Lesson Plan

Philip Zimbardo - Professor, Stanford University: One of the most basic human needs is the need of social belonging, and to satisfy that need we will step across that line between good and evil, between what we know is right and usually do and what we know at some level is wrong and we shouldn't do, but just this once we're going to step across because the group is pushing us. The other thing about the human mind is it has infinite power to justify any behavior, either before doing it to say 'here's why we do it', then after you do it to say 'here's why we had to do it'. Human beings are more rationalizing than rational, that is we like to think we're rational, we weigh the alternatives, but in fact what we are a people who can reexplain anything after the fact to make it fit some good social values. So it's the perversion of the incredible power of the human mind that can do almost anything, all the magical things the human mind does in terms of creativity, can be perverted to justify any evil, any transgression.