Module: Risk Management and Assurance ACCT 627
Introduction
The Lucifer effect describes Philip Zimbardo’s experiment in 1971 in which college students under took the roles of guards and prisoners in a study that was originally intended to examine how prisoners would adapt to prison life. However, the study took on a different focus as the behaviour of the guards (and authoritative figures) become a key point of interest.
Before the study commenced, participants were dutifully screened for abnormal psychological traits and were randomly assigned the roles of prisoners and guards. The experiment was to be conducted over two weeks with Zimbardo himself dual hatting as a prison supervisor and that of a researcher. Steps were taken conceal the identities of the guards, to create a sense of anonymity and deindividuation. The students were not given any form of training on how to perform as normal prison guard and rules were poorly defined. As part of the study process, the counts sessions were simply intended as a role call and to ensure that the prisoners were made aware of their identification numbers and the rules. However, the count sessions very quickly became abusive from the first day. The sessions went beyond the intended duration, during which prisoners were humiliated, physically abused, psychologically weakened and punished without reason. At one point, the abuse even turned sexual in nature. As a result of the rapid escalation of abuse, the study was terminated just after 6 days. Yet, for the duration of the study, Zimbardo and the other researchers did not intervene in any of the abuse that took place. At the end of the study, Zimbardo put forth several observations and key insights on why good people do evil things which I believe are very relevant and applicable to corporate governance.
Corporate governance
Corporate governance as