Here we see another example where people are looking for a phenomenon that doesn’t exist – EVIL.
Do people harm others in the real world and experimental settings? sure.
Does that constitute evil? no.
The conclusion of the studies never mention evil.
“What the experiment shows is that the person whose authority I consider to be legitimate, that he has a right to tell me what to do and therefore I have obligation to follow his orders, that person could make me, make most people, act contrary to their conscience,” Blass said.
It is the junk writing and sensationalist interpretation of data that assigns the evil label.
What the subjects were doing in these experiments was behaving under contingencies. Assigning a label of evil or hero or immoral doesn’t help explain what’s actually going on.
Get over the search for evil or good. Get on with the search for why and how we behave.
How do you define “evil”?
There are many people in the world who do believe that some form of evil exists, but what is it? Where did it come from, and does it have any place in the analysis of particular studies?
To me, people use “Evil”, “God”, etc. as a means to explain the things they do not understand, but feel they must have an answer for. I also think that there isn’t a damn thing wrong with that, it’s just not what I do.