What Can Make Someone Evil

When we see a baby we see purity and goodness, we could never see them growing up to be a murderer, terrorist or someone who chooses bad over good. I don't believe that any baby is born with the intent to cause harm to anyone. So what causes them to go to the dark side? Could it be that some parents are raising their children to be evil masterminds, or that the media is brainwashing us to do bad things? Maybe evil is something we learn or are raised to believe in or maybe it’s just an illusion

Babies are seen as wholesome and angelic creatures by most people. Their minds are innocent and they have an absolute minimum of cultural influence - they haven’t been exposed to the world we live in. They don’t read books, see the news or chat with friends. A study at Yale University showed that, even though babies can’t directly communicate with us, they can still show us what they want and what they’re interested in. In this study they had a puppet show where there was a bad person and a good person. At the end the baby was given the chance to help the good person by pointing to it. The results showed that most (70%) of the babies as young as 3 months pointed towards the good person showing their instinct to move away from the bad and focus on the good. So, if we are born good (or 70% of us are) then what makes us do the wrong thing when we’re aware of what's good and bad at such a young age?

I imagine that almost all parents are hoping their children grow up to be the best they possibly can be and to do good in the world. But what happens if bad parenting leads to bad actions in the future. Parents are the ones who have the biggest influence on their child’s upbringing. They teach a child how to react to certain situations and showing different emotions. A lot of children often pick up on things they see at home when the parent is unaware that the child is consciously registering what's happening.

Could it be that regular healthy people do evil things due to the illusion of power. Many people will easily do something if a person of authority or higher status tells you to. There have been many social experiments done to showcase that the illusion of authority can make you do something you wouldn’t normally, the two most famous ones being the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment. Both of these physiological studies had mentally stable people participate and dozens of them quickly turned evil. In the Milgram Experiment participants are asked to administer a lethal shock to another participant (who was actually an actor), results show that 100% of participants gave a lethal shock (over 350 V) and 65% fully completed the experiment. The dark part about this experiment is that the person giving the shock could hear the actor screaming in pain and begging them to stop, yet they continued because someone who was wearing a lab coat told them to. When being questioned afterwards as to why they did it, the answer was mostly ‘because the doctor was telling me to.’ This shows how humans are easily susceptible to doing something they know is morally wrong when the blame would inevitably land on someone else (in this case, the experiment leader)

The Stanford experiment was a role play situation organised by psychologist Philip Zimbardo, between ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ who were all played by university students. Within a few days the guards had started torturing prisoners physically and mentally, they would take away their mattresses and have them do strenuous exercise in the middle of the night. When the guards were questioned as to why they did this they replied with ‘We were doing what Zimbardo said, to be guards’. It’s interesting how a uniform can change someone’s perception on a situation, instead of seeing it as doing a bad thing they just saw it as doing as they were told. We would all do what a police officer said because they’re there to help us but we would be less inclined if it was someone without the uniform. So what if a badge and hat is all it takes to control someone’s actions and make them evil?

In today’s modern world we use technology like it’s second nature to us. Most kids will have phones at very young ages nowadays. As much as the use of technology can help us and make our life more efficient, there is also a downside. There are many theories that technology does more harm than good in the sense of influencing and provoking a dark side in people. The media plays a huge role in technology and our everyday lives, and a lot of what we see has a great impact on us. There have been many allegations of horror movies being ‘too dark’ and ‘giving the audience bad ideas’. A very good example of this is the murder of two year old James Bulger which shocked the country. The biggest shock by far was that the two boys who were responsible were only ten years old. Allegedly the ideas behind the torture element of the murder were stimulated by the horror movie ‘Saw’. The boys had apparently seen the movie a few days prior to the murder and that is what led them to abducting James. This is a perfect example of how the media can influence and almost brainwash two children to commit a horrible and shocking crime at such a young age. Yet the question remains - why are only some people affected by these external influences? Is it due to their inherent nature which makes them more likely to be influenced or are they simply born with an evil streak and it’s only a matter of time before they act out their darkest thoughts.