Includes bibliographical references (p. [491]-533) and index.

Preface -- Acknowledgments -- List of illustrations -- 1. The psychology of evil : situated character transformations -- 2. Sunday's surprise arrests -- 3. Let Sunday's degradation rituals begin -- 4. Monday's prisoner rebellion -- 5. Tuesday's double trouble : visitors and rioters -- 6. Wednesday is spiraling out of control -- 7. The power to parole -- 8. Thursday's reality confrontations -- 9. Friday's fade to black -- 10. The SPE's meaning and messages : the alchemy of character transformations -- 11. The SPE : ethics and extensions -- 12. Investigating social dynamics : power, conformity, and obedience -- 13. Investigating social dynamics : deindividuation, dehumanization, and the evil of inaction -- 14. Abu Ghraib's abuses and tortures : understanding and personalizing its horrors -- 15. Putting the system on trial : command complicity -- 16. Resisting situational influences and celebrating heroism -- Notes -- Index.

Includes information on Abu Ghraib Prison, Achilles as archetypal war hero, administrative evil, Afghanistan, anonymity, Army Reserve Military Police (MPs), Britain, Bush administration, bystander intervention, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Dick Cheney, conformity, corporations, U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), dehumanization, deindividuation, doctors, Lynndie England, evil, Ivan (Chip) Frederick, II, genocide, good, Charles Graner, Guantanamo Bay Prison, heroism, Adolf Hitler, Holocaust, human nature, Saddam Hussein, identity, inaction as force for evil, International Committee of the Red Cross, Iraq, Iraq War, Katrina hurricane disaster as crisis of inaction, persuasive uses of language, Lord of the Flies (Golding), lynchings, Military Intelligence (MI), moral disengagement, My Lai massacre, national security, U.S. Navy, Nazis, New York City, 1984 (Orwell), obedience to authority, otherness, Pentagon, Peoples Temple cult, personal responsibility, power systems, prejudice, prisons, rape, role playing, rules, Donald Rumsfeld, situational forces, sleep deprivation, social approval, social influence, social psychology, Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) http://www.prisonexperiment.org, Taguba Report, torture, transformation of character, Vietnam War, violence, war, war on terror, whistle-blowers, women, World War II, etc.

What makes good people do bad things? Where is the line separating good from evil, and who is in danger of crossing it? Social psychologist Philip Zimbardo explains how--and the myriad reasons why--we are all susceptible to the lure of "the dark side." Drawing on examples from history as well as his own research, Zimbardo details how situational forces and group dynamics can work in concert to make monsters out of decent people. By illuminating the psychological causes behind such disturbing metamorphoses, Zimbardo enables us to better understand a variety of phenomena, from corporate malfeasance to organized genocide. He replaces the long-held notion of the "bad apple" with that of the "bad barrel"--the idea that the social setting and the system contaminate the individual, rather than the other way around. Yet we are capable of resisting evil, he argues, and can even teach ourselves to act heroically.--From publisher description.