The concept of “evil” has been explored throughout time–in philosophy, religion, psychology, and everyday conversation. For some, it’s an intellectual question, an argument about whether or not the label is harmful and misleading, or whether we need such labels to capture the profound moral horror behind certain actions.

The discussion changes from abstract to tangible, and even emotional, when we are talking about actual people and acts they’ve committed. After World War II–and the exposure to the heinous crimes committed by the Nazis–psychologists in the US became very interested in whether or not there was something about the German psyche and/or culture that was behind the commission of so many terrible acts by so many people, or if it was something more generalizable. Surely independent, free-thinking Americans would react differently, they surmised. The result? It seems that even ordinary Americans, under the “right” circumstances, might also be induced to cause the suffering of others. One of the most famous studies was the Stanford Prison Experiment (

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