OBEDIENCE

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OBEDIENCE
Nazi Germany WWII
Tiananmen Square China, 1989
Adolf Eichmann War criminal WWII
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Term Test 4

• Thursday March 4
• in class, 1200 - 150
• 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)
• Social Perception (Ch. 13)
• Social Influence (Ch. 14)

This was missing from the earlier list
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Names to Know for Term Test 4

• Brocas and Wernickes 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

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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
• Aschs 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)

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• Social loafing
• Deindividuation
• Bystander apathy
• The murder of Kitty Genovese
• why didnt any of 38 neighbor witnesses help
  her?!!!
• diffusion of responsibility
• frequently demonstrated in field studies and lab
  experiments
• even Good Samaritans fail
• Persuasion
• 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?

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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.

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Extreme Obedience

• Jonestown, Guyana, 1978
• Jim Jones, cult leader of The Peoples Temple,
  persuaded his followers to drink Kool-Aid laced
  with cyanide
• 913 died, including gt200 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

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Extreme Obedience
Nazi Holocaust Germany Poland (Europe) 1941-1945
6,000,000
Rwanda (Africa) 1994 800,000
Cambodia (Asia) 1975-1979 4,000,000
An estimated 210 million people were killed by
genocide in 20th century.
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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?

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Milgram Video Questions

• 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?

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Milgrams Obedience Experiment
Stanley Milgram 1933-1984
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We do what were told

• We do what were told.
• We do what were told.
• We do what were told.
• Told to do.
• -- lyrics to Milgrams 37 by Peter Gabriel

Psychologists predictions
(Milgram, 1974)
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Factors that affect obedience

• 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
• Closeness and legitimacy of authority figure
• ordinary person confederate instead of
  experimenter 20 obedience
• 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 learners
  welfare 0 obedience
• Personal characteristics
• no significant differences based on sex (though
  women reported feeling more guilty), politics,
  religion, occupation, education, military
  service, or psychological characteristics

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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.
• 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
  Eichmanns 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.

Hannah Arendt 1906-1975
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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?

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Why Genocide?

• Psychology of Genocide (Ervin Staub, 1989, 2000)
• starting point severely difficulty life
  conditions
• 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
• in- vs. out-group definitions become particularly
  strong
• out-groups become scapegoats for societys ills
• example Germans blamed Jews for their economic
  hardships
• violence begins against out-group people believe
  that the out-group deserved it
• belief in a just world, blaming the victim
• example Germans believed the Jews deserved their
  fate
• violence comes to justify itself
• stopping would be admitting it was wrong to begin
  with
• counter-example Truth and Reconciliation
  Commission in South Africa
• lack of opposition from allies strengthens
  resolve
• example lack of opposition to massacres in
  Yugoslavia in 1991 condoned action

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Its 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?

Timothy Kuhn Boston, Mass.
Joe Smith Omaha, Neb.
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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."

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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

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Six Degrees of Separation

• But
• 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 Milgrams number was too large
  because there were probably other shorter routes
  unknown to the participants

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Links
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Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
In Hollywood, there are 3 degrees
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Hubs
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Hubs
10 most connected actors in Hollywood
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Hubs
Internet nodes in 1998 800 million Average
degrees of separation 19
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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

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9-11 Terrorist Links
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Brain Connections

• amygdala appears to be a hub