Transcript 023_W2004_Obedience - Instructional Web Server

Nazi Germany
WWII
Adolf Eichmann
War criminal
WWII
Tiananmen Square
China, 1989
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Term Test 4
Thursday March 4
in class, 12:00 - 1:50
30 to 40 multiple choice questions
10% of course grade
Topics covered
– class material: Jan 27 - Mar 2
– assigned readings: see lectures web page
– Language and Nonverbal Communication (Ch. 11 & a bit
of 10)
– Cognitive Development (Ch. 11)
– Social Development (Ch. 12)
This was missing
– Social Perception (Ch. 13)
from the earlier list
– Social Influence (Ch. 14)
Names to Know for Term Test 4
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Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas
Noam Chomsky
B.F. Skinner
Kanzi, Washoe, Alex Pepperberg
Jean Piaget
Niccolo Machiavelli
Erik Erikson
Harry Harlow
Solomon Asch
Kitty Genovese
Stanley Milgram
Adolf Eichmann
Hannah Arendt
Three Minute Review
SOCIAL INFLUENCE
– How do we make others do what we want?
– Conformity
• essential to well-functioning society
• but not always a good thing
• Asch’s line judgment experiment
– Group decisions
• Group polarization
• Groupthink
– Bay of Pigs Invasion
– Space Shuttle, then and now
– how can you minimize groupthink?
– Social facilitation
– Social interference
• similar to “optimal level of arousal” (Yerkes-Dodson law)
• Social loafing
• Deindividuation
• Bystander apathy
– The murder of Kitty Genovese
• why didn’t any of 38 neighbor witnesses help her?!!!
– diffusion of responsibility
– frequently demonstrated in field studies and lab experiments
– even “Good Samaritans” fail
• Persuasion
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reciprocity
lowballing
door-in-the-face
foot-in-the-door
four walls technique (text)
• How can Social Impact Theory account for many
social influence phenomena?
Test Yourself
Which persuasion
technique is most
likely being used in
this “survey”?
NB -- Just to cover the
political spectrum… I
also received another
“survey” from the
Alliance using a
similar technique. It
went something like
this: (1) “I believe that
marriage is only
between a man and a
woman”; (2) “I believe
the Alliance will
protect the sanctity of
marriage better than
other parties.”
Extreme Obedience
Jonestown, Guyana, 1978
• Jim Jones, cult leader of The People’s
Temple, persuaded his followers to drink
Kool-Aid laced with cyanide
• 913 died, including >200 children
poisoned by their parents
• Factors
• cult members felt alienated from
American society
• cult members were in an isolated
location
• Jones was very charismatic
• Jones promised life “in a better
place”
Waco Texas, USA, 1993
• David Koresh, cult leader of the
Branch Davidians, maintained an
armed standoff with the
government for 51 days until he
and cult members died in a fire of
unknown origin
• over 80 adults and children died
Extreme Obedience
Nazi Holocaust
Germany & Poland
(Europe)
1941-1945
6,000,000
Cambodia
(Asia)
1975-1979
4,000,000
Rwanda
(Africa)
1994
800,000
An estimated 210 million people were killed by genocide in 20th century.
Are the people who commit such acts inherently evil?
Adolf Eichmann
• supervised the deportation
of 6,000,000 Jews to Nazi
gas chambers
• Were Germans generally
evil?
• Was Eichmann an evil
sadist or merely a cog in
the wheel?
• How would you have
behaved in his situation?
Milgram Video: Questions
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How did Milgram make the situation seem realistic?
What was the task for the learner and for the teacher?
How did the learner protest?
What sorts of things did the experimenter say to encourage
the teacher to obey? What made the experimenter seem
like an authority?
• How far did subjects go before stopping?
• Did the real subjects enjoy shocking the learner? Were they
sadists?
• Did the subjects obey just because Yale researchers had
legitimate authority?
… and a few things to think about…
• Was the study ethical? Were the results worth it?
• Why did so many people obey? What would you have done
in that situation?
Milgram’s Obedience Experiment
Stanley Milgram
1933-1984
We do what we’re told
“We do what we’re told.
We do what we’re told.
We do what we’re told.
Told to do.”
-- lyrics to “Milgram’s 37” by
Peter Gabriel
Psychologists’ predictions
(Milgram, 1974)
Factors that affect obedience
1. Remoteness of the victim
– teacher and learner in separate rooms: 65% obedience
– teacher and learner in same room: 40% obedience
– teacher and learner in physical contact (teacher had to put learners
hand on apparatus): 30% obedience
2. Closeness and legitimacy of authority figure
– “ordinary person” confederate instead of experimenter: 20%
obedience
3. Cog in a Wheel
– “another subject” confederate does the dirty work and real subject
assists: 93% obedience
– “another subject” confederate disobeys: 10% obedience
– subjects told they are responsible for learner’s welfare: 0%
obedience
4. Personal characteristics
– no significant differences based on sex (though women reported
feeling more guilty), politics, religion, occupation, education, military
service, or psychological characteristics
The Banality of Evil
From Eichmann in Jerusalem, 1963
• [Eichmann] remembered perfectly well that he
would have had a bad conscience only if he had
not done what he had been ordered to do -- to ship
millions of men, women, and children to their death
with great zeal and the most meticulous care.
Hannah Arendt
1906-1975
• Half a dozen psychiatrists had certified him as
“normal” -- ‘more normal, at any rate, than I am
after having examined him,’ one of them was said
to have exclaimed, while another had found that his
whole psychological outlook, his attitude toward his
wife and children, mother and father, brothers,
sisters, and friends, was ‘not only normal but most
desirable.’
• It was though in those last minutes [of Eichmann’s
life] he was summing up the lesson that this long
course in human wickedness had taught us -- the
lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying
banality of evil.
Stanford Prison Experiment
(Zimbardo, 1975)
• How did Zimbardo make the roles of prisoner
and guard realistic?
• What happened? How did prisoners react?
How did guards react?
• Was the experiment ethical? Why did it finish
earlier than planned? Were there any negative
long-term effects? How did subjects feel years
later about their participation?
Why Genocide?
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Psychology of Genocide (Ervin Staub, 1989, 2000)
1. starting point: severely difficulty life conditions
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harsh economic circumstances, political upheaval
example: Germany was struggling greatly after WWI defeat
counter-example: US Marshall plan after WWII
– economic contributions to post-WWII Europe helped prevent repeat
2. in- vs. out-group definitions become particularly strong
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out-groups become scapegoats for society’s ills
example: Germans blamed Jews for their economic hardships
3. violence begins against out-group; people believe that the out-group
deserved it
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belief in a just world, “blaming the victim”
example: Germans believed the Jews deserved their fate
4. violence comes to justify itself
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stopping would be admitting it was wrong to begin with
– counter-example: Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa
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lack of opposition from allies strengthens resolve
– example: lack of opposition to massacres in Yugoslavia in 1991 condoned
action
It’s a Small World After All
• Stanley Milgram also did other cool, more optimistic
experiments
• Milgram (1967) -- If you pick any two people at
random, how many intermediate acquaintances
does it take to establish a link between them?
Joe Smith
Omaha, Neb.
Timothy Kuhn
Boston, Mass.
Six Degrees of Separation
Stanley Milgram (1967)
– sent 300 letters to randomly-selected people in Omaha
Nebraska
– asked them to have the letters relayed to a specific
person in Boston whose name, age, location (but not
their specific address) and occupation was specified
– the original person was asked to send the letter to
someone they thought would be closer to the target and
then to get that someone to follow the same instructions
• “If you do not know the target-person on a first-name basis, then
pass the document folder on to one friend that you feel is most
likely to know the target. That friend must be someone you know
on a first-name basis."
Six Degrees of Separation
Milgram followed the sequence of transmissions
– On average, it took 5.5 (rounded up to 6) intermediate
people
– Conclusion: Any two people are connected by “six
degrees of separation”
Six Degrees of Separation
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Milgram recruited only “particularly sociable” people
only 30% of the letters arrived
success rate was much lower for low income participants
sociologists suggest than, on average, most people know
about 300 people on a first-name basis, but there is likely
wide variability in this number
– some argue that Milgram’s number was too large
because there were probably other shorter routes
unknown to the participants
Links
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
In Hollywood,
there are ~3
degrees
Hubs
Hubs
10 most connected
actors in Hollywood
Internet nodes in 1998: 800 million
Average degrees of separation: 19
Hubs
Sex Degrees of Copulation
Matthew Perry
HIV/AIDS hub
• “Patient Zero”: Gaetan Dugas
• Canadian flight attendant
• 250 partners/year
• 40 of 248 people diagnosed
with AIDS in 1982 had had sex
with him or someone who had
9-11 Terrorist Links
Brain Connections
• amygdala appears to be a hub