Article: Could you be Pushed to Commit a Horrific Crime?

Article Review
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Institution
Article Review
Introduction
The Lucifer Effect is an article by Major Joon Kong which explains how being under certain circumstances can influence the way we behave. The author discusses why normal people can be transformed into murderers when placed under extreme conditions. To prove this theory, the article presents an experiment conducted at the Stanford Prison where college students` were placed in a bad situation. The article reports that the students that were actions as guards in the experiment ended up torturing the prisoners even though they knew that this was just an experiment. The article concludes that what happened in the Stanford prison experiment explains what happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq where prisoners were tortured to death.
Summary
The article discusses about a book titled The Lucifer Effect that has been authored by Philip Zimbardo. The author of this book seeks to understand the processes of transformation at work when good or ordinary people commit bad things. Specifically, the author discusses the nature of character transformations when they are presented with powerful situational forces. In the Stanford Prison experiment (SPE), paid student volunteers took on the roles of prison and prison guards in a bid to replicate a realistic prison environment as a way of establishing the extent to which an individual adapts to their new roles. The article presents a scenario where the guards who had been given the liberty of deciding the kind of punishment to present to the prisoners ended up being violent to a point where the experiment had to be called off before its completion date (Ho...