DOMINIC W. MASSARO, editor
University of California, Santa Cruz

The Definitive Answer to Creationism

The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil
By Philip Zimbardo. New York: Random House, 2007. 551 pp. Cloth, $27.95.

Philip Zimbardo has studied human behavior in social situations for decades, and his efforts have given us some of the most memorable glimpses into the surprising possibilities of social behavior. Among these, the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) has pride of place. Conducted in the basement of the psychology department over 6 days in 1971, the SPE has become one of the icons of situationism, or the idea that ordinary people can all too easily be induced to visit horrors on one another.