Summary

do after they refused to continue to shock the poor soul

who was so obviously in pain? Did they intervene, go to his

aid, denounce the researcher, protest to higher

author-ities, etc.? No, even their disobedience was within the

framework of "acceptability"; they stayed in their seats,

''in their assigned place" politely, psychologically

demur-red and they waited to be dismissed by the authority.

Using other measures of obedience in addition to "going all the way" on the shock generator, obedience to authority in Milgram's research was total.'

Some commentators have objected to Milgram's general-isation from his findings to t h e nature of war atrocities, saying that he is taking his conclusions too far. But is he?

Sociologist Hannah Arendt, who covered Adolf Eichmann's trial, made the telling statement: ' T h e sad and very uncomfortable truth of the matter was that it was not his fanaticism but his very conscience that prompted [him] to adopt his uncompromising a t t i t u d e / Eichmann had said himself that he would have sent his own father to the gas chamber if ordered to. (From Are We All Nazis?)

Milgram's experiment caused a furore, not least because he was heavily criticised for exposing the poor subjects to such stress and suffering themselves. But the ethics of experimenters are not at issue here. Another, more low key experiment carried out by American sociologists, Sorokin and Boldyreff, shows the power that an authority figure can unwittingly wield in shaping others' opinions.

A piece of music (Brahms' First Symphony) was played twice to a group of over a thousand school and college students but the musicians were not identified. Although exactly the same gramophone record was in fact played twice, an expert introduced the first by saying that the rendering was far superior in beauty and feeling and technical excellence than the version they would hear next.

T h e second was described, in introduction, as an 'exagger-ated imitation of a well-known masterpiece'. Only 4 per cent of the listeners did not accept that they had heard two different pieces of music. Of the 96 per cent who didn't argue, nearly 60 per cent found the first piece superior to the second, 21 p e r c e n t didn't know and 16 per cent disagreed. A very low percentage therefore presumed to question the authority of the expert or to disagree with his learned opinion.

That obedience is so deeply entrenched is further illus-trated by another experiment of Milgram's, this time demonstrating just how difficult it is to breach social norms, regardless of authority figures to reinforce them. Milgram asked one of his students to go up to a person sitting on a subway train and request that person to give up his seat to him, without giving an explanation as to why. T h e student was supposed to repeat this performance on twenty different occasions and gauge the reactions of the people he asked. But the student backed out before he had finished because, he said, the assignment was one of the most difficult things he had ever had to do in his life. So Milgram decided to take over himself and he soon came to understand his student's unexpected reaction. He approached a passenger on a train and then found himself sweating before he could even speak.

When he finally forced out his request, he experienced extreme panic. But the man did surrender his seat. In

Milgram's words:

'Taking the man's seat I was overwhelmed by the need to behave in a way that would justify my request. My head

sank between my knees and I could feel my face blanching.

I was not role-playing. I actually felt as if I were going to perish. As soon as I got off t h e train all tension disap-p e a r e d / (Psychology Today, June 1975.)

When the rules have been set, we feel difficulty in disobeying them unless we have massive peer support.

Which leads us on to the equally potent power of conformity.

Conformity

People cannot be trusted to say and do what they think is right if others around them are expressing an opposite opinion. T h e pull towards social conformity is far too strong.

T h a t was the finding of psychologist Solomon Asch's now celebrated study. He showed subjects a thick eight-inch line drawn on one piece of card and asked them to say which of three other lines on another piece of card was the same length

as the first. T h e other card showed a line that was obviously longer than the first, a line that was quite obviously shorter and a line that was clearly identical. But very few subjects chose the identical line! Asch had so arranged things that the test involved several 'subjects' at once, but only one subject was genuinely being tested. T h e others were confederates of the experimenter and all had been primed to give the same wrong answers. Asch found that his real subject, given the choice of sticking with his own judgement and being the odd one out or waiving his judgement and concurring with his co-subjects' clearly wrong answers, opted to do the latter thing and conform. Nearly three-quarters of his subjects showed some tendency to conform to the view expressed by the others in the room. In interviews afterwards, it was made quite clear by the subjects that they hadn't believed the chosen line was the same length as the first line.

In Asch's experiment, there were no penalties being meted out for being wrong, even so mild as a frown; so it is possible to infer that, in a situation where there might be some form of

disapproval shown to a dissenter, conformity would be even higher.

Conformity was found to occur only if there was more than one confederate giving wrong answers. Similarly, when there were several confederates and one of them gave the correct answer, thus dissenting from his peers, the subject

reverted to his own judgement and gave the correct answer too. Having one supporter was sufficient to eliminate the strong conformity drive.

Zimbardo suggests, in Influencing Attitudes and Chang-ing Behaviour, that 'pressure toward uniformity may operate directly on opinions or indirectly by changing the way we perceive the world'. As an example he describes an experi-ment by Sherif that was based around the fact that a stationary light seen in the dark will appear to move, if there

is nothing to judge it against. Sherif asked students the direction and distance that a stationary light appeared to them to move. T h i s varied from individual to individual, some seeing small, limited movements, others lengthy.

complicated movements. However, when all the students were gathered together to watch the light and to state what they saw, one after another, a group norm developed that fell between what any of the students, as individuals, had seen.

Those who had described very small movements increased the movements they 'saw' and those who had seen the large sweeping movements reduced them.

T h e need to be one with a group, to have group approval and therefore social approval, means that individuals will very often change their attitudes themselves, to fit with the norm, instead of having to be persuaded- Just as an authority figure only needs to identify himself, not exert his influence, in order to command obedience, so a group may only have to be known to hold different views from a newcomer to that group for the newcomer to revise his own stands accord' ingly. T h e passive power exerted by social norms is all the stronger than overt power because it is bowed to uncon*

sciously.

One reason for the strength of the drive to conform is that we tend to learn how to cope in unfamiliar social situations by following what others do. We pick up from others the accepted social code of behaviour for the circumstances we are in. Imitative behaviour is a process of learning. It can also become a habit.

Psychologist Irving Janis introduced a term which has now become a modern colloquialism: groupthink. He found that, in group decision making, the pressure for consensus is so strong that it can inhibit any expression of dissent.

Particularly likely to succumb to the dangers of groupthink, he said, are tightly knit groups where morale is high. T h e enthusiasm of the members can lead to an illusion of invulnerability; whatever decision is made must be the right one because they made it. Any evidence that throws doubt on the validity of the course proposed is rationalised out of the equation. T h e group comes to believe in its own intrinsic morality, therefore there is no need to give consideration to any moral consequences of acts it proposes to carry out.

T h e group decided it, therefore it is moral. In other words,

the group comes to have a momentum of its own, fostered by