Everyone Is a Monster in the Wrong Company

Everyone Is a Monster in the Wrong Company

I was watching a film the other night when a scene jolted me into reflection. It reminded me of a chilling moment in George Orwell’s 1984: a man turns in the woman he loves, not because he stopped loving her, but because the system reprogrammed him to.

That’s what the wrong environment can do. It doesn’t just influence you. It reshapes you.

Psychologists call this social contagion. It’s our tendency to absorb the behavior and morality of those around us. You’re not a fixed character. You’re clay. And the company you keep? The sculptor.

In the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, volunteers assigned as guards became cruel and dehumanizing in just six days. They weren’t sadists, they were students. But the setting, the roles, the group dynamics, all conspired to bring out their worst.

Robert Cialdini, in his seminal book Influence, tells the story of American prisoners of war in Chinese camps. The Chinese didn’t torture them, they simply encouraged small public confessions. Fellow prisoners would write statements like “America isn’t perfect.” These tiny concessions, repeated and reinforced, led some POWs to eventually denounce their country entirely. Not because they were weak, it’s because they were surrounded.

A 2023 study in Nature Human Behaviour found that individuals in high-stress, low-trust groups were far more likely to betray their values, conform to harmful behavior, and even act immorally, despite previously expressing moral opposition.

We like to think we’re immune to this. We aren’t.

A soft-spoken woman becomes defensive and distrustful after months with a toxic, explosive partner. A well-adjusted student joins a violent cult, slowly adopting its ideology. A kind-hearted man starts spending time in cynical circles and soon finds himself mocking others just to belong.

They wake up one day, look in the mirror, and ask, How did I get here?

The truth? You didn’t become a monster. You were shaped into one.

Your soul is elastic. It stretches, warps, and hardens to survive the container it’s in.

So choose your container carefully. Choose friends, relationships, workplaces, even spiritual spaces, that reflect the kind of person you want to be. Because eventually, inevitably, you will become them.

And no, it won’t happen in a day.

But by the time you notice…

It may already be too late.