![](\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/images\/slideshow\/2008\/02\/gallery_abu_ghraib\/abu2.jpg\")
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Link<\/a> to wired news article about this image, from Philip Zimbardo’s TED presentation.<\/p>\n From an accompanying article and interview with Zimbardo:<\/p>\n Wired: <\/strong>Your work suggests that we all have the capacity for evil, and that it’s simply environmental influences that tip the balance from good to bad. Doesn’t that absolve people from taking responsibility for their choices?<\/p>\n Philip Zimbardo: <\/strong>No. People are always personally accountable for their behavior. If they kill, they are accountable. However, what I’m saying is that if the killing can be shown to be a product of the influence of a powerful situation within a powerful system, then it’s as if they are experiencing diminished capacity and have lost their free will or their full reasoning capacity.<\/p>\n Situations can be sufficiently powerful to undercut empathy, altruism, morality and to get ordinary people, even good people, to be seduced into doing really bad things — but only in that<\/em> situation.<\/p>\n Understanding the reason for someone’s behavior is not the same as excusing it. Understanding why somebody did something — where that why<\/em> has to do with situational influences — leads to a totally different way of dealing with evil. It leads to developing prevention strategies to change those evil-generating situations, rather than the current strategy, which is to change the person.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Link<\/a> to this article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Link to wired news article about this image, from Philip Zimbardo’s TED presentation. From an accompanying article and interview with Zimbardo: Wired: Your work suggests that we all have the capacity for evil, and that it’s simply environmental influences that tip the balance from good to bad. Doesn’t that absolve people from taking responsibility for… Continue reading abu ghraib photos<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[451,450,256,452,453],"class_list":["post-1325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abughraib","tag-evil","tag-iraq","tag-torture","tag-war","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wnIz-ln","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}