In the Name of Authority

In 1994, a Rwandan schoolteacher, once trusted and respected in his community, picked up a machete and joined a mob that massacred hundreds of his neighbours. How does such a transformation happen? How can seemingly normal people commit horrific acts of cruelty? According to the legal dictionary, evil is a ‘gross violation of standards of moral conduct, vileness’. Evil is not, as we comfortably believe, the work of madmen or sociopaths. Instead, it usually happens when ordinary people get overwhelmed by authoritarian systems that erode compassion, punish individuality, and scatter accountability. The psychology behind this has been explored through numerous studies like Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, Milgram's obedience studies, and Hannah Arendt's hypothesis of the 'banality of evil.' Together, they show us the horrifying ease with which people can be persuaded to cause pain and teach us how genocides like the Holocaust, war crimes, and corporate cruelties are facilitated.

Understanding the Psychology of Evil & Control

In 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo set up a simulated prison in the basement of Stanford University. 24 psychologically healthy male students were randomly assigned the roles of guards or prisoners. Within days, the experiment became a psychological nightmare. ‘Guards’ became sadistic, humiliating ‘prisoners’, enforcing arbitrary punishments and subjecting them to emotional abuse. The ‘prisoners,’ in turn, became passive and depressed. The study was terminated after just 6 days (Zimbardo, 1973). Zimbardo’s conclusion was that it wasn’t inherent sadism or moral weakness that led the guards behavior, but the situation's power. Environmental cues and social roles transformed ordinary young men into abusers. They were not inherently evil but were part of a system that dehumanized others and rewarded domination. Psychologically, the guards experienced deindividuation, losing their personal identity in the anonymity of the group, and role internalization, where the boundaries between acting and believing blurred. With power delegated to them with no one accountable, diffusion of responsibility kicked in. No one guard felt fully responsible. This dynamic is not just theoretical. In 2004, images emerged from Abu Ghraib prison showing U.S. soldiers mocking and abusing Iraqi detainees. The perpetrators, like Zimbardo’s guards, operated in a climate of stress, poor oversight, and unchecked authority (Zimbardo, 2007).

A decade prior to Zimbardo, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted another unsettling experiment at Yale. Volunteers were told they were assisting a learning experiment. Under the guidance of a stern ‘scientist,’ they were instructed to administer increasing electric shocks to a man in another room for every wrong answer he gave. The man’s screams (pre-recorded) escalated in agony until they stopped altogether. Despite visible distress, over 60% of participants obeyed instructions to deliver the maximum shock (Milgram, 1963). Milgram argued that people enter an agentic state when under commands of a perceived legitimate authority, they stop seeing themselves as autonomous individuals, but as instruments of another’s will. Harm is rationalized as not their responsibility. Additionally, gradual escalation made each new step seem only slightly worse than the last, allowing participants to cross moral lines in increments. This experiment mimics the strategy of the Nazi regime, where thousands of bureaucrats and officers insisted that they were merely following orders. The same logic persists in modern institutions. Unethical actions in corporations or governments often go unchallenged because ‘that’s just how the system works’ (Milgram, 1963). For me, what is most disturbing is that participants weren’t cruel. Many trembled, wept or protested, yet they complied. This internal conflict reveals how the need to obey authority can override moral instinct, even in kind, well-intentioned individuals.

In 1961, philosopher Hannah Arendt covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a key organizer of the Holocaust. Expecting to find a monstrous ideologue, she instead found a bland, middle-aged bureaucrat who insisted he was merely a functionary ‘just following orders’ (Arendt, 1963). Arendt used the phrase ‘the banality of evil’ to describe this unsettling phenomenon. Great atrocities are often carried out not by fanatics, but by unimaginative, obedient individuals who fail to think critically about their actions. Evil becomes banal and not because it is trivial, but because of its unremarkable form, hidden in paperwork and routine. Eichmann didn’t personally kill anyone, but he organized train schedules. The trains that led millions to their deaths. This occurs over and over in history. In modern genocide logistics, in Rwanda, Bosnia, Myanmar, there are always people in offices filling forms, stamping orders, updating spreadsheets. Likewise, in corporate disasters, such as the Volkswagen emissions scandal or the 2008 financial crash, unethical decisions emerged from boardrooms, not back alleys. Arendt’s insight shows that evil often flourishes not in hatred, but in carelessness.

These studies do more than account for history, they warn us about the present. In genocides, people are radicalized not because they are inherently violent, but because propaganda, peer pressure, and fear reshape their norms. In corporations, employees can do environmental or economic harm by simply 'following protocol.' In battlefields, troops commit atrocities because they're told to or because everybody is doing it. Understanding the psychology of evil allows us to intervene before it’s too late. Whistleblower protection, ethical training, and systems that encourage dissent can prevent obedience from becoming complicity. In schools, teaching moral courage and critical thinking can stop future generations from blind conformity. In governments and corporations, accountability must be built into the structure not just hoped for. We need to not just identify evil but to resist it from within our social systems.

When we imagine evil, we imagine villains: sociopaths, monsters, ideologues. But the truth is worse. Zimbardo, Milgram, and Arendt show us that we are all capable of being evil, not as something that we necessarily bring into the world with us, but as something that is awakened within us by environment, pressure, and indifference. Rather than asking 'Who are the bad guys?', we should be asking 'What situations, systems, and silences allow evil to thrive?' because really, the psychology of evil isn't about understanding them. It's about understanding us.