Why policemen do evil things: A brief analysis on why people go bad

“The world is, was, will always be filled with good and evil, because good and evil is the yin and yang of the human condition.” - Phillip Zimbardo

Phillip Zimbardo's observations of Evil

According to Phillip Zimbardo, “Evil is the exercise of power…To intentionally harm people psychologically, to hurt people physically, to destroy people mortally, or ideas, and to commit crimes against humanity.” (Zimbardo) In Zimbardo’s, “Psychology of Evil”, he makes insightful observations on the nature of evil in humans and how it’s created. In his talk, he goes over specific cases in which power is left unchecked, and how that power is used to harm others. His studies have focused on how peer pressure and unchecked authority leads to evil being maintained.

He comes to the conclusion that people are “plastic” when it comes to their good or evil nature. For example, in a famous experiment he conducted, students were assigned the role of guard or prisoner and were were put in a simulated prison. The experiment quickly turned ugly when the "guards" quickly became abusive and misused their power over the "prisoners." This is a good example of plasticity because it shows us how quickly people can adopt to power and how quickly that power can foster "evil." Something similar, but real, happened in Abu Ghraib where real guards abused their real prisoners.

Ms. Jane's blue eye/brown eye study

In Ms. Jane’s study, she created stratification and status by labeling blue eyed students as superior to brown eyed students. She used her authority to pressure the students to conform to these new “realities” based on arbitrary physical features. She herself treated the brown eyed students as an inferior class and the blue eyed students followed. The role of the superior class was then reversed to show how easy it is for the kids to alter their behavior towards each other. The inferior class suffered from loss of confidence, substandard performance, sadness and an overall feeling of haplessness, among other things. The study gives us an idea of how people are pressured by their peers and authority figures into committing “evil,” and how those behaviors can aversely affect the oppressed class.

The conditions that foster evil

Evil requires that there is some form of authority abusing its unhampered power. In Ms. Jane’s study, she takes on the role of authority with unchecked power, and the blue eyed students are her guards who wear the costume of superior people. However, instead of being literal guards, such as the ones who abused their power in Zimbardo’s examples in Abu Ghraib, they subconsciously guard Ms. Jane’s authority and use their new status to commit evil against the lower class brown eyes. The soldiers in Abu Ghraib were also given unchecked authority, and used their new power to commit evil acts against their prisoners. In both of these scenarios, we can conclude that the environment is a major influence on individuals to behave a certain way.

“Yeah, people are the actors on the stage, but you'll have to be aware of what that situation is. Who are the cast of characters? What's the costume? Is there a stage director?" (Zimbardo) 

Peer pressure is also a major factor. When Ms. Jane told her class, “the blue eyed people are the better people in this room”, many kids met her with skepticism and objection. After a few hours, all the kids we’re playing along with their new reality and had accepted their new status. Peer pressure from the other kids must’ve been a factor in converting those kids who weren’t immediately compliant to authority. Perhaps these kids looked around the class and came to the conclusion that if everyone else is behaving a certain way, that must be the correct way of behaving. The same can be applied to Zimbardo’s prison guard experiment in which the guards abused and humiliated their prisoners. It would be unlikely that all the pretend guards just happened to be sadistic people who enjoyed another person’s suffering. It’s more likely that there was one or two influential guards abusing their power, which lead to pressure for the other guards to adapt. In both of these scenarios, it’s people’s need to belong that influences them to be good or evil.

Discrimination

Ms. Jane makes the connection between her study and the real world multiple times. Both Ms. Jane’s and Zimbardo’s experiments showed us how the environment can create conditions of extreme inequality and abuse of status. Just as the blue eyed students discriminated against the brown eye students due to pressure from authority, peer pressure and personal benefit, so do dominate classes discriminate against less dominant ones on society. Many times these dominant classes are told they’re superior, whether directly or indirectly, through the behavior of others towards them. Non-dominant classes often receive the opposite treatment.

“Violence is a disease. And since the Inquisition, we've been dealing with problems at the individual level. And you know what? It doesn't work.” (Zimbardo)

If we are willing to accept the idea that race is mostly a social construct, and take the time to examine statistics related to crime, incarceration, poverty, etc, we can conclude that the effects of discrimination are real and powerful. Why? Because if these discrepancies between dominant and non-dominant classes exist, then we cannot simply explain them away through biology or culture, but must also remember the effects of discrimination on an individual's mind. However, placing all the blame on individuals is misguided, and instead we should take a moment to examine the system that nurtures these inequalities. 

“It’s a filthy nasty word called discrimination. We’re treating people a certain way because they are different from us. Is that fair?” (Jane) 

This is the question Ms. Jane asks her students near the end of her study, to which they respond with with no’s and nods. At the end of her study, Ms. Jane asks her students, “should you judge people by the color of their skin?”(Jane) Again, the students respond with an overwhelming no. Ms. Jane meets their no’s with skepticism, because she knows that as soon as they go back into the “real world,” nothing will have changed. Although, the kids had a newfound understanding of the effects of discrimination, the pressure from authority and peers to conform would still be there.

How it applies to police brutality

Using what we know, we can conclude that much of the brutality by police officers is due to systemic issues. In other words, the system encourages or allows police officers to get away with such things. There are bad police officers out there, just like there are bad people in any institution. However, the current system must be set up in such a way that police officers have too much power over citizens. In order to minimize these conflicts, we have to take a close look at the system, and be willing to talk openly about it. Police have authority because we as a society agree to allow them to have it, and we're allowed to change the rules if we need to.

One way of "evening out the playing field," is to have our police officers wear body cameras. This way the citizen has evidence of any wrong doing by the officer, and the officer has evidence of his innocence. Of course, this won't completely prevent police brutality, nothing will, but it's a step in the right direction. These are the type of systemic changes we as a society should be looking into. Punishing one officer is useful, but changing the environment in which the officer operates is essential.

In a nutshell, the problem seems to be that officers have too much power over the average citizen. We need to examine how the system in place allows the police to have such an advantage over the average citizen, then tweak the system accordingly. The goal is not to "nerf" our police officers, but to be able to hold them accountable when necessary. In other words, we want to give the police officer enough authority to carry out his job, but not enough to brutally beat or murder someone and get away with it. 

Conclusion

These studies hold up the mirror on our society and ourselves. Ms. Jane and Phillip Zimbardo both show us how the combination of a powerful authority and peer pressure can lead people to go bad. In Ms. Jane’s experiment, a trivial difference in appearance caused evil. In Phillip Zimbardo’s studies and observations, evil was perpetuated by a system that encouraged it. Instead of merely continuing to punish individuals for their evil actions, we should take the time to move our attention towards the system and what type of people it produces. “…so if you want to change a person, you've got to change the situation.” (Zimbardo)