The Psychology of Becoming Walter White

Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad, said that his goal with Walter White was to turn Mr. Chips into Scarface. Take a regular person, like you—assume you’re regular for a second—and then make you nice and evil, like a witch in a gingerbread house. Is that really even possible? Could you become another Walter White?

I’m inclined to believe that most of us still think some people are good and some people are bad, and never the twain shall meet. Despite the lessons we learned from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we still think that good and evil belong in different people. Walter clearly shows that it doesn’t. And he demonstrates this with so many good psychological reasons—reasons that experimental psychologists observe in ‘normal’ people on a daily basis.
What are these reasons and do they apply to you?

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