Philip Zimbardo on Situations, Evil and Heroism
TED · Talk · 23 min · 2008 · YouTube title: The psychology of evil | Philip Zimbardo
Why it's here
HN uses it to argue that systems rather than bad apples drive cruelty, and for its section on how anonymity changes behavior.
What it covers
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo explains how ordinary people can be pushed into doing evil by situations and systems. He draws on the Stanford prison experiment and unseen Abu Ghraib photos, then turns to the opposite case: how ordinary people can become heroes.