Can what has happened before in history happen again and can it happen here? It does in the Psychological Laboratory. Were the Nazis so different? Are we so different from the German people? We're not different at all. We are all much more alike than we wish to admit. It is ironic that the United States is admonishing Russia about its invasion of Georgia when American does not have clean hands. No either now or once powerful country has clean hands. Who are the Nazis and who does not live in a glass house? This article, an excerpt, talks about human aggression. We are all capable of evil because we are innately violent and aggressive. Our human nature is our animal nature and it infects every species. SO, are we different? NOT according to "Lessons from the Laboratory."
Book by Neil J. Kressel; Westview Press, 2001
What really matters is not who you are, but where you are. Study after study in the social psychological laboratory has seemed to hammer home this unsettling message. In one of the earliest demonstrations, the classic Asch study in the 1950s, people believed that they were about to participate in a study of visual perception. In a series of trials, they were shown three lines and asked to identify the one that best matched another line in length. The task was a very easy one and solo participants had little difficulty with it. The outcome changed dramatically, however, when subjects judged the lines as part of a small group. Without telling the subjects, the experimenter employed stooges, who were instructed to give obviously incorrect answers in some instances. After the first stooge gave the wrong answer, the subject typically giggled nervously or otherwise expressed disbelief at the blatant error. But after all the other participants, a total of six to eight people, echoed the incorrect response, the subject faced a dilemma - conform to the unanimous majority, or stand alone.
Fifty to eighty percent of the participants, depending on particular conditions, yielded at least once to the erring crowd. Only a minority of the subjects maintained their independence throughout the trials, never bending to group pressure. The study, repeated many times in dozens of variations around the world, shows the power a group can exert on individuals. Even a very small group can elicit conformity to a unanimous verdict. When issues are more ambiguous than the line judgments in the Asch study, higher rates of conformity are observed.
Though many people conform to views inconsistent with their private perceptions, the message is not that people are "sheep." For one thing, the urge to conform is partly rational much of the time because a unanimous majority may possess additional information or a better understanding of the situation; under such conditions, a deferral to group pressure may result in a more accurate judgment. More important, people will defend a minority view against an overwhelming majority under some circumstances. As long as one other person sides with the dissenter, conformity rates drop off very sharply and dissenters become much more common. The studies on conformity suggest that many people do have the courage of their convictions, but on an occasional basis rather than a consistent one. Differences in personality have something to do with who conforms and who doesn't. But, much of the time, it is the situation, rather than an underlying personality or disposition, that determines who will stick to their guns.
Another laboratory demonstration of the power of the situation concerns how people decide whether or not an emergency exists. In a simple but poignant study, an experimenter left Columbia University students in a room to fill out a questionnaire; soon afterwards, a stream of smoke poured into the room through a wall vent eventually filling the entire room. When the subjects had been alone in the room, 75 percent left to report the smoke. When two other subjects also had been in the room, 38 percent reported the smoke. But when the two other participants were stooges told to remain passive and continue working, only 10 percent of the subjects left to report the smoke. Thus, students who watched other subjects resume work on the questionnaires after noticing the smoke were apt to conclude that everything was okay. They displayed what psychologists call "pluralistic ignorance," a phenomenon where bystanders assume that nothing is wrong because nobody else appears panic-stricken. Subjects were most likely to decide that an emergency existed and to act on this decision when they were left alone in the room. Yet the students who participated in the group settings showed little awareness that the presence of others had influenced their own behavior.
In another experiment, subjects heard someone whom they believed to be a fellow participant having an epileptic seizure while talking to them over an intercom. Eighty-five percent of subjects intervened when the experimental setup led them to believe that nobody else was listening. When subjects thought one other person could hear the seizure, the intervention rate dropped to 62 percent. And when they believed a total of five people could hear the person in need, only 31 percent intervened. Circumstances again overpowered character, this time in determining who would offer help a person in need.
In another study on bystander intervention, seminary students were asked to speak to a group of high school students. On a random basis, some seminarians were told that they had plenty of time to get across campus to the event while others were put on a tight schedule. Along the way, the seminarians observed a young man collapse in front of them; some helped, and some did not. But the matter cannot be reduced to how well they had learned morality lessons in the seminary. Those with a tight schedule found intervention too costly, in the sense that helping would make them late for the speaking engagement. Those with ample time judged assisting the stranger in need a deed eminently worthy of seminarians. In a telling touch, the experimenters had asked some of the future religious leaders to address the high school students on why they had chosen to enter the seminary, while others were asked to lecture on the parable of the Good Samaritanthe New Testament hero who assisted a fellow traveler who had been beaten and robbed. This seemingly relevant variable, what was on the subject's mind, didn't make a bit of difference.
In all three experiments on altruism, circumstances - the situation in which one found oneself proved more powerful than personality, values, or character. As in the case of the conformity studies, the most likely conclusion is not that the subjects, or people in general, lack an impulse to help strangers. In the first two studies, the presence of others led to a diffusion of responsibility that did not occur for solo participants. In the seminary study, the costliness in time of the intervention proved prohibitive.
Milgram's research on obedience grew out of his desire to know whether the conformity observed in Solomon Asch's line judgment study would occur in matters of more apparent human significance. As part of his doctoral dissertation at Harvard, he had reenacted the Asch study, except that subjects were asked to determine which of two acoustic tones was the longer and they were told that results would be applied to the design of aircraft safety signals. Thus, he linked participants' performance in the study to a life-and-death issue. This did not mitigate the impact of group pressure. Milgram's results confirmed Asch's findings, and, because he did the research in Norway and France, accumulated some evidence for their cross-cultural generalizability.
As a consequence of this study, Milgram grew even more curious about the limits of group influence. He recalls conceiving the famous obedience experiment while working for Asch at Princeton University:
"Could a group, I asked myself, induce a person to act with severity against another person? ... I envisioned a situation very much like Asch's experiment in which there would be a number of confederates and one naive subject, and instead of confronting the lines on a card, each one of them would have a shock generator. In other words, I transformed Asch's experiment into one in which the group would administer increasingly higher levels of shock to a person, and the question would be to what degree an individual would follow along with the group."
But to assess the power of group pressure, Milgram needed to know, for comparative purposes, how far a person would go without group influence. To obtain this information, the experimenter would have to tell the subject to give progressively higher shocks, in order to determine the level at which the subject would refuse to comply. Milgram ultimately did explore the impact of group influence, but he immediately recognized the phenomenon of individual obedience to the experimenter-authority figure as important in its own right. A review of Milgram's experiment will serve to highlight some salient details.
Participants responded to direct mail solicitations as well as an ad placed in local papers seeking persons for a study of memory and learning. The initial studies called for subjects between the ages of twenty and fifty, and did not use high school students, college students, or women, although subsequent studies did.
Significantly, Milgram used participants from many different socioeconomic backgrounds, including postal clerks, high school teachers, salesmen, laborers, and professionals. As soon as they arrived at the Interaction Laboratory at Yale University, each received four dollars plus fifty cents...
Milgram hired two confederates to assist with the experiment, a thirty-one-year old high school biology teacher who played the part of the experimenter, and a forty-seven-year-old, mild-mannered accountant who played the learner-victim. Both were white males. Most observers judged the experimenter as stern looking, but considered the learner-victim quite likeable.
After discussing some theoretical matters briefly to increase the plausibility of the ruse, the experimenter told the subject (and the confederate) that the purpose of the study was to "find out just what effect different people have on each other as teachers and learners, and also what effect punishment will have on learning in this situation." The experimenter then conducted a drawing to determine who would be the teacher and who the learner; it was, of course, rigged so the subject always would end up as the teacher and the confederate as the learner. The experimenter then took the teacher and the learner to an adjacent room where the learner was strapped into an "electric chair" apparatus.
Milgram built into the procedure many touches designed to insure that the subject would believe the ruse, especially that the shocks were real. For example, the experimenter explained that the straps on the chair would prevent the learner from moving excessively while he was being shocked. The electrode paste would avoid blisters and burns. In response to a question by the learner, the experimenter noted that, "Although the shocks can be extremely painful, they cause no permanent tissue damage." In addition, each subject received a genuine, "sample" shock of forty- five volts prior to beginning his role as teacher. The shock generator itself had a scary appearance; its instrument panel consisted of thirty switches in a horizontal line, indicating voltages from fifteen to four hundred fifty at fifteen volt increments. Beneath the voltage designations, the panel read "Slight Shock," followed by "Moderate Shock," "Strong Shock," "Very Strong Shock," "Intense Shock," "Extreme Intensity Shock," "Danger: Severe Shock," and ominously, "XXX." Lights, buzzing, and appropriate clicks were activated whenever the subject depressed a switch.
In the basic version of the experiment, the teacher and learner are in separate but adjacent rooms. When the learner-confederate failed at his task, which he did in a prearranged pattern, the experimenter told the teacher-subject to administer a shock. Moreover, he instructed the teacher to "move one level higher on the shock generator each time the learner gives a wrong answer." Thus, Milgram could see how far teacher-subjects would go in delivering shocks to the learner-victims in response to the experimenter's demands.
The teacher had good reason to believe that the learner actually received the shocks. At seventy-five, ninety, and one hundred five volts, the learner emitted small grunts. At one hundred twenty, he shouted that the shocks were becoming painful. At one hundred fifty, he demanded that the experimenter let him out. By two hundred seventy, his aggravated grunts had become "agonized screams." Three hundred volts sparked a revolt with the learner refusing to participate, but the experimenter told the teacher to treat "no answer" as an incorrect answer. The learner no longer provided answers, but screamed after the shocks. At three hundred forty five, the screams too disappeared. From this point on, until the four hundred fifty volt level, nothing was heard from the victim.
The experimental design also called for the experimenter to use a series of prods, should the teacher-subject request guidance or refuse to continue. First, he would say, "Please continue." Next, "The experiment requires that you continue." Then, "It is absolutely essential that you continue." Finally, "You have no other choice, you must go on."
How far would people go? Asked to predict their own behavior in a similar experimental situation, none of a typical group of middle-class adults believed they would continue to administer shocks beyond the three hundred volt, "Intense Shock" level; the average predicted break-off point was about one hundred fifty volts, the level labeled "Strong Shock." When groups of college students and psychiatrists at a leading medical school were asked to estimate their own behavior in the described set-up, they offered similar guesses. The psychiatrists also predicted that most people would not go beyond the one hundred fifty volt level, at which the learner-victim would first ask to be excused from the remainder of the study. The psychiatrists further maintained that only one person in a thousand would go all the way to the highest level 450 volts, labelled "XXX".
They were very wrong. More than six people in ten (62.5%) delivered the highest level of voltage, ignoring the printed warnings of danger as well as the screams and protestations of the victim. Out of forty participants in this version of the experiment, not a single one stopped before the "Strong Shock" level. The average maximum shock exceeded three hundred sixty volts, just below the "Danger: Severe Shock" level. Remember, the subjects didn't hate the victims; they didn't even dislike them. In fact, most of those who persisted in delivering the shocks to the very end did so with great reluctance. They asked for permission to discontinue the shocks and they called the experimenter's attention to the victim's suffering. They obeyed, but not because of aggression.
Milgram notes:
"Many people, not knowing much about the experiment, claim that subjects who go to the end of the board are sadistic. Nothing could be more foolish than an overall characterization of these persons. It is like saying that a person thrown into a swift-flowing stream is necessarily a fast swimmer, or that he has great stamina because he moves so rapidly relative to the bank. The context of action must always be considered. The individual, upon entering the laboratory, becomes integrated into a situation that carries its own momentum. The subject's problem then is how to become disengaged from a situation which is moving in an altogether ugly direction."
Milgram proceeded to explore the impact of different situations on levels of obedience, using a new group of similar subjects for every condition. The following are among his many findings. When the victim remains in the same room as the subject, obedience diminishes, but 40 percent of subjects still deliver the highest voltage. Even when the teacher-subject must force the victim's hand onto a metal plate in order to shock him, 30 percent go on to the bitter end. In one variation, a soft, nonaggressive person replaced the stern biology teacher as experimenter and a tough guy was substituted for the victim; the impact on obedience was very slight 50 percent still delivered the highest shock. When women participants delivered the shocks, their performance paralleled that of the men. When the victim mentioned a heart condition and then protested that his heart was beginning to bother him, there was absolutely no impact on the level of obedience.
Some observers commented that, whatever one might think about Yale University, it was implausible that such an austere institution would permit the murder of experimental subjects. Sensitive to such criticism, Milgram moved the experiment to an ordinary office building and conducted the study under the auspices of "Research Associates of Bridgeport." Obedience dropped off a little, but nearly half of the participants still delivered the highest level of voltage. When a confederate of the experimenter pulled the switch and the subject merely had to assist in a subsidiary task, only three subjects out of forty refused involvement as an accomplice to the evil act.
Still, some situations led to a considerable reduction in the level of shocks delivered. When, for example, the experimenter instructed the teacher to give whatever shock he or she thought appropriate, the majority chose very low voltage levels, and almost none continued beyond the first protest by the victim. This variation indicates that subjects in the other conditions were not using the shock machine to release personal, pent-up aggression. In another variation, the experimenter told the subject to stop after the victim screamed in pain, but the victim then demanded to be shocked in order to reassert his manliness; here, the subjects generally refused to administer shocks. In yet another version, when the experimenter left the laboratory and continued to give his orders by phone, obedience dropped substantially, with only about 20 percent going to the end. And when two experimenter- authority figures disagreed about whether to continue shocking the victim, none of the subjects took advantage of the opportunity to deliver the shocks - all stopped almost immediately after the disagreement. Finally, when subjects participated as part of a group responsible for delivering the shocks, very few would agree to continue after their peers (confederates of the experimenter) had rebelled.
Milgram concluded from this research that "[t]he force exerted by the moral sense of the individual is less effective than social myth would have us believe." It's not that people lack empathy or moral feelings. On the contrary, Milgram notes that most of the participants felt terrible about inflicting pain on an innocent victim. But people could not muster the resources necessary to disobey. Though they wanted to do the right thing, enormous anxiety prevented them from standing up to the experimenter. There was no fear of punishment. But they had absorbed a firm rule from their social surroundings: thou shalt not violate the orders of a legitimate authority figure. According to Milgram, "Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts." By bringing the victim closer and making his suffering more apparent, some people could be induced to disobey. And by rendering the authority figure less credible or less legitimate, one could increase the incidence of disobedience. But once a subject entered an "agentic state" in which he or she relinquished authority to another, the subject would most likely do as told. Equally important, the subject would continue to deliver higher and higher shocks, in order to evade responsibility for shocks already given. Breaking off would require the subject to acknowledge, in effect, that everything done until the stopping point was bad. But continuing with the procedure can permit the subject to avoid any uncomfortable realizations about the morality of his or her past performance.
Oddly enough, etiquette plays a crucial role in sustaining obedience: it would be rude to challenge the authority figure. One does not do such things. In one of his classes, Milgram proposed to students in New York City that they ask strangers on the subway to give up their seatswithout using any initial justification, like "I'm feeling nauseous," "I'm dizzy," or "I'm doing a psychology experiment." All students but one were unable to carry out the assignment; the one who did claimed it was among the most difficult things he had done in his life. Milgram himself initially felt overwhelmed by "paralyzing inhibition." When finally he managed to make the request, the seated man got right up. But the learned professor immediately dropped his head between his knees and turned pale. In effect, his ill behavior restored the etiquette of the situation. A healthy male does not ask for someone else's seat, but a sick one might.
This episode demonstrates the enormous power of unspoken social rules that govern our lives. For Milgram, these rules provide a key to why people pulled the switches in the obedience experiment. He explains, "Embarrassment and the fear of violating apparently trivial norms often lock us into intolerable predicaments."
All commands are not equally effective in inducing obedience. A person must judge an order consistent with the role of the authority figure. Thus, the experimenter must concoct a pretext that is, at a minimum, superficially credible to the subject. In the obedience study, the experimenter orders harm to others in the name of noble science. No one has tested the idea, but subjects probably would not have obeyed an order to steal five bucks from a victim's wallet or to urinate on the floor unless offered a suitable pretext. On the other hand, as Milgram notes, Masters and Johnson routinely were obeyed when they requested women to masturbate in the context of studies on sexual response. The key issue appears to be whether the nature of the order undermines a person's perception of the legitimacy of the experimenter.
In the obedience experiment, people apparently show a willingness to accept the idea that a legitimate scientist might order the infliction of pain on innocents in the pursuit of scientific truth.
Not everyone agrees with Milgram's explanation of why people pulled the
lever.
Some, like psychologists Martin Orne and Charles Holland, believe various
subtle cues give away the deception and tip off that the teacher is the real
subject of the experiment. The weirdly passive and imperturbable behavior of
the experimenter, for example, might suggest that nobody is really being
hurt.
They ask:
"[H]ow different this experiment is from the stage magician's trick where a volunteer from the audience is strapped into the guillotine and another volunteer is required to trip the release lever. The magician is careful to do a professional job of deception. He demonstrates that the guillotine will split a head of cabbage and allows the volunteer to satisfy himself about the genuineness of the guillotine. Though releasing the lever will lead to the apparently inevitable decapitation of the victim, he has little difficulty in obtaining "obedience" because the [subject] knows full well that everything is going to be all right. This does not, of course, prevent the [subject] from being somewhat uncomfortable, perhaps showing nervous laughter, when he is actually required to trip the lever, if only because such behavior is appropriate in this context."
Orne and another colleague asked subjects to throw "fuming nitric acid" into a person's face, telling them that their task was to behave "as if" they were hypnotized. Under some circumstances they obtained high levels of compliance for a different reason, they conclude, than that suggested by Milgram. When an experimenter asks someone to carry out a dangerous and destructive task, he or she may simultaneously communicate that it would really be safe to do so.
Milgram objected strenuously to this line of argument. "Orne's suggestion that the subjects only feigned sweating, trembling, and stuttering to please the experimenter is pathetically detached from reality, equivalent to the statement that hemophiliacs bleed to keep their physicians busy." To support his objection, he presents some evidence. In experiments conducted by other researchers, he notes, subjects have willingly obeyed commands to harm themselves, for example, by eating very bitter crackers soaked in quinine or accepting near traumatizing shocks. Since these subjects themselves were the victims, they could hardly have denied the reality of those situations. More to the point, the comments uttered by Milgram's subjects during and after the experience strongly indicate that they believed the shocks were real. Responding to a follow-up questionnaire, more than 75 percent of obedient subjects admitted, after zapping the victim, that they probably or fully believed in their reality. Most expressed tremendous relief upon learning that the victim had not been harmed; coupled with their intense anxiety during the study, one would have to stretch the imagination to accept Orne's argument that they merely played the role of "good subjects" to please the experimenter.
Some psychologists have taken a middle road on this issue, asserting that people in Milgram's study thought they were shocking innocent strangers and inflicting pain, but did not believe that they were causing any enduring harm. 34 Still others have called attention to the type of authority figure in the Milgram study. Erich Fromm, for example, notes:
"The psychologist was not only an authority to whom one owes obedience, but a representative of Science and of one of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the United States. Considering that science is widely regarded as the highest value in contemporary industrial society, it is very difficult for the average person to believe that what science commands could be wrong or immoral."
Similarly, philosopher S. C. Patten suggests that an experimenter possesses authority by virtue of his presumed expertise, in this case, concerning shock machines and learning. Knowing how people respond to this type of authority really tells us little about how people might respond to other types of authority figures say, political leaders.
There is yet another way to explain why so few people disobeyed the experimenter. Social psychologists Lee Ross and Richard Nisbett ask us to reexamine the predicament of the subjects:
"The events that unfolded did not "make sense" or "add up"....The subject's task was that of administering severe electric shocks to a learner who was no longer attempting to learn anything, at the insistence of an experimenter who seemed totally oblivious to the learner's cries of anguish, warnings about a heart condition, refusal to continue responding, and ultimately, ominous silence. What's more, the experimenter evinced no concern about this turn of events, made no attempt to explain or justify that lack of concern or, alternatively, to explain why it was so necessary for the experiment to continue. He even refused to "humor" the subject by checking on the condition of the learner."
If subjects were very clever, or if incongruities exceeded a certain point, they might have seen through the deception and, presumably, told the experimenter where to go. Even if they did not grasp the true nature of the ruse, however, they probably perceived enough inconsistencies to prevent them from arriving at a stable "definition of the situation." Under this scenario, people would typically lack the decisiveness and confidence to rebel against the experimenter. Thus, confusion, rather than slavish obedience, led people to inflict apparent pain on their fellow human beings. This analysis is a slim straw for optimists to grab, but a plausible one.
So much for Milgram's subjects. What about perpetrators of mass atrocities
in
the real world? How well does their behavior match that of the Connecticut
participants? How closely do their circumstances approximate those of the
New
Haven and Bridgeport laboratories?
Many social scientists have focused on similarities between the Milgram subject and the Nazi bureaucrat. Professor Gordon Allport of Harvard, one of the century's most prominent psychologists and author of the monumental volume, The Nature of Prejudice, called the obedience study "the Eichmann experiment." Milgram judged the appellation apt and explained:
"In the laboratory, through a set of simple manipulations, ordinary people no longer perceived themselves as a responsible part of the causal chain leading to action against a person. The way in which responsibility is cast off, and individuals become thoughtless agents of action, is of general import. One can find evidence of its occurrence time and again as one reads over the transcripts of the war criminals at Nuremberg, the American killers at My Lai, and the commander of Andersonville. What we find in common among soldier, party functionary, and obedient subject is the same limitless capacity to yield to authority and the use of identical mental mechanisms to reduce the strain of acting against a helpless victim."
Despite his judgment of their essential relatedness, Milgram did note some clear differences between his subjects and Nazi bureaucrats. For one thing, he conceded that his study obtained obedience in the name of an ostensibly positive human value the increase of knowledge. And the authority figure told his subjects that their acts would not result in any permanent damage to the victim, something no Nazi ever suggested. Face-to-face surveillance played a critical role in influencing the subjects in Milgram's experiment. In Nazi Germany, obedience depended much more on internalized values and beliefs, often taking place when no authority figure was physically present - a condition that significantly lowered obedience in the experimental scenario. Still, for Milgram, the most important psychological process underlying Nazi atrocities was slavish obedience, of the sort observed in his research.
The differences noted by Milgram seem substantial enough to raise questions about the extent to which the research design zeros in on the core psychology of the Nazi perpetrator. Moreover, the tional ways from the situation of the obedience experiment. The entire Milgram study lasted about an hour; most Nazis committed their crimes time and time again over a period of months or years. In a brief experiment, a subject can behave, more or less, mindlessly, never pausing to contemplate the implications of his or her deeds. People can also persist in mindless behavior over the course of months or years, but it is harder; generally, a person would need to invoke a more effective and subtle system of defense mechanisms. Indeed, even in the short time span of the experiment, some of Milgram's subjects showed signs of denigrating and devaluing the learner in an effort to reduce the strains associated with delivery of the shocks. Afterward, others focused on their own purity of heart to facilitate denial of their complicity. Case studies of Nazi criminals show that those who did not share party ideology and extreme antipathy toward Jews frequently employed dissociation, doubling, and other protective tactics to hide from their deeds.
If the Milgram subjects had time to ponder their day's activities over dinner with their spouses, one wonders how many would have returned for a previously arranged second day of zapping new victims. Additionally, one might ask how many subjects would have continued if Milgram had wheeled out a real corpse after the victim had been shocked and then instructed the subject to continue with the procedure on a new, healthier pupil. This situation would more closely resemble the circumstances surrounding many instances of mass murder in the real world.
Unlike the Milgram subjects, many Nazis sought out their destructive roles, entering the party, attending rallies, and joining the SS. They did not usually show signs of serious mental illness, but they may well have shared an inclination to violent, obedient, or discriminatory behavior. The Nazi institutional support system then pushed them down a corridor of hatred and violence. They may, in the end, have responded to situational pressures, but to a large extent they did choose and help create their own situations.
When Milgram's subjects delivered dangerous shocks to victims who, for the most part, resembled themselves, they did so with great reluctance. Some Nazis, as historian Raul Hilberg has noted, were "bearers of burdens," consumed by guilt, but, in stark contrast, many others are better described as "zealots" and "vulgarians." Whereas conscience plagued Milgram's subjects, it seemed painfully absent from the mindset of many Nazis, at least with regard to anti-Jewish acts. And while few of the teacher-subjects in the obedience study acted with any cruelty at all, death camp survivors recount that many guards, even those who showed no signs of sadism in other contexts, committed acts of great brutality in the death camps.
Though the Nazis attempted to shroud the Holocaust in a euphemistic cloak, only a very small percentage of perpetrators can plausibly claim ignorance about the likely consequences of their deeds. In the 1930s, many Germans did not have a clear sense of where Hitler's policy was headed. But by the time of the Holocaust, few of the killers could have had doubts that Jews were being slaughtered. For the members of the Einsatzgruppen and the staffs of the concentration camps, there could be no doubt at all. Yet, as we have seen, Milgram's subjects may well have succumbed to the pressures of the situation precisely because of its ambiguity. The confusion that prevailed in their minds could not have existed in those of most Nazis instrumental in the murder of the Jews, except perhaps for a few bureaucrats inhabiting offices far from the gas chambers and killing fields of the Einsatzgruppen.
One of Milgram's key conclusions is that obedience diminishes sharply if even a single role model disobeys. The German resistance did not attract huge numbers, but some Germans did disobey the regime and many more opted out of murderous duty.
Nazi leaders hardly resembled Milgram's experimenter in credibility, demeanor, or objective. Yet these ungodly souls were often perceived as legitimate. One can imagine a person obeying the experimenter because of respect for experimentation or because some unwritten social rule advises against questioning a knowledgeable scientist. But would a normal person plucked out of an everyday Connecticut environment feel the same way toward Rudolf Hoess, the commandant at Auschwitz, or Heinrich Himmler, the SS chief? German citizens did treat the Nazi leadership as legitimate in spite of an agenda that violated traditional Western norms. They accepted their argument that atrocities served the higher moral purpose of advancing the interests of the German race. For Milgram, this parallels the behavior of subjects who hurt others in the name of science. But one might reasonably ask whether the acceptance of Nazi ideology, as opposed to the endorsement of science, requires an entirely different set of social and political preconditions. And, more important, one can justly question whether the key to Hitler's effectiveness lay to a greater extent in his ability to arrange these preconditions and orchestrate monumental change in Germany, rather than in a ubiquitous human tendency to obey.
The Nazi Holocaust reached such a huge dimension because it relied on bureaucracy rather than spontaneous hatred. Obedience propelled this bureaucracy forward, but so did individual initiative and a shared set of beliefs, values, and goals. The motives of those who follow an authority figure symbolizing knowledge and those who obey a leader who stands for racial superiority cannot be equivalent. Unquestioning trust in either can lead to disaster, but surely the Milgram subjects had probability on their side. One can participate in thousands of psychological studies without ever seriously hurting another person; one cannot say the same about following the orders of Nazi leaders.
Some Nazi murders were as bloodless as the shock experiments, but most required killers to stomach butchery and gore of unprecedented proportions. Though sometimes described as a bloodless genocide, there was plenty of blood, and more than a little cruelty. Would Milgram's subjects have tolerated this as well?
Among the many paths followed by Nazi mass murderers, some may have fit the Milgram model. Though most people in Nazi Germany were anti-Semites to one degree or another, they entered the scene without much anti-Semitism and encountered authorities who seemed legitimate and whom they trusted completely. They then subordinated their own better judgment to these figures, following a social norm that one always obeys legitimate governmental authorities. This, in turn, led them to participate in murders of Jews, despite tremendous personal misgivings and overwhelmingly guilty consciences. Even for subjects who fit this model, however, the obedience studies tell us little about what happened next, more specifically, how they managed to return day after day to persist at their murderous tasks.
Many more Nazis sought to build their careers on the blood of their victims, though they too were not motivated in the main by anti-Semitism and hatred. The members of the SS obeyed, but largely because their deeds did not violate any deep personal values and because they had merged psychologically and socially with the organization. Large numbers, too, identified with the goals of the Nazi party and, more important, the person of Adolf Hitler. All probably felt some inclination to obey authorities whom they wrongly accepted as legitimate. In itself, however, the impulse to obey legitimate authorities was a necessary and sufficient condition for only a few. Nonetheless, Milgram's work correctly focuses our attention on the social and situational pressures that can lead people to commit acts of which they would not dream, or perhaps of which they would only dream, under different circumstances.
The mass rapes in Bosnia have also been described as instances of destructive obedience; to assess this position, one must rely on informed speculation, because reliable historical studies will not appear for many years. Imprisoned militia members in Bosnia have asserted that they had no option but to kill civilians and rape Muslim women. Some claim that the alternative was death, that they were told, "Rape, or be killed." It is difficult to know for certain whether this order was given, or whether anyone was executed for disobeying it. The Bosnian Serb leadership probably authorized the rapes and encouraged them as a matter of policy; they certainly planned the massacre of large segments of the civilian population as part of their strategic objectives. The rapes, also, contributed to emptying the lands they wanted to annex.
Lower level leaders communicated the acceptability of murder and rape; no doubt, they also exerted social pressures on their subordinates to participatea reluctant soldier might easily have felt isolated. In any case, victim accounts indicate that most of the rapists participated with relish. They seemed consumed by hatred. Many also capitalized on an opportunity to indulge animalistic urges that civilized people generally lack or, at least, suppress; in an atmosphere where the social contract was nowhere to be found, and where life and dignity collapsed easily, they committed rape with disgusting eagerness. These rapists, in a sense, responded to situational pressures, but stretching Milgram's model to account for their behavior strains credulity.
Reports abound of cruelty at the Omarska concentration camp, created by the Bosnian Serbs in the spring of 1992. The genocide perpetrated by Bosnian Serbs lacked any hint of sanitized, bureaucratic detachment. Drawing on the residue of past conflicts, and more significantly, fired up by several years of hate propaganda, most soldiers in the Bosnian Serb cause detested their Muslim opponents. And most of those who carried out, and to some extent initiated, the worst atrocities and ethnic cleansing brought even angrier and more virulent animosities to the task. It is likely that, five or six years earlier, many of these men disliked their Muslim neighbors, but few would have mistreated them. And even fewer, perhaps none, would have physically attacked them. But by the spring of 1992, "slavishly but reluctantly obedient" is hardly an apt description of their frame of mind. In this bloody conflict, everyone on all sides grew more militant as the casualties mounted; many sought revenge for the death of comrades or family in the recent past. As a result of memories and propaganda, many more felt anger concerning real or imagined crimes against the Serbs in the more distant past. For some, the matter boiled down to "Kill them now or they'll kill you later." The Serbs had been transformed into killers who felt much affinity for the orders they obeyed, and even a need to inflict humiliation on their victims.
Reasonable people on all sides of the Balkan conflict report feeling tremendous pressure to conform and choose sides, even when this ran against their inclinations. Most succumbed. But they were far less likely to join Arkan's bloodthirsty militia or other groups responsible for the atrocities and rapes.
Though the circumstances surrounding ethnic cleansing do not approximate very closely the predicament of subjects in the Milgram experiment, one cannot discount the power of the military norm to obey. The norm to obey is far stronger in the wartime military than in civilian life. Though plenty of precedents establish a soldier's right to disobey unlawful orders, massive pressures limit the practicality of exercising this right. Recruits, in Bosnia, may have bought their leaders' propaganda line, bowed to group pressure, or been pushed into the military by the "Which side are you on?" logic of conflict. Then, without having thought much about the matter, they might have received an order to kill the Muslim residents of a village, perhaps under some guise deemed plausible. By this time, they may already have killed Muslim soldiers in battle. With sympathy for the victims, or at least with some trace of moral reluctance, they may have carried out the murders. Here, again, the Milgram obedience experiment illuminates the path that some may have followed. It remains impossible to determine how many arrived at their genocidal bent via this indirect route, though the prevalence of hatred and cruelty seems to suggest that this was not the most common path.
In Rwanda, the situation was somewhat similar. A cycle of genocide instilled in many Hutu a fear of what the Tutsi might do if they gained power. There was also a widespread desire for revenge. The crimes of the past to which they reacted were in some cases real, but in any event always salient in their minds because of the waves of hate propaganda emanating from the radio and elsewhere. Without this conscious effort to stir up animosities, the warring groups might have coexisted in peace.
The members of the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambe militias did not reflect a random cross-section of Hutu society; instead, they may well have been selected and trained in part because of their propensities to hate Tutsis and to follow orders. Still, the order to murder Tutsis and moderate Hutus came without much notice, and many found themselves faced with an immediate dilemma: to follow orders or to rebel. The radio broadcasts led them to believe that the Tutsi would not hesitate in killing them; at a minimum, this must have reduced reluctance to obey. The fact that moderate Hutu were numbered among the extremists' victims may also have stimulated fears. As one interpretation of the subjects' predicament in the obedience study suggests, these militia men may have acted out of confusion resulting from difficulty arriving at a stable definition of the situation; perhaps they were unsure of whether they were engaging in self-defense or the murder of innocents. Without a clear sense of what was going on, they lacked the fortitude to disobey. Again, however, the genocidal situation differs from the laboratory situation in significant ways. The killers knew, for certain, that death would result from their actions. They often acted with incredible cruelty. They possessed a hatred for the victims born of many years of conflict and fed by virulent and effective propaganda.
There are few meaningful parallels between the obedience experiment and the situation presented by the Muslim extremists. Simply put, the Manhattan terrorists and other extremists across the globe do not resemble the Connecticut subjects in their essential psychology. The extremists seek out their terrorist tasks and regard them as morally justifiable in terms of their religious beliefs. Nonetheless, these extremists do view the radical sheikhs as legitimate authorities and, for the most part, surrender moral and religiouslegal responsibility to them. Thus, they do not ask whether blowing up the United Nations is an ethical act; they inquire whether Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman approves.
A somewhat better case can be made for the relevance of the obedience experiment to the behavior of some American troops in Vietnam. Milgram himself cites the My Lai massacre as an excellent illustration of destructive obedience at work, and many other political and social analysts agree. 44 The events of March 16,1968, in the Vietnamese village of Son My, bear some important similarities to the obedience experiment. The time frame was short, only a few hours one morning. The purpose of the act was ostensibly noble: to advance the American effort to free Vietnam from the scourge of a vicious totalitarian regime, and to advance the interests of the Free World in the struggle against an ever-expanding Communist threat. No officially sanctioned hate campaign stimulated fear and anger toward the Vietnamese people. The American killers had not chosen to join extremist organizations, and most seemed to resemble the Connecticut subjects. The mechanical, "doing-my-job" mentality approached the surreal, as the men of Company C who had just completed a horrifying massacre of old men, women, and babies paused for lunch. Two young girls who had escaped the slaughter wandered back from a hiding place, were observed by the soldiers, and invited to share lunch. Having finished the job, the normal human values of the soldiers had reasserted themselves.
But the parallels with the Milgram study are not perfect. The day before, the soldiers had attended the emotional funeral of a sergeant who had been killed by a Viet Cong booby trap. Many thirsted for revenge, and were ready to find Viet Cong anywhere. The soldiers could have suspected that a few VC numbered among the many they had murdered. Some of the killers at My Lai also raped their victims, something which certainly had not been included in the orders of Lieutenant Calley or anyone else. And while the American government had not preached hatred against the Vietnamese, many American soldiers certainly had absorbed a considerable amount of prejudice against them, as evidenced by the widespread use of disparaging names like "Gooks."
Insofar as Milgram's experimental situation differs in so many essential aspects from circumstances surrounding mass atrocities in the real world, the study proves little about how such crimes could occur. However, the obedience research does help to explain several elements of mass murder in Nazi Germany, Bosnia, and Rwanda. First, if people lacked a powerful tendency to obey the orders of authorities, the architects of mass murder would not be able to coordinate effective policies; pogroms and other manifestations of mass hatred would occur, but they would not reach the levels observed in Rwanda, Bosnia, Nazi Germany, or elsewhere. Second, perpetrators nearly always find it easier to commit atrocities when they can surrender moral and legal responsibility to an authority whom they perceive as legitimate. Third, some percentage of murderers in every genocide act without any hatred toward their victims, or at least without much hatred, and some experience considerable guilt; these obedient killers are one type among several, not the majority, but they do kill for much the same reason that Milgram's subjects pull the lever. They simply lack the presence of mind or moral courage to challenge an authority figure. Fourth, group pressure apparently drives many people to suppress any inclinations they might have to question or disobey authority.
By focusing on a short-term laboratory situation where the consequences of the teacher-subject's act were by no means certain and where the authority figure represented a generally benevolent institution, Milgram probably exaggerated the probability that everyday Americans would in their current psychological states commit mass atrocities. Milgram's results derived at least partly from subjects' confusion about what was really transpiring. Additionally, the "obedience" model of mass atrocities misses, or deemphasizes, some critical points about the psychology of genocide. While mass atrocities are not generally the direct consequence of certain individuals expressing deep hatred, a personal lust for blood, or psychopathology, such individuals are disproportionately likely to join organizations that perpetrate atrocities. Moreover, their most vile tendencies emerge and dictate their behavior as they follow orders and embroider on them; thus, some soldiers ordered to kill may end up raping or torturing their victims.
The "obedience" model also detracts attention from the overarching importance of an ideology of hatred - the Nazi racial doctrines, the vision of a Greater Serbia, Hutuism, Islamic extremism, and the like. Over the course of years, opportunistic or genuinely hateful leaders use control of the state, the media, and other institutions to flood people's minds with messages teaching them to devalue their victims. People must perceive those who give genocidal orders as legitimate authorities, and they must be willing to accept that genocidal orders do not diminish a figure's legitimacy. The ideological campaign of hate sets the stage so potentially obedient killers will not challenge claims to legitimacy; to some extent, at least, the followers now share the vision of their leaders. Many atrocities are crimes of obedience, but many more are crimes of agreement and even initiative.
The people who commit atrocities may have, years earlier, resembled the "nice" people of Connecticut, but by the time they commit their acts of aggression, they have been substantially transformed. As much as he would like us to believe otherwise, Eichmann was not a nice person.
Additionally, most atrocities occur in the context of war. Nearly always, war cheapens life, as soldiers kill other soldiers, or see friends die at the hands of the enemy. Often, these experiences engender fear and a desire for revenge, even when completely misdirected, as in the case of Nazi Germany.
And in the military, obedience takes on an altogether different character. Milgram himself notes its essentially logical character when he writes that "the maintenance of discipline becomes an element of survival, and the soldier is left with little choice but to obey." True, there should be limits to obedience, but those who suggest that we train soldiers to disobey are being overly simplistic. No military organization, not even one engaged in reasonable defense, could function without a powerful norm against disobeying orders. Soldiers would be placed at unnecessary risk, and most likely the end result in the armies of Western nations would be an increase in atrocities. Individuals at war are placed under tremendous strain; soldiers would, no doubt, be apt to loot or even kill or rape without the restraints imposed by the norm to obey legitimate authorities.
From time to time, some of us notice an individual donning a button, popular a few years back, that says: "Question Authority!" Within limits, this makes sense. But the adolescent urge to disobey should not be mistaken for a social philosophy. Even in civilian life, obedience helps to hold society together. Would America function better if people stopped obeying the law and started making their own decisions in every instance? Do we want everyone asking, "Is it really wrong for me to take this apple when I'm so hungry and he has so many?" The proper response when the teacher says, "Write a fifteen-page paper," is not to ask, "Why?" Obedience in itself is not the enemy. In any case, the tendency to obey probably is deeply entrenched in most societies, good and bad, and, consequently, an ill-advised place to intervene in order to discourage mass murder.
Milgram offers some advice. "First, we need to be aware of the problem of indiscriminate submission to authority.... Second, since we know men will comply, even with the most malevolent authorities, we have a special obligation to place in positions of authority those most likely to be humane and wise." This is reasonable advice, but in both respects easier said than done.
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Today is Saturday February 04, 2012
