Suchergebnisse

What makes good people do bad things? Where is the line separating good from evil, and who is in danger of crossing it? Social psychologist Philip Zimbardo explains how--and the myriad reasons why--we are all susceptible to the lure of "the dark side." Drawing on examples from history as well as his own research, Zimbardo details how situational forces and group dynamics can work in concert to make monsters out of decent people. By illuminating the psychological causes behind such disturbing metamorphoses, Zimbardo enables us to better understand a variety of phenomena, from corporate malfeasance to organized genocide. He replaces the long-held notion of the "bad apple" with that of the "bad barrel"--the idea that the social setting and the system contaminate the individual, rather than the other way around. Yet we are capable of resisting evil, he argues, and can even teach ourselves to act heroically.--From publisher description

Provides commentary on a journal article by Mark Costanzo, Ellen Gerrity, and M. Brinton Lykes. The original article argues that psychologists should not be involved in interrogations that make use of torture or other forms of cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment. Adapted from the source document.

This article reports on an `extraordinary' time perspective, one that partitions the future into pre- and post-death time frames. Based on data from 1235 individuals, the `transcendental-future' extends from the point of imagined death of the physical body to infinity, yet may influence present behavior. Related to numerous psychological variables, the transcendental-future is a component of, but not synonymous with, many religious beliefs. From the perspective of the transcendental-future, behaviors often seen as irrational, such as suicide, extreme heroism, and excessive tithing, are transformed into rational behaviors expected to lead to fulfillment of transcendental-future goals.

Although the tendency to delay gratification is by definition the core feature of twoincreasingly popular—within the scope of individual differences at least—constructs: emotional intelligence (EI) and time perspective (TP), the role of the latter two in its development has never been investigated before. Moreover, none of existing research reports consider mutual relationships between EI and TP. Our research investigated relationships between TP, EI and the rate of discounting of delayed awards, understood as one of the forms of gratification delay. We also applied a new method of assessing balanced time perspective—the Deviation from the Balanced Time Perspective (DBTP). 126 university students participated in the study. The results obtained suggest the existence of several important connections between TP and EI and moderate impact of DBTP on the process of discounting. Future studies on temporal orientation could be enriched by utilizing this integrative measure of balanced time perspective (the DBTP coefficient) and by partitioning award delays into stages when analyzing temporal discounting strategies.