The Lucifer Effect - How Groups Go Bad [and How to Avoid It]

CZBZ, at her site Web of Narcissism , has shared an extremely valuable post regarding The Lucifer Effect.

This term was coined by Professor Philip Zimbardo, of Stanford, to describe the psychological de-evolution of human character, the shockingly swift conversion of previously normal, decent people into brutal abusers, that can occur in group settings - small or large, on any scale from chat rooms to nations - under the right conditions.

He first studied this dynamic in the well-known "Stanford Prison Experiment". Now Professor Emeritus, he has written a book about this process, exploring in detail both how normal human beings can come to behave like monsters, and how we can learn to recognize, and resist, the pressure to become less-than-fully-human beings.

There is a particularly trenchant exposition on Dr. Zimbardo's website regarding the incredible power of group norms to influence human behavior. The authors [Dr. Zimbardo and Cindy X. Wang] advise [bold italics mine]:

In our daily decisions, we should also examine whether our reasons justify our actions. In an unfamiliar situation, first ask yourself whether the actions you observe others performing [are] rational, warranted, and consistent with your own principles before thoughtlessly and automatically adopting them.

Similarly, in a situation in which you want to impress and be accepted by others, ask yourself whether the action conflicts with your moral code, and consider whether you would be willing to compromise your own opinion of yourself just so others would have a higher one of you. Ultimately, you are the only one who has to live with your actions. Also take a time out to find out the correct information.

To resist the powers of group conformity: know what you stand for; determine how really important it is that these other people like you, especially when they are strangers; recognize that there are other groups who would be delighted to have you as a member; take a future perspective to imagine what you will think of your current conforming action at some time in the future.

I am planning to spend a great deal of time reading Dr. Zimbardo's work... and being thankful, in this season, for the Internet, for people like CZBZ and Dr. Zimbardo, and for all the valuable websites such as theirs that shed light and offer validation to people who would otherwise be isolated and lost.

Without further ado, let me cede the floor to CZBZ and Dr. Zimbardo.

Dysfunctional Dyads

In the rich tapestry of human relations, some pairings seem to be a recurring pattern.

Someone abusive pairs with someone unassertive and vulnerable to abuse.
Someone irresponsible pairs with someone hyperresponsible and vulnerable to exploitation.
Someone controlling pairs with someone passive and indecisive.
Someone sadistic pairs with someone masochistic.
Someone with an addiction pairs with someone enabling.
Someone selfish pairs with someone generous.

These pairings are often nothing more than 'predator-prey' relationships... but only the predator knows it.

Then there are 'tag teams':

A bully pairs with a provocateur, to mug third parties: the provocateur provokes the target, and the bully attacks when the target responds to the provocation.

Con men team up like this; one plays the victim needing rescue and one plays the 'detached observer' so that the mark will loan the 'victim' money, or whatever is involved in the con game.

When multiple players are involved, you may find yourself dealing with a clique, which, when dysfunctional and destructive enough, becomes a gang. You'll find gangs in factories, schools, universities, hospitals, and offices all over the world, and people of all ages from 8 to 80 may belong to them.

It's a clique when they're just not interested in getting to know Mabel, because she isn't from the same neighborhood/has red hair/goes to a different church/weighs more [or less] and dresses less well [or more classily] than the rest of them... it's a gang when they use these minuscule differences as reasons to bully and hound and torment Mabel until she quits her job or attempts suicide.

The forces that draw people together, sadly, are often destructive. It's wise and protective to know this.

Especially because, if your Family Of Origin was set up around one of these pairings or groupings - and all too often, they were - then something very similar will feel just like home.

Getting Well, Part 7: Deep Safety

Geologists, paleontologists, and physicists all deal with "deep time". It is the time required for planets to form... species to evolve... continents to drift. It is measured in units of millenia... epochs... eons.

In my own halting journey as an abuse survivor, I have lately been contemplating "deep safety". This is a concept of safety that goes beyond the simple physical and emotional self-protection that one individual can practice; it is communitarian, and it is multidimensional. It is, in simplest terms, the Social Contract raised to the level of a sacrament.

It has also, I have discovered, been profoundly mapped and explored by Sandra Bloom, M.D.; the term she uses for it is "Sanctuary".

This is a fitting term. In Western religion, the first description of sanctuary is found in the Pentateuch; in the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy, there are designated "cities of refuge", where fugitives could seek shelter. The custom was also observed in Ancient Greece and in medieval Europe, particularly England, where fugitives fled to churches and cloisters for protection from persecution by arbitrary and capricious temporal authorities, whose exercise of power was otherwise unchecked.

Sanctuary, then, was refuge, asylum, shelter, protection. It was not extended universally and uncritically - but it was extended generously and without betrayal, to many who would otherwise have been arbitrarily destroyed.

In my experience, most survivors of abuse have a profound, even consuming desire for a place of deep safety. This does not represent mere regressive desire for infantilized caretaking, but is a genuine and valid need for an external environment which is healthy, restorative, and profoundly honest. Abuse survivors need such an environment in order to fully recover from the effects of their experiences. Tragically, this need is often so intense that unsafe environments are dreamed into places of safety, just as abusers may be dreamed into charming princes, and the net result is further, often more severe, retraumatization and a deep sense of self- and other-engendered betrayal. And thus the cycle of abuse continues.

What are the elements of deep safety? Bloom considers four:

-physical safety, which is basic safety from harm;
-psychological safety, which she defines as the ability to preserve one's safety in the world, built upon self-discipline, self-esteem, self-control, self-awareness, and self-respect;
-social safety, defined as the ability to be safe with others in relationships and other social settings [this would include churches, clubs, workplaces, support groups and recovery groups];
-moral/ethical safety, which is the ability to maintain standards, beliefs and principles that are consistent, guide behavior, and are grounded in respect for life.

These elements assure that a person, family, group, or organization will be "trauma-sensitive", in Bloom's terminology; there will be a culture of nonviolence, that is emotionally intelligent, committed to inquiry and social learning, with shared governance in that members learn self-control, self-discipline, and the ability to recognize and cooperate with healthy authority.

Crucially, she also notes that such a culture requires open communication - essential to the reduction of acting out, to healthy self-protection, to the establishment and maintenance of healthy boundaries, and to self-correction. In such an atmosphere, social responsibility easily becomes a shared positive norm, and growth and change are embraced as key to the restoration of hope, meaning, and purpose for all members.

Bloom's approach stems from extensive experience with trauma survivors, which gave her a fundamental awareness that support and recovery for trauma survivors absolutely requires an enviroment which does not re-traumatize them. In her own words, "...teaching and reorientation... cannot be successful if the treatment environment mimics the behaviors of the dysfunctional systems... experienced as children." She goes on to note that any dysfunctional system may be characterized by collective denial of problems, shared shameful secrets, a lack of honesty between system members, and "a web of lies that is difficult to penetrate". There are often "unclear and shifting roles... boundaries are diffuse and confusing... There is poor tolerance for differences and no good mechanism for conflict resolution. Instead of resolving conflicts they are kept submerged... if they finally rise to the surface they are dealt with in a highly moralistic and usually hypocritical way."

She also notes [as do Judith Wyatt and Chauncey Hare, with respect to abusive workplace environments] the strong internalization of negative norms by survivors of dysfunctional systems. These are norms such as denial, coercion, secrecy, and manipulation [her list], "cloaked and given other words like "privacy", "loyalty", 'self-sacrifice", and "obedience" so that the individual... subject to such norms becomes cognitively confused - accepting the verbal interpretation while nonverbally sensing the more hostile aspects of the environment... Additionally, a coercive system makes it clear that there is no tolerance for questioning this double and contradictory level of meaning and any attempt to do so is labeled as "disloyalty"... and... summarily punished."

This is an uncannily accurate description of every abusive environment I recall from my own experience. I have gradually come to believe that it is impossible to speak to and engender healing of any kind in such environments. One cannot address any pertinent issue gently enough to avoid provoking distortion, projection, retaliation; because the real issue is not one's gentleness or tact, but one's heresy. To see what goes on beneath the surface of any dysfunctional system is suspect; to articulate it is anathema. The game is always rigged; the house always wins.

What then can be done?

First - one must be aware, and one must hold that awareness as if it were a sacred trust. In many ways, it is. To become aware, one must learn; to learn, it is wise to read. This link will take you to Dr. Bloom's publications page, on her Web site. It is an excellent place to learn about deep safety - how to recognize it, how to contribute to it, how to avoid counterfeits.

Second - one must seek to detach. This is much harder to do, always, than to say, or to pretend to do. To fully detach, one must emotionally divest oneself, and this is very, very difficult when in pain or fear. But it is even more difficult when in the 'throes of hope' - and that is when it is most necessary. To seek detachment, to know that it is necessary for healing, is enough of a start.

Third - one must learn to trust one's own judgement. Hare and Wyatt, in the book linked to at their names above, describe ways to do this while immersed in an abusive environment. However, it is inevitable that with greater awareness and greater self-trust comes greater unwillingness to remain in, and thus tacitly collude with, an abusive system; then one must trust oneself enough to know when it is safe to leave - or less safe to leave than to stay.

Fourth - and highly important - one must learn to recognize abusive systems as quickly as possible upon entering them, and remain detached enough not to prematurely invest in them. This is really no different than learning to be less susceptible to charmers offering whirlwind romance, or to cults proffering cures for your soul - if you will but sell it to them. It isn't necessary to despise or condemn any system in order to leave it, but it is necessary to see as clearly as possible, and to be able to accept what you see, even when painful [because it will always be painful; there is no anesthesia for the loss of hope].

Finally, and crucially - one must remain detached enough to be able to recognize if a previously safe place is becoming unsafe. Sadly, negative norms are very powerful, and 'stealth abusers' often take advantage of courtesy combined with cluelessness to establish themselves as influential members in groups. They do this in workplaces by conning interviewers during the hiring process; they do it in churches and other groups, by presenting a 'facade' which may not match their actions in significant ways, but goes unchallenged because 'nobody wants to be impolite'. Any system, once so infiltrated, becomes progressively less safe as the abusers within feel more safe, and thus more free to abuse. It is important to recognize this when it occurs, and not to accept blame for causing it merely because you happen to see it.

Deep safety. Earnestly we seek it; our souls thirst for it; our bodies long for it, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. We have seen it in the sanctuary, and beheld its power and its glory...

The Ultimate Hostile Takeover

A good formal definition of plagiarism is "the practice of ... incorporating material from someone else's written or creative work, in whole or in part, into one's own without adequate acknowledgement."

A while back, I experienced this directly as a participant in an informal book discussion group. This was [ostensibly] a writers' support group, yet I found myself repeatedly fending off bullies there. In the most egregious variation on this theme, one particularly impervious duo pointedly ignored or disparaged every contribution I made to group discussions, while presenting many of those very same concepts and ideas in their own comments, without attribution, sometimes verbatim, apparently in order to create the impression that they, not I, had originated them.

Both people emphatically praised and credited other discussion group members whose ideas they quoted; the contrast between this behavior and that directed towards me was remarkable, to anyone paying attention. Thus to all appearances, these individuals sought to stifle my voice within the group, while appropriating that same voice - my words, my ideas, even aspects of my 'style' - to pass off as their own.

[I have also experienced this in workplace settings - both as a bystander and as the target. Women may experience this behavior from male colleagues and superiors as a subtle form of discrimination: ignore her, but steal her ideas... ]

This behavior gives a bully a triple payoff.

First, the bully obliterates the target by disenfranchising him [or her] to keep him [or her] excluded and unheard, and at the same time appropriates the target's talents and accomplishments to pass off as the bully's own productions.

Second, while preventing the target from receiving recognition and reinforcement, the bully diverts what is rightfully the target's 'payoff' into the bully's own hands. Much sadistic pleasure can be gleaned from this behavior, for those so inclined.

The final payoff, of course, is that the bully does no actual work to produce the talents and accomplishments he or she dishonestly appropriates. It is an act of pure parasitism: the ultimate hostile takeover.

Both of the people whose actions I am describing here seemed highly focused on establishing themselves as 'gurus' over this particular group, and apparently regarded my presence and contributions as a threat to this. For someone whose goal is dominance of a group - "power over" it, in Patricia Evans' terminology - people who think well [aka 'critical thinkers'] are not easily deceived and cannot be easily controlled; they must therefore be intimidated, marginalized, and, if possible, driven away.

This happens in churches, clubs, neighborhoods, and workplaces. It happens everywhere. It happens all the time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The hostility that underlies this type of plagiarism - and its many cousins - seems rarely to be acknowledged by onlookers, no matter how blatant it becomes. But this particular experience was relatively minor, as such things go.

I know of a case that was far more extreme, extending far beyond the theft of someone's idea, catchphrases, or pet metaphors, to the point where the actual life of the target was plagiarized and appropriated, in the most extreme form of 'hostile takeover' possible short of outright murder and impersonation.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A woman I know [whom I will call Sandy] had an entire career plagiarized out from under her by someone who was, to all appearances, a bully with erotomanic stalker 'traits'. With her permission, I will tell her story. I've altered a few details to protect her privacy.

Sandy, who was single, started working for a new employer about 20 years ago. Although she loved the work, she was soon very uncomfortable with the woman in the office next to hers. This woman, who was also single, made no overt passes at Sandy, but insinuated herself into every conversation Sandy had, work-related or otherwise, that involved a male colleague or superior, and made barbed, hostile, often highly inappropriate remarks to the man [usually semi-jocular threats of violence].

She struck obvious 'vamping' poses in Sandy's office doorway; gushed fulsomely and effusively over things Sandy did, said, wore, or read; referred to her as 'sweetie', 'honey' and 'my dear'. She followed Sandy to on-site meetings and presentations, sat next to her, and disrupted the events with loud, inappropriate comments [usually audible, hostile put-downs of the speaker, if male]. Claiming 'seniority', she tried to force their employer to send her to all of the offsite meetings that Sandy attended.

Because no direct overtures were ever made, Sandy, who is a very devoted PFLAG and utterly opposed to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, could only hint that she had other romantic preferences, talk about her dates, etc. - all of which simply compounded her discomfort.

Since the underlying issue was never directly revealed to Sandy, she never felt able to directly address it. Erotomania was hardly a common topic of conversation at the time; stalking of any kind was only beginning to be addressed legally with any seriousness. Dr. Doreen Orion's personal account of her own horrific experiences, "I Know You Really Love Me", had not yet been published and wouldn't be for years. Sandy could not describe what was happening to her in any way that she felt a third party, particularly her own management, could understand.

Within a year, Sandy's 'office neighbor' had bought a car of the same make as Sandy's, as close to the same color as possible; was purchasing identical clothing and dressing like Sandy; and had even switched physicians so that she was seeing some of the same doctors. At this point, Sandy took the opportunity to move to a different office, feeling quite reasonably that she was being stalked and subjected to barely-covert sexual harassment.

The woman became infuriated when Sandy moved, went to their superiors, and demanded that Sandy "be ordered" to return to her original office or that Sandy's office furniture, computer, and professional reference books be reallocated to her "for compensation". When Sandy was told about this by her puzzled [and frightened] bosses, she was asked only if a direct and unwelcome pass had ever been made; she answered honestly that it had not, that no non-collegial relationship of any kind had ever existed, that her preference was for male romantic companions, and that she hoped that any such issue would die away eventually as a result of her relocating.

She had no such luck. Shortly after the office relocation, Sandy required emergency cancer surgery and chemotherapy. While she was gone, her former neighbor broke into her office, broke into her computer, and subsequently claimed to be the real author of all the work Sandy had done. Amazingly, by the time Sandy returned, this woman had appropriated the promotion that Sandy was promised at hire - and had been told she was qualified for, just one week before her surgery.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The term 'existential revenge', used by Martha Stout in connection with workplace sociopaths' deliberate sabotage of their colleagues' careers, comes readily to mind here. In Sandy's case what occurred was so drastic and bizarre that it is more accurate to call it 'psychic cannibalism'. This woman clearly had an extreme wish to possess Sandy, and failing that, was determined to devour her, professionally at least. She sought to destroy Sandy's career and appropriate it for herself, and Sandy's feckless superiors were only too willing to oblige - after all, it was easier for them to destroy the career of a convalescing cancer survivor than to stand up to an obviously unstable bully.

Sandy's 'harasser' remains in her position to this day. Sandy, fortunately, found a healthier workplace, where she met and married a decent man who had enough life experience and common sense to believe her when she told him about this ghastly situation. She tells the story of her former life [with a shudder] when the subject of occupational plagiarism comes up in professional discussions, as a strong warning that not all plagiarism involves the written word, that employees cannot expect bosses to control even the most obvious and egregious bullies, and that such bullies, when coddled and enabled, may do - and get away with - almost anything short of murder.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What do people gain by behaving in such ways?

My two bullies gained very little in real terms. Neither of them worked, and they were both enmeshed in the writer's group to the point of spending most of their waking lives in activities related to it - phone calls and e-mails to other members, lunches and coffee with other members, etc. This investment of one's time and treasure is a steep price to pay to maintain a small captive audience, and when I realized this, their behavior almost immediately ceased to be an issue, emotionally at least.

Sandy's Nemesis, on the other hand, gained a great deal, outwardly at least. She was able to con [or bully] their mutual supervisors into awarding her the promotion that Sandy worked for and earned. Although she was not able to maneuver Sandy into a parasitic personal relationship, she intruded into Sandy's life as much as possible, and co-opted many of Sandy's 'unique characteristics'. The purchase of an identical car and identical clothes, and the appropriation of the same medical professionals that Sandy consulted, parallels the theft of ideas, catchphrases, and 'style' that I experienced - but on a much larger, much more pathologically disturbing scale. And, in fact, Sandy's entire body of work was essentially stolen by her harasser, when the woman infiltrated her computer and claimed credit for all of the work that Sandy had prepared.

But Sandy had the existential 'last laugh'. While her 'usurper' clumsily copied some of the outward aspects of her life and took over her career path, she does not have Sandy, and never will. She also does not have the professional or personal respect that Sandy has, in her new working life.

Sandy, in the meantime, has someone sane and balanced in her life, whom she dearly loves, and who loves her dearly in return. She considers herself a double cancer survivor - "one physical cancer, one occupational cancer, two radical surgeries, two great reconstructions" is the way she puts it. She has far more satisfying work now, which she would never have considered but for this 'catastrophe', and she has no illusions whatsoever about the extent to which people will go to steal from one another in supposedly civilized places.

Pattern Recognition, Part 2: Labeling and Mind-Reading

Tolstoi famously said every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way; but it's the other way around. Every dysfunctional group has a great deal in common with other dysfunctional groups. There's a limited set of games, thank God; we can learn to recognize the moves.

Your family of origin is the first group / system you experience; what you learn there, you take with you into every other system you encounter. School, church, the office, the bowling league, the bridge club... all of these are groups, all operate as systems. All have their own group dynamics, roles, and taboos.

We can learn to recognize healthy groups, unhealthy groups, bullying, cliques, and so forth. What we are doing, in a sense, is learning to read the 'group mind'. It's not arcane wisdom; it's just 'street smarts', but it's happening in the office or the rectory. And we are also using labels; we label certain behaviors as healthy, others as unhealthy. Or productive and unproductive; mature and immature.

Now let's take that idea one step further. If it's possible to read a 'group mind', assess group dynamics, even label and predict group behavior, then it must also be possible, to some extent at least, to do something similar at the individual level. After all, every group is composed of individuals.

But, in this culture, there is a prevalent assumption that it is 'bad' to label. That it's not possible to know what someone is likely to be thinking in certain situations, or guess how they might react. That's called 'mind-reading', and it's culturally held to be an impossibility - sacrilegious even to contemplate - because we human beings are complex, unfathomable mysteries, each one of us utterly unique.

Not quite.

Consider - for just a moment what life would be like - if this were literally and completely true.

There would be no language; how could there be? Your vocalizations and mine would be - utterly unique. If we could be said to ascribe any meaning to them, such meaning would also be - utterly unique.

Social organization would be likewise impossible. Without basic commonalities, human interaction would be complete and utter chaos.

At the ultimate extreme, we as a species - could never even have been a species; if each of us were truly unique, we would have no commonality on even the genetic level. How would we reproduce? Humankind could not exist, if we were each utterly unique and distinct.

This, of course, is an exaggeration - but the cultural position sometimes seems that extreme; and it's often defended almost as extremely.

Let me present a provocative alternative. Let us suppose that 'labeling' and 'mind-reading', rather than being forms of social sacrilege, are actually essential daily activities that we engage in more or less continuously, in many different ways and on many different levels - and that, in some instances, even keep us alive.

If you are diabetic, aren't you grateful for the 'label' that has literally saved your life? Being 'labeled' diabetic means that you get medication to correct an otherwise fatal metabolic abnormality - that can be managed and compensated for - because you know what it is. You know what to watch, and how to watch it.

If you have migraine, aren't you grateful for that 'label'? The one that tells you: when you start seeing shimmery things in your left eye, you have about 20 minutes while the shimmery things [scotoma] move across your visual field, before the headache hits, so take your medication / do your biofeedback / get into bed with a heating pad now?

These labels allow us to name, demystify, and manage situations that otherwise might kill us. And that's also true of labels such as: alcoholism. Codependency. Bipolar disorder. Depression...

Here's another provocative notion.

If 'mind reading' is such an awful thing, and so impossible to do; if each human being's interior reality is an utterly unfathomable mystery that cannot ever be understood by comparison to any other human being's inner workings....

Then how can anyone ever diagnose 'depression', 'bipolar disorder', or any other similar problem? How can there be prognoses for these conditions? And how can any of the medications and therapies for them even work?

The truth of the matter is - we are all built from the same basic blueprint, GATTACA GATTACA GATTACA... and that blueprint can be flawed in certain ways, with certain predictable effects. We are also built to grow at a certain rate, to learn certain things at certain times, and to respond to certain stimuli in certain ways. If something interferes with these processes, we are likely to react to that interference in certain specific ways.

There is nothing demeaning or reductionist about any of this. It is, on the contrary, comforting. It does not mean that we are identical automatons; Milton, Van Gogh, Mahalia Jackson, Leo Kottke prove and prove again just how rich the varieties of human experience can be. What it means is this: the darkness is not totally without form, and void; it is only a lack of knowledge, not absolute chaos.