeling a contractual obligation.

Example: contracts “signed in blood” in fairy tales, Jack’s use of the meat from the pig to make the boys feel like they have to listen to him, etc.

3. Giving participants meaningful roles to play that carry with them previously learned positive values and response scripts.

Changing the name of someone’s job or position from something “negative” to something “positive” will change the way people feel about it and will make them more willing to do things they know to be wrong.

Example: calling someone a “teacher” instead of “the guy who shocks people to death or a “warrior” instead of “murderer”.

4. Presenting basic rules to be followed that seem to make sense prior to their actual use, but then can arbitrarily used to justify mindless compliance.

The important part of this is getting people to agree to a set of rules and then slowly changing them over time. This can be done either by adding to the rules that already exist, or by using “positive” words that you change the meaning of later.

Example: “Strength through unity” sounds great, but can actually be used by a government to keep people from speaking out.

5. Altering the semantics of the act, the actor, and the action; replace reality with desirable rhetoric.

Again, this has to do with changing the wording of something to make it sound better.

Example: People are more likely to want to be part of a “parade” than a “riot”. “Loyalist” sounds better than “Man in a mask with an automatic weapon”. “Prepared for peace” makes “ready for war” sound less threatening.

6. Creating opportunities for diffusion of responsibility for negative outcomes; others will be responsible, or it won’t be evident that the actor will be held liable.

Anonymity! Any situation where people in a group feel like they won’t get in trouble (either because they won’t be caught or because everyone else is doing it) makes it easier for people to tell themselves that what they’re doing is ok.

Example: Using uniforms to repress individuality.

7. Starting the path toward the ultimate evil with a small, insignificant first step.

No one will do the really horrible thing (killing someone, torutring, mutilating, etc.) without being built up to it.

Example: Milgram started his participants with 15 volts. Jack had to work his way up to killing a pig.

8. Having successfully increasing steps on the pathway be gradual, so that they are hardly noticed as being different from one’s most recent prior action.

9. Changing the nature of the influence authority from initially “just” and reasonable to “unjust” and demanding, even irrational, elicits initial compliance and later confusion, but continued obedience.

Once people have taken the first small step towards evil action, the steps that come after must be small and slow. The goal is to get people to cross the “line” between right and wrong so slowly that they barely notice it.

Example: The guards at concentration camps were never stationed there first. They went through several steps of training before being posted to the camps.

10. Making the “exit costs” high, and making the process of exiting difficult by allowing usual forms of verbal dissent, while insisting on behavioral compliance.

Once people have “crossed the line”, they are made to feel like they cannot turn back or escape from their situation. Guilt and fear are often the motivators that keep people in situations that they know to be bad.

Example: Gangs will keep their members by literally refusing to let them leave and threatening to kill/hurt/turn in them or people close to them.