How to Understand Evil with Psychology
How to Understand Evil with Psychology
In 2010, I explored the uncomfortable intersection of military conduct, social psychology, and the definition of "evil." By examining controversial footage—specifically the 2007 WikiLeaks video featuring Bravo Company 2-16—we can peel back the layers of human behavior to see how ordinary people become agents of destruction.
Here is the perspective I shared back in 2010, which serves as a stark reminder of how systems shape our reality:
Understanding Evil: Bravo Company 2-16, Abu Ghraib, and the Power of Situation
Videos released by WikiLeaks depicts the shooting of 12 unarmed Iraqis by a U.S. military helicopter unit. The audio reveals soldiers laughing as they hit targets, calling them "dead bastards," and expressing frustration when they cannot find a reason to "legally" engage a van attempting to rescue the wounded. Josh Stieber, a member of the unit who was not involved in the specific shooting but was present during that deployment, later noted that for the unit, this was a "normal day."
Renowned psychologist Philip Zimbardo wrote the book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil which explained his famous Sanford Prison Experiment. In the book he mirrors this experiment to the conditions and occurrences of Abu Ghraib. Basically, the Power of the Situation makes humans social actors and they fulfill the role they find themselves in with almost unanimous obedience to authority and the situation.
It is also important to note that in previous experiments by Stanley Milgram on Obedience to Authority—where Milgram created a teacher-learner environment with fake shocks to the learner
—the power of situation and obedience to authority was more powerful if the person with harmful control (teacher) was further away. This is because the closer the teacher was to the learner the harder it was for him to inflict pain on the learner.
Bravo Company is a textbook example of this. Attributing these actions solely to "bad apples" is a mistake; it is an application of the Fundamental Attribution Error, where we focus on individual morality while ignoring the situational context. As Stieber put it, “Not to justify what they did, but militarily speaking, they did exactly what they were trained to do… If we’re shocked by this video, we need to be asking questions of the larger system.”
The Nuance: Why "Evil" Is Often Just "Compliance"
Revisiting this in 2026, the psychological framework holds, but our application of it must be sharper. To "understand" evil is to recognize that it is rarely a mustache-twirling villainy; it is often the banality of following orders.
1. Beyond the Fundamental Attribution Error
When we see acts of cruelty, our brains immediately want to categorize the perpetrators as "monsters." This is the Fundamental Attribution Error in action—the cognitive bias that leads us to blame an individual’s internal character for their actions while ignoring the massive, invisible pressures of their environment. By labeling them "evil," we absolve the system that trained them. Applied philosophy forces us to ask: If the situation is designed to create a specific output, how can we be surprised when we receive that output?
2. The Psychology of Distance
Milgram’s "distance" factor is more relevant today than ever. Whether it is a pilot looking through a high-resolution drone scope or a corporate manager signing a layoff notice via email, technological abstraction is the ultimate shield against empathy. When the victim is reduced to a pixelated target or a spreadsheet row, our mirror neurons—the biological basis of empathy—do not fire. We effectively turn off our own humanity through the removal of physical contact.
3. How Do We Combat and End It?
If evil is a product of situation and authority, then we cannot end it simply by punishing individuals. We must dismantle the situational architecture:
Cultivating "Heroic Imagination": Zimbardo argues that we must train people to be "everyday heroes"—individuals who are taught to recognize when a situation is turning toxic and have the social and moral tools to dissent.
Radical Accountability: We must stop training people to be "social actors" who follow roles blindly. We must foster systems where institutional disobedience is not only permitted but required when human rights are at stake.
The Applied Philosophy of "Close-up" Living: In our own lives, we must intentionally bridge the gap. We combat the "distance" effect by looking at the humanity of those we disagree with or the people affected by our actions. If you can’t look them in the eye, you shouldn't be making the decision.
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