Unique—Like Everybody Else  Personality, intelligence, and the
differences that matter  Challenging the "Banality" of Evil and
of Heroism Part 1  Claims that heroism and evil are equally
"banal" rest on double standards This post is a response to
Individual Differences in the Stanford Prison Experiment by
Scott A. McGreal, MSc.  What moves a person to become a hero or
a villain? Do people perform heroic actions, acts which involve
genuine risk to themselves, because they are special people, or
is it just a matter of banal circumstance, being in the right
place at the right time? Do people who perform evil actions do
so because of flaws in their character, or are they just victims
of an evil system that corrupts the innocent, inducing otherwise
“good” people to do terrible things? Those who subscribe to
situationism, such as Phil Zimbardo, have argued that given the
proper circumstances virtually anyone could either become a hero
or an evil-doer, regardless of what sort of person they are.
However, a closer ex