The Lucifer Effect in the Context of Epidemics: How Environment Affects Behavior

By Jiangnan Misty Rain, Jointing.Media, in Shanghai, 2022-05-24

It has been heard on the grapevine that on the 22nd of this month, most of the residents of Huixianju in Shanghai’s Xuhui district gathered at the entrance of No.287 Wuyuan Road, where the Hunan Road Office is located, and after a night of protest, finally won the right to enter and leave the neighbourhood freely without restrictions on the number of people and the number of times they can enter and leave the neighbourhood (20220522). It is raining in Shanghai today and Huixianju has been resealed (20220524), with a police presence at the entrance.

The Stanford Prison Experiment of 52 years ago may be worth revisiting.

In 1971, the American psychologist Philip George Zimbardo, in order to examine the extent to which the social environment influences human behaviour and the ways in which social institutions can control individual behaviour and dominate individual personalities, values and beliefs, placed an advertisement in a newspaper: Looking for college students to participate in an experiment in prison life, reward $15 a day for two weeks.

After a series of psychological and medical tests, 24 physically and mentally healthy, emotionally stable and law-abiding young university students were selected. They were randomly divided into three groups: nine guards, nine prisoners and six extras.

To make the situation more realistic, the basement of a Stanford University classroom building was transformed into a prison; the guards were issued batons, handcuffs, police uniforms and sunglasses; the inmates were arrested from their homes by real police officers, who were then asked to change into prison uniforms, were not allowed to use their own names but only numerical code numbers as their identities, were handcuffed, and were required to obey the prison administration.

Soon everyone is invested in their role in this simulated situation or atmosphere. The guards began to exercise their leadership by torturing and humiliating the inmates who dared to challenge their authority, and this punishment gradually escalated; while the inmates gradually showed reactions very similar to those of first-time inmates in real prisons, as they gradually became submissive and gradually identified with their status as inmates.

In this experiment, almost everyone was overly invested in their role in this atmosphere, and the simulated prison embodied situations that would only be found in a real prison. The experiment had to be stopped on the sixth day to prevent more serious problems.

Under the influence of certain situations and systems, people’s character, thinking, and behavior will show an incredible side, and the phenomenon of reflecting the evil side of human nature is known as The Lucifer Effect. Zimbardo described this experiment in detail in his book The Lucifer Effect：Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (2007), which became known as the Stanford Prison Experiment.

（Editor’s note：The core idea behind the Lucifer Effect is that situations and systems can shape human behavior in negative ways that lead good people to make unethical choices. Zimbardo argues that various social dynamics like obedience to authority, peer pressure, deindividuation and diffused responsibility can work to diminish moral sensibility and make cruelty seem acceptable. ）

Everyone is unconsciously influenced by his environment and changes his behavior. Shanghai has passed 60 days after becoming a giant prison; Beijing is being Shanghaiized into separate districts; there are many other large cities and small counties that have passed, are being, or will be quietly managed; there are no cases, no need to seal off the town, but announce that the town requires residents to have a nucleic acid test every other day before leave homes;and in villages where farmers are required to wear protective clothing before they can go out into the fields with their spring planting permits. This dystopian drama unfolding in China is nothing less than a large-scale experiment in the Lucifer effect.

Those who are in it are forced to be prisoners or fugitives, those who are forced or actively choose to be guards, and others who sit behind cameras and numbers and monitor it all. These different identities reshape each person’s behaviour, and each act is a reinforcement of perception, which further changes the person’s thinking, which in turn then influences the repetition and intensification of behaviour.

Two years ago, people affectionately called the medical workers who wore white protective suits and bravely went against the grain to save lives Da Bai. So what are the people doing who blur the identity of the individual and hide their various roles under the white suits? They may be the staff of a few neighbourhood committees, ruthlessly enforcing the so-called rules from above; they may be the law enforcers, breaking the law in the name of preventing epidemics; they may be the propagandists in the official media, doing superficial photo-shooting propaganda; and they may be the city administrators, changing their orders from one day to the next, all in the same white cover. Different behaviours have changed people’s perception of Da Bai. The word “Da Bai”, which once meant warmth and respect, has been stigmatised as something like the “Axe Gang”.

（Editor note: Chinese Da Bai comes from the character Baymax in the movie Big Hero 6)

The videos related to the recording of the Hui Xian Ju on the Internet have now been removed. The details of the incident, as told by those who experienced it, continue to be spread in the virtual world.This kind of “discordant” voice being “harmonized” often occurs.

After the spring equinox and the small abundance, Shanghai’s spring passed in the silence of the whole city. Even if people’s eyes are covered, their mouths gagged, and their online “rumors” deleted, their memories cannot be erased. What is imprinted in the minds of those who experienced it and those who watched it will reshape their perceptions, and the individual psychological changes will gradually show up in their behavior. More far-reaching changes in group behavior and the social problems that have been and will be caused have also become the secondary disasters of the city closure and anti-epidemic. The depth, breadth, and duration of this disaster may be beyond our imagination.

Lucifer, also known as Satan or the Devil, is derived from the Latin term lucem ferre, meaning light-bringer. According to Christian theology, Lucifer was once the archangel before the Fall. Due to his excessive pride and self-confidence, he wanted to be equal to God and led one-third of the angels to rebel, which is also known as the famous War in Heaven. He was defeated and imprisoned in the prison of fallen angels, and was subsequently banished and lost the glory he once held. Later, Lucifer re-established a new world in Hell, similar to Heaven, where he became Satan, the demon king, and the fallen angels who followed Lucifer became demons.

Originally good angels, in a variety of environmental factors become fallen angels, and even the so-called Satan. When some people become a cold number in the eyes of another part, when some people become a ruthless tool in the hands of another part, when the environment subtly shapes people, some people from good to evil.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is often compared to the Milgram Experiment, also known as the Obedience to Authority Study. The purpose of the experiment was to test how much refusal/obedience is humanly possible when subjected to an order from an authority figure that goes against one’s conscience. Such “experiments” are being conducted all over the world in the name of the COVID-19 epidemic, and people are watching.

Friedrich Hegel said:” The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”

We all repeat history.

Whatever has happened before will happen again.

Whatever has been done before will be done again.

There is nothing new under the sun.

——Ecclesiastes

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