bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
Let's outline some of the procedures in this research paradigm that seduced many ordinary citizens to engage in this apparently harmful behavior. In doing so, I want to draw parallels to compliance strategies used by "influence professionals" in real-world settings, such as salespeople, cult recruiters, and our national leaders (see Cialdini, 2001).
Among the influence principles to be extracted from Milgram?s paradigm for getting ordinary people to do things they originally believe they would not are the following ten:
1) Offering an Ideology so that a big lie provides justification for any means to be used to achieve the seemingly desirable, essential goal. Presenting an acceptable justification, or rationale, for engaging in the undesirable action, such as wanting to help people improve their memory by judicious use of punishment strategies. In experiments it is known as the ?cover story? because it is a cover-up for the procedures that follow which might not make sense on their own. The real world equivalent is known as an ?ideology.? Most nations rely on the same ideology of ?threats to national security? before going to war or suppressing dissident political opposition. It is a convenient familiar ideological theme that fascist governments and military juntas have used to destroy socialist or communist opposition. When citizens fear that their national security is being threatened they are willing to surrender their basic freedoms when the government offers them that exchange. In the Unites States, the fear of the threat to national security posed by terrorists has led too many citizens to accept torture of prisoners as a necessary tactics for securing information that could prevent further attacks. That reasoning contributed to the background of the abuses by the American guards at Abu Ghraib prison. See the provocative analysis by Susan Fiske and her colleagues on why ordinary people torture enemy prisoners (Fiske, Harris, & Cuddy, 2004).
2) Arranging some form of contractual obligation, verbal or written, to enact the behavior.
3) Giving participants meaningful roles to play (teacher, student) that carry with them previously learned positive values and response scripts.
4) Presenting basic rules to be followed, that seem to make sense prior to their actual use, but then can be arbitrarily used to justify mindless compliance. Make the rules vague and change them as necessary.
5) Altering the semantics of the act, the actor, and the action, (from hurting victims to helping learners by punishing them)?replace reality with desirable rhetoric.
6) Creating opportunities for diffusion of responsibility for negative outcomes; others will be responsible, or it won?t be evident that the actor will be held liable.
7) Starting the path toward the ultimate evil act with a small, insignificant first step (only 15 volts).
8) Having successively increasing steps on the pathway be gradual, so that they are hardly noticed as being different from one?s most recent prior action. (By increasing each level of aggression in gradual steps of only 30 volts, no new level of harm seemed like a noticeable difference to the Milgram participants.)
9) Changing the nature of the influence authority from initially ?Just? and reasonable to ?Unjust? and demanding, even irrational, elicits initial compliance and later confusion, but continued obedience.
10) Making the "exit costs" high, and making the process of exiting difficult by allowing usual forms of verbal dissent (that make people feel good about themselves), while insisting on behavioral compliance (?I know you are not that kind of person, just keep doing as I tell you.?)
Such procedures are utilized across varied influence situations where those in authority want others to do their bidding, but know that few would engage in the "end game" final solution without first being properly prepared psychologically to do the "unthinkable."
From:
The Psychology of Power and Evil:
All Power To the Person? To the Situation? To the System?
Philip G. Zimbardo, Psychology Department, Stanford University
http://www.zimbardo.com/
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-muslim voice-
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