"Homo homini lupus" ("Man is a wolf to man") says an ancient Latin motto, firstly attributed to the playwright Plauto and subsequently adopted by Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) and Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) in their conception of human nature. Are we all potentially evil under certain environmental circumstances? Is this our nature, a selfish and predatory animal, masked in civil appearances? With all due respect to a more philosophical approach, I feel that investigating people's behaviour from a social and psychological perspective can give us a better insight about this strange animal called human, and in a more pragmatical way. Our behaviour is the expression of our nature, in the end.

"Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" is an essay from Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), an American naturalized German philosopher and writer. I strongly recommend this book to all those who are still incredulous at the inexplicable horrors of the twentieth century and wish to obtain a unique perspective on human nature under the light of one of the most tragic events in human history, the Holocaust. This essay is a report of the author, sent by the New Yorker, on the sessions of Adolf Eichmann's trial. After the defeat of the regime, the Nazi hierarch fled to Argentina in 1945. Subsequently, Eichmann was captured by the Israelis in 1960, tried for genocide in Jerusalem in 1961 and, finally, sentenced to death by hanging.

What emerges from the detailed account of the hearings of the trial, is the shocking but disarming finding on the nature of Nazism: that, for the most part of it, it's been a mass phenomenon based on the uncritical adjustment to trivial and mechanical routines.
We think to such an important process and we would expect to find this Eichmann as a diabolically intelligent and perverse being. Truth is that what the book reveals is nothing but an ordinary man, who has done what he has done driven by the desire to please his superiors and advance in his career. A man who followed orders without questioning them.

Here's Arendt description of Adolf Eichmann:

I was struck by the manifest shallowness in the doer [ie Eichmann] which made it impossible to trace the uncontestable evil of his deeds to any deeper level of roots or motives. The deeds were monstrous, but the doer – at least the very effective one now on trial – was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous.

As of 2017, daily social media usage worldwide amounted to 135 minutes per day, up from 126 daily minutes in the previous year (source). In times where social media can determine the results of political elections, if not the whole fate of nations, we need to be aware that "evil" in all its social shapes is not a detectable phenomenon, but an ordinary process in which our consciences slowly slide into oblivion. E gradually stop questioning orders, disobeying, thinking with our brain, remembering the past.

During my university studies, when writing my dissertation on the rights of prisoners, I came across two social experiments whose result are both shocking and insightful. I think that understanding these experiments may be a good antidote for countering that "lupus" that lies in the shadow within everyone of us.

The Stanford prison experiment (SPE), was held at Stanford University in August 1971, by a research group led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. The experiment engaged 24 college students, equally divided in the roles of "prisoners" and "guards" and each paid $15 per day (Approximately $90 in 2017) to participate in a 7-14 day period of stay in a prison-alike environment, settled purposely in the basement of the Stanford's psychology building.

The guards' suit was stereotypical of a certain common perception. They were dressed with uniforms and mirror sunglasses, carrying a whistle around their neck and even a billy club. They were also specifically instructed by Zimbardo, who held the role of "superintendent", a sort of prison's director, as follows:

You can create in the prisoners feelings of boredom, a sense of fear to some degree, you can create a notion of arbitrariness that their life is totally controlled by us, by the system, you, me, and they'll have no privacy ... We're going to take away their individuality in various ways. In general what all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness. That is, in this situation, we'll have all the power and they'll have none.

After answering to a local newspaper and expressing their intention to participate in a vaguely described study on the psychological effects of prison life, the applicants whose been assigned with the prisoner's role were "arrested" at their homes by real city police collaborating with Zimbardo, blindfolded and taken to the simulated prison environment.

This is the description of the prisoner's introductory modalities to the experiment:

A degradation procedure was designed in part to humiliate prisoners and in part to be sure they weren't bringing in any germs to contaminate our jail. This procedure was similar to the scenes captured by Danny Lyons in these Texas prison photos.
The prisoner was then issued a uniform. The main part of this uniform was a dress, or smock, which each prisoner wore at all times with no underclothes. On the smock, in front and in back, was his prison ID number. On each prisoner's right ankle was a heavy chain, bolted on and worn at all times. Rubber sandals were the footwear, and each prisoner covered his hair with a stocking cap made from a woman's nylon stocking.

The experiment, whose details you can read here, narrates of an escalation of abuses and real tortures perpetrated by the guards to the prisoners. It was forced to be aborted after seven days from its beginning, due to the strong ethical and moral objections of Christina Maslach, a psychology student that was invited to observe the experiment and the future wife of Zimbardo.
Slowly during the experiment, the applicants lost their perception of individuals and fully embraced their role. This was applicable for Zimbardo too, who had to admit he had been "grossly absorbed", allowing psychological and physical violence to be performed under his supervision.
One third of the guards showed "genuine sadistic tendencies", and the prisoners have reported severe psychological traumas.

A clear demonstration of the depersonalization and deindividuation process, is given by the story of prisoner #819 (obviously, prisoners were called by their number and not with their name):

The only prisoner who did not want to speak to the priest was Prisoner #819, who was feeling sick, had refused to eat, and wanted to see a doctor rather than a priest. Eventually he was persuaded to come out of his cell and talk to the priest and superintendent so we could see what kind of a doctor he needed. While talking to us, he broke down and began to cry hysterically, just as had the other two boys we released earlier. I took the chain off his foot, the cap off his head, and told him to go and rest in a room that was adjacent to the prison yard. I said that I would get him some food and then take him to see a doctor.

While I was doing this, one of the guards lined up the other prisoners and had them chant aloud: "Prisoner #819 is a bad prisoner. Because of what Prisoner #819 did, my cell is a mess, Mr. Correctional Officer." They shouted this statement in unison a dozen times.
As soon as I realized that #819 could hear the chanting, I raced back to the room where I had left him, and what I found was a boy sobbing uncontrollably while in the background his fellow prisoners were yelling that he was a bad prisoner. No longer was the chanting disorganized and full of fun, as it had been on the first day. Now it was marked by utter conformity and compliance, as if a single voice was saying, "#819 is bad."

I suggested we leave, but he refused. Through his tears, he said he could not leave because the others had labelled him a bad prisoner. Even though he was feeling sick, he wanted to go back and prove he was not a bad prisoner.

At that point I said, "Listen, you are not #819. You are [his name], and my name is Dr. Zimbardo. I am a psychologist, not a prison superintendent, and this is not a real prison. This is just an experiment, and those are students, not prisoners, just like you. Let's go."

He stopped crying suddenly, looked up at me like a small child awakened from a nightmare, and replied, "Okay, let's go."

Notwithstanding its importance, this experiment came under heavy criticism and could never be repeated nowadays, due to stricter ethical protocols.