• The philosophical approach – Considering evil abstractly, rather than in its real-world implications
• The artistic approach – Considering evil through literature, painting, poetry and so on
• The theological approach – Considering evil as potentially emanating from the supernatural realm

This last approach, the theological one, is extremely commonly employed in our present world. It may actually remain the most common approach to evil. And it was on display last week during a segment of The O’Reilly Factor.

Recently, the television miniseries “The Bible” portrayed the character of Satan as bearing a remarkable physical resemblance to President Barack Obama. Some found this offensive and, in the wake of the minor outrage, Bill O’Reilly used his March 21, 2013 episode’s “Factor Follow Up” segment to explore the question “Does Satan Exist?”

O’Reilly introduced the segment by saying:

“We wanted to update the status of Lucifer the Prince of Darkness. What is the current wisdom regarding him?”

To help answer the question, he interviewed two theologically-based guests:

• Rabbi Aryeh Spero, author of Push Back: Reclaiming the American Judeo-Christian Spirit
• Dr. Christopher Ruddy, Associate Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at The Catholic University of America

Ruddy believes there is an active God and an active Devil and that both actually influence human behavior toward “good” and “evil.”

The Rabbi believes that, at the time of creation, God allowed for the existence of an evil force in the world and within people, even if he does not believe in an actual being such as the Devil.

I was surprised that O’Reilly actually took objective enough an approach to question the Rabbi on what he meant by the word “force.” I took this as a small indicator that Bill really does want to understand the roots of evil, rather than simply resign himself to accepting clichés.

O’Reilly then asked the Rabbi how he explains those that, given free will, choose to do evil and what happens to them after they die.

The Rabbi claims that people choose evil because they are lazy or have ambitions or lusts and fail to bow to authorities.

O’Reilly says:

“But it’s always a free decision unless you’re mentally ill and incapacitated.”

This point is really glossed over, even though, in my view, a major discussion is called for on what O’Reilly means by “mentally ill.” Does “mentally ill” only refer to those, such as psychotics, who are out of touch with reality and, therefore, make their choices on the basis of delusions and hallucinations? Or does it also refer to those, such as psychopaths, who are fully in touch with reality and simply biologically lack conscience to guide their decisions in compassionate directions?

Now, one of the things I like about O’Reilly is that he is very aware of and concerned with the problem of evil. He frequently talks on his show about the implications of the fact that there are in our world truly malicious and destructive people. And he seems genuinely curious about what underlies their behavior.

He displays this interest once again toward the end of this particular interview when he says:

“I wonder why so many people succumb to evil, though, because I believe that they know it…When you do something bad there is something inside you, whether you’re born with it or not, that says, you know, this isn’t right. You know the — the people who are slaughtering other people and maiming other people and betraying other people and stealing and all, they know what they’re doing is wrong. Yet they choose to do it anyway.”

The Rabbi replies that the reason is that they succumb to immediate gratification.

O’Reilly asks him “But don’t they think there’s going to be a payday down the road for that?”

The Rabbi says “They should. If they had the right type of religion and teaching they would understand that ultimately we’re going to be accountable.”

I find this exchange symbolic of just why it is so important that ponerology become more established and promoted. Here, O’Reilly has asked some extremely important questions that lie at the very heart of any attempt to truly understand our world and how to improve it. But, because he is asking a Rabbi, rather than a scientist who specializes in studying the objective realities of this subject matter, he receives a response that is, as I like to say, quite “fluffy.” It really leaves us with no deeper understanding of the answer to O’Reilly’s question or how to address the problem (and in fact conflicts with what some actual research says on the matter.) And that is a shame because even at this moment there are people who do know more about the actual answer to his question than these guests.

It would be similar to asking a Rabbi, rather than a physician or microbiologist, about the cause of infections. It may be interesting to hear the Rabbi’s opinion, but if you really want to know where infections come from and how to best prevent or resolve them, you probably want to talk to the men and women of science.

O’Reilly then says that he believes more people are choosing to do evil today than ever before in the history of the planet. When Ruddy disagrees, O’Reilly responds by re-asserting his view. This is another example of how strongly O’Reilly feels about this topic and its relevance to our modern age.

With the most popular cable news/opinion program in America for many years running, Bill O’Reilly has quite a prominent platform from which to help educate a very large audience about the dynamics of evil – one of the most crucial topics there is.

I don’t begrudge him featuring on his show, at times, the theological viewpoint on evil. It is one viewpoint and there is nothing wrong with it being heard.

But the scientific viewpoint on evil, I believe, has much more profound insight and actionable information to offer on this subject. This is why I feel so strongly about promoting ponerology – the science of evil.

So I’d love to see O’Reilly and other media personalities with a genuine interest in this subject spend more time featuring the many scientists – such as some that we’ve featured on this website – whose work in fields ranging from neurobiology to criminology to genetics sheds light on the sources of harmful behavior. Luckily, this is increasingly happening. Not only have we highlighted on this site cases where the media has covered ponerologic stories – whether through online news, television news or television shows – but it was observing this uptick in such media coverage that inspired its creation in the first place.

If you look at O’Reilly’s expression at the beginning of the “Does Satan Exist?” segment, when he announces the show’s desire to “update the status of Lucifer the Prince of Darkness,” you can make out a bit of a grin. Perhaps this indicates that he himself realizes what a “fluffy” topic this is to feature on his show. I’d like to think this is the case and that deep down, he too realizes that, while a Rabbi and an academic theologian may make for a somewhat interesting discussion on good and evil, if he really wants answers to the questions about harm and suffering that perplex him and millions of others, he’d be better off interviewing folks like James Fallon, Philip Zimbardo, Adrian Raine, Robert Hare and any of the others who have devoted their professional lives to bringing us objectively closer to those answers.

In our recent piece about Dr. James Fallon, we discussed the three ingredients that Fallon believes are required for the creation of a psychopathic killer.

These included:

• Certain structural and functional characteristics of the brain
• Certain variants of particular genes
• An environment that triggers the expression of these biological predispositions

While psychopathic killers can cause great harm to a certain number of people, they are relatively rare. The greater danger, from the perspective of society at large, is the emergence of “evil” on a broader scale within systems. And, as Andrew M. Lobaczewski makes clear in Political Ponerology, for that to happen, not only must people with disorders other than psychopathy be drawn into harmful activities, but so must some percentage of biologically healthy, normal people.

Zimbardo’s work has primarily focused on investigating how this latter event occurs – how everyday, average people can end up participating in destructive events.

Zimbardo has been a psychology professor at Stanford University for over forty years. He is best known for leading the team that conducted what has come to be known as the Stanford prison experiment back in 1971.

The study was actually funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research because they wanted to understand more precisely why military guards and prisoners come into conflict.

In the study, part of the basement of the Stanford psychology building was set up to resemble a dungeon. 75 participants were considered and, out of these, 24 male college students who were assessed as the most psychologically stable and healthy of the bunch were chosen. They were then randomly assigned to one of two roles – prisoner or guard.

Once divided into these roles, the participants were treated very much as their assigned role would normally entail.

• “Prisoners” were suddenly arrested by actual city police at an unexpected time, taken to the mock prison, fingerprinted, photographed, searched and dressed in uniforms, just as might take place in a real prison.
• “Guards” were dressed in professional uniforms, complete with batons, and instructed to do what it takes to maintain order.

Then the drama was allowed to unfold.

Zimbardo’s original hypothesis was that the conflicts in the scenario would arise due to the inherent personalities of the “guards” and the “prisoners.”

But instead, the study showed that these relatively healthy, normal participants quickly and deeply internalized their assigned roles within a system that justified and supported them in doing so.

• “Guards” began to treat prisoners poorly, with a third of them acting in genuinely sadistic ways.
• “Prisoners” became subdued and submissive, even turning against fellow prisoners who resisted the guards’ abuse.

Even Zimbardo himself was surprised by how extreme some of the situations became.

At its inception, the study was expected to last for two weeks. But some participants were so upset that they quit early and, after only six days, the entire experiment had to be shut down because of the excessive emotional trauma being manifested.

Decades later, during the Iraq War, when the abuse of prisoners by American personnel at Abu Ghraib prison came to light, many recognized the relevance of Zimbardo’s research to the case. So did Zimbardo himself. In fact, so much so that he became an expert witness for the defense of one of the accused Americans, Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Chip Frederick. In that role, he attempted to show that Frederick and some of the other perpetrators were not inherently evil people, but that, just as in the Stanford prison experiment, the systemic and situational forces involved played a significant role in generating the horrific activities that took place.

Zimbardo discusses the lessons of the Stanford prison experiment and his experience with the Abu Ghraib trials in his book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. The book uses the story of Lucifer, God’s favorite angel who fell and was transformed into Satan, as an allegory about how good people can, in certain situations or if intoxicated with power, become corrupted.

Zimbardo’s work is somewhat controversial. Some have criticized his methodology, while others have conducted similar studies using different methodologies and come to different conclusions. But Zimbardo himself is a strong advocate for the need to take into account systemic and situational factors when analyzing why harmful activities occur.

Now, the reason that all of this came up at this time is that, as mentioned earlier, Zimbardo was just featured by The Huffington Post.

The page, posted last Friday, features his 2008 TED talk entitled “The psychology of evil”, seen below:

The talk’s relevance to ponerology is immediately evident, as it begins with Zimbardo telling the audience:

“Philosophers, dramatists, theologians have grappled with this question for centuries: what makes people go wrong?”

while standing in front of an image of an ominous looking face superimposed with the words “Evil: What Makes People Go Wrong?”

In the talk, he discusses:

• How his early life experiences taught him that the line between a “good” and an “evil” person is not as fixed as some would like to believe
• His view that the world will always be filled with a yin/yang mixture of good and evil
• The paradox of the fact that, mythologically, God created Hell as a place to store evil, including His once favorite angel, Lucifer
• His definition of “evil”
• His experience working as an expert witness for the defense of Abu Ghraib perpetrator Staff Sgt. Chip Frederick
• The individual (dispositional) vs. situational vs. systemic factors involved in the abuses of Abu Ghraib
• The famous Milgram experiment, in which a surprisingly large percentage of participants were – if told to do so by a supposed authority figure as part of an ostensible “learning experiment” – willing to administer shocks to another person, even up to a dangerous degree of voltage. This experiment is often paired with the Stanford prison study as a famous example of the power of situational factors in the generation of harmful behavior.
• The relevance of the Milgram experiment to the Jonestown tragedy, in which hundreds committed suicide or were murdered as a consequence of their obedience to the People’s Temple founder and cult leader Jim Jones
• His Stanford prison study
• How anonymity changes behavior amongst warriors
• “7 social processes that grease the slippery slope of evil”
• Why harmful behavior must be studied using a public health model that assesses systemic and situational aspects rather than just focusing on individuals
• How we can promote heroism, especially by recognizing everyday heroes

The video is accompanied by a blog post written by Zimbardo entitled “Journeying From Evil to Heroism,” in which he covers much of the same material, but also tells the story of the TED talk itself, which was, apparently quite dramatic. Zimbardo says he ran over the strict time limit just as he was about to launch into the uplifting conclusion of his speech. Only after a special exception was made for him, because of the moderator’s belief in the importance of his message, was he able to complete his talk, explaining why it is so important that we not only study evil, but also focus on the other side of the coin, heroism, so as to better understand and promote it.

The enthusiastic response to this conclusion of his TED talk helped inspire and support Zimbardo in scaling up his current endeavor, the Heroic Imagination Project. This is a non-profit organization, of which he is president, “dedicated to promoting heroism in everyday life.” They also conduct investigations into how reformed people, who were previously involved in violent activities, were motivated and able to change.

Few people have made more of a name for themselves when it comes to the study of “good” and “evil” than Dr. Philip Zimbardo. And even at almost 80 years old, he is still continuing to do so. His work does not focus as much on the very important biological aspects of ponerology. But when it comes to thinking about the non-biological influences relevant to the field, Zimbardo has given us a lifetime of work to consider.