On Wed, 22 Jul 2015 04:51:44 -0700, Jim Clark wrote:
Hi
I perhaps misread Mike's original list of reasons for psychologists
and medical doctors engaging in torture as an exhaustive list of
possible reasons rather than the motivations of specific people
who participated in torture. My additions were certainly not meant
to refer to specific people, but simply to represent other possible
reasons.
I think that Jim might be referring to people such as those who
decided to go into the armed services as a direct consequence
of the 9/11 attacks, people's whose motivation was to avenge
the attack that killed thousands that terrible day and continues to
kill people to this day (the first responders who went to the World
Trade Center who tried to save people there and now find that
they are developing deadly illnesses and health problems long
after that terrible day; see the entry on the James Zadroga Act
on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Zadroga#James_Zadroga_Act )
SIDENOTE: Let me take this opportunity to point out how useless
giving advice to others is. In my earlier post (see below), I referred
to
Alex Gibney's "The Human Behavior Experiments" which in
addition to covering Milgram's obedience experiment, Latane
and Darley's bystander apathy studies, and Ziimbardo's Stanford
Prison Experiment (SPE) also connected the results to contemporary
events that appear to reflect the results of the research.
I had mentioned SPE and how it was connected to Abu Ghraib.
Although I provided a link to the documentary on YouTube below
(it's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVpV73wSyG8 )
I do not think that Jim Clark watched it. If he did, then he would
have seen and heard Ken Davis, a US Army Reservists who was
at Abu Ghraib and a friend of Charles Graner, the specialist who
was involved in the "softening up" of detainees before they were
interrogated and appears in many photos of abusing the detainees
(e.g., the infamous "pyramid" of naked detainees). Davis relates
one conversation he had with Graner after a "softening up session".
Graner's voice was hoarse and Davis asked if he were coming
down with something. Graner said no, it was from all of the shouting
he was doing with the detainees. Graner says that he been told
to "soften up" the detainees (not exactly how but to use his
imagination)
and he thinks that he is being forced to do unethical things to the
detainees that he does not want to do. When Graner says something
to his superiors, they say if he doesn't do it, then the blood of
American soldiers who are killed/maimed by an IED (improvised
explosive device) on the roads of Iraq will be on his hands because
he did not help get the information from the detainees that could
have saved those solders. As Zimbardo points out in his commentary
on Abu Ghraib, the situation there, one of the endproducts of Mitchell
and Jessen's work, could have been predicted from the SPE results
mainly because it did not matter what the low level staff like Graner
and Davis felt and believed, their superiors created a situation where
the development of abuse of detainees would develop naturally and
would be nurtured by those following the procedures of Mitchell and
Jessen. It should be noted that Zimbardo served as an expert witness
at Graner's trial -- prior to Abu Ghraib Graner was an exemplary
soldier and a good family man, nothing in his background suggested
that he would abuse detainees -- and pointed out how the whole system
was designed to encourage the worst in the people running Abu Ghraib,
all supported by their superiors and others who "suggested" what to
do with detainees.
It would be a good idea to watch the documentary. On second thought,
forget about it.
And I continue to disagree with Mike's assumption that it takes
horrendous
people to do horrendous things, the example of Ted Bundy not
withstanding.
If you like, I can produce a very long list of people in addition to Ted
Bundy that did horrendous things to others and, well, turn out to be
horrendous people as well. However, I don't think I'll have enough
space
for all of the people in the Nazi SS, the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge,
the Serbians who committed genocide against Muslims, the Boko
Haram's killers who are selling of girls into sexual slavery, ISIS and
..
Well, you get the picture, right?
Let me make another point, relating back to Zimbardo's SPE.
If one has not read the original reports on the SPE, one would
think that ALL of the guards turned into "John Wayne", the name
used by prisoners for a particularly abusive prison guard. But
this is wrong. Allow me to cite from a 1973 paper by Zimbardo
& Co which describes the guards and which also appears in
earlier reports:
|There were three types of guards. First, there were tough
|but fair guards who followed prison rules. Second, there
|were "good guys" who did little favours for the prisoners
|and never punished them. And finally, about a third of the
|guards were hostile, arbitrary, and inventive in their forms
|of prisoner humiliation. These guards appeared to thoroughly
|enjoy the power they wielded, yet none of our preliminary
|personality tests were able to predict this behaviour. The
|only link between personality and prison behaviour was a
|finding that prisoners with a high degree of authoritarianism
|endured our authoritarian prison environment longer than
|did other prisoners.
(quote from
Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). Study of
prisoners and guards in a simulated prison. Naval Research
Reviews, 9(1-17).
which is available here:
http://www.garysturt.free-online.co.uk/zimbardo.htm ).
One critical result that most accounts of the SPE pass over
is that there was this "guard by manifestation of abusive behavior"
interaction. The third of the guards who really got into their
roles were the ones who helped to initiate and escalate the
level of abuse toward the student prisoners. When I go over
this point in class I ask:
(1) What would have happened if one could have screened
out the third of the guards who appeared to be the cause of
the abuse. Perhaps the use of Bob Altemeyer's "Right Wing
Authoritarianism" (RWA) scale and Pratto & Sindanius'
"Social Dominance Orientation" (SDO) might have predicted
which guards would have been more likely to engage in abuse.
(2) Even if one did not screen out guards with a predisposition
toward abusing student prisoners, would things have been
different if the supervisors MADE CLEAR THAT THE PRISONERS
SHOULD NOT BE ABUSED OR DISRESPECTED? Prison
guards have to follow rules of behavior but if the administration does
not enforce them (like Zimbardo did not in SPE; like the administration
at Abu Ghraib, according to Davis, did not), is it really surprising
that the guards predisposed to abusing prisoners actually wind
up abusing them? What Zimbardo should have done is have
two prison conditions: one where guards were given free reign
(which he did in the classic SPE) and one where a guard supervisor
made sure that prisoners' civil rights were not abused. What
do you think the results of that experiment would be?
Getting back to "horrendous people do horrendous things", two
points:
(1) The guard known as "John Wayne" acknowledged that he was
going to do outrageous things until someone stopped him. He admits
this in the Zimbardo produced documentary on SPE "Quiet Rage".
See:
http://www.prisonexp.org/quiet-rage
(2) Milgram described several different "subjects/teachers" in his
"obedience to authority" study; he provide information about them
in the following article in Harper's:
Milgram, S. (1973). The perils of obedience. Harper's, 247(1483), 62.
And this is available at:
http://is.muni.cz/el/1423/podzim2012/PSY268/um/35745578/Milgram_-_perils_of_obediance.pdf
One of the subjects was given the name "Bruno Batta" and was
an example of a person who "did his duty without conflict". The
following quote captures the "banal evil" (tm Hannah Arendt) that
could have "populated the guards of Nazi concentration camps
with citizens from New Haven":
(regarding the subject/participant Bruno Batta)
|What is extraordinary is his apparent total indifference to the
|learner; he hardly takes cognizance of him as a human being.
|Meanwhile, he relates to the experimenter in a submissive
|and courteous fashion.
|
|At the 330-volt level, the learner refuses not only to touch the
|shock plate but also to provide any answers. Annoyed, Batta
|turns to him, and chastises him: "You better answer and get it
|over with. We can't stay here all night." These are the only words
|he directs to the learner in the course of an hour. Never again
|does he speak to him. The scene is brutal and depressing,
|his hard, impassive face showing total indifference as he subdues
|the screaming learner and gives him shocks. He seems to
|derive no pleasure from the act itself, only quiet satisfaction
|at doing his job properly.
|
|When he administers 450 volts, he turns to the experimenter
|and asks, "Where do we go from here, Professor?" His tone is
|deferential and expresses his willingness to be a cooperative
|subject, in contrast to the learner's obstinacy.
|
|At the end of the session he tells the experimenter how honored
|he has been to help him, and in a moment of contrition, remarks,
|"Sir, sorry it couldn't have been a full experiment." He has done
|his honest best. It is only the deficient behavior of the learner that
|has denied the experimenter full satisfaction.
.
If that's not a horrendous person engaging in horrendous behavior,
it's time for me to change professions and become a male stripper. ;-)
Just call me "Magic Mike" ;-) ;-) ;-)
Thomas Blass in his biography of Milgram "The Man Who Shocked
the World" also discusses "Bruno Batta"; see page 96. The book
is available at books.google.com:
https://books.google.com/books?id=9NK534T2BOcC&pg=PA96&dq=milgram+%22obedience%22+%22bruno+batta%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAGoVChMIwdzUo_PuxgIVxjc-Ch0QBAeu#v=onepage&q=milgram%20%22obedience%22%20%22bruno%20batta%22&f=false
Dropping atomic bombs on Japan had horrendous consequences,
I always find it interesting that when people talk about the US
bombing of Japan, they refer to the use of the atomic bombs
while, apparently, not realizing that the US had firebombed
major population centers throughout the was which resulted
in the deaths of a range of 241,000 to 900,000 people; see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan#Atomic_bombings_and_final_attacks
By comparison, the Hiroshima bomb killed in the range of 66,000 to
80,000 people (up to 140,000 had died by the end of 1945) and
somewhat over 100,000 people died in Nagasaki. Together,
the highest estimate is around 240K, less than the lower limit
of the deaths from firebombing. The morality of the firebombing
is open to debate but often overshadowed by the atomic bombing.
Then again, do we want to start comparing how many people the
Japanese killed (about 200,000 to 300,000 just in Nanking; see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre) with how many
the U.S. killed?
as did Ally bombing of Dresden during WW II.
In response to how many killed in the blitz on England,
the concentration camps, and the killing that went on
in Europe, Russia, Africa, and elsewhere?
Do we therefore assume the actors involved from
Generals on down were horrendous people?
If I remember correctly, I believe that the Allies did not consider
certain groups of people to be subhuman and worthy of genocide
(the U.S. has a problem with African-Americans, Japanese
American, American Indians and others but last I checked,
we didn't build death camps to eliminate them from the U.S.;
U.S. right-wingers, however, are concerned about the "FEMA
camps" that are being built and that the federal government
will fill with undesirables like conservatives, fundamentalist
Christians, etc., or least that's what right wing sources tell me).
Indeed I believe many people recognize
that horrible acts during war do not necessarily reflect horrible
qualities of
individual actors.
Maybe, but when you're dealing with people who consider other
people to be subhuman and worthy of extermination, I'd say that
that a lot of those people have horrendous qualities. I admit that
it is possible that a guard at an extermination camp might be a
wonderful person but I would have to ask "Why are you killing all
those people?"
As an anecdotal example, my neighbors across the road when
growing up were a British woman married to a German man, both
of whom emigrated to Canada, met, and married shortly after
WW II. This is not to exonerate everyone for all actions they might
have taken during the war.
I think I miss the point. I'm sure that Eva Braun thought Adolf was
a fabulous person (though he did not look like the Aryan ideal)
and treated her wonderfully. What am I supposed to conclude
from this? That Adolf Hitler was a good person?
Take care
You too.
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Palij [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: July-22-15 5:01 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Cc: Michael Palij
Subject: RE: [tips] Essay on why scholarly ethics codes may be likely
to fail
|
InsideHigherEd
On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 11:43:42 -0700, Jim Clark wrote:
>Hi
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Mike Palij
>> The next question is why did medical/health professionals assist
>> the
>> CIA et al in > such activities (e.g., "rectal feedings")? Was this
>> an example of a Milgram style "submission to authority"? Was it a
>> purely selfish response on the part of medical/health
>> professionals,
>> that is, they like their job, they like their future in the
>> organization, and did not want to jeopardize what seemed to them
>> was
>> a good livelihood -- what's a little torture or unethical behavior
>> among colleagues if each can get away with it (using the "Nuremberg
>> defense") and
>> keep their jobs and the promise future opportunities?
>.
>I guess another possibility is that they sincerely believed the
>procedures could extract useful information and save lives, American
>and other nationalities.
Jim, with all due respect, who the hell are you talking about? If
you're
referring
to James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the two psychologists who had no
experience with interrogation techniques, in contrast to the FBI and
others
whose experience goes back to the early 1950s, you have to convince me
of the
evidence that they thought their "made up" techniques would actually
work and
they could save lives. In fact, give me one example where the use of
torture
actually saved lives.
If you need some reminding of what Mitchell and Jessen and the CIA
did, here's
a NY Times article that provides a brief
overview:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/us/politics/cia-on-path-to-torture-
chose-haste-over-analysis-.html?_r=0
One of the things that puzzled many experienced interrogators was why
Mitchell and Jessen were brought in (NOTE: their lack of experience
with
interrogation would allow them to try anything they wanted, from the
most
heinous to the profoundly stupid). Here is an article from the BBC
website on
how interrogators got Dzhokhar Tsamaev, one of the Boston Marathon
bombers, to open up: build rapport with the person being
interrogated. See:
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22227704
Also, the FBI in 2012 released its "primer" on how to interrogate a
terror
suspect
which is based on 50+ years of experience; here is one story that
appeared at
the time:
http://www.examiner.com/article/fbi-declassified-primer-offers-guidance-on-
how-to-interrogate-terror-suspects
You can actually read the primer which is available as a PDF on the
web;
see:
www.aclu.org/files/fbimappingfoia/20120727/ACLURM036782.pdf
The report is about 78 pages long but here's a quote about one of the
effective
techniques used in interrogation:
| Direct Questioning In using the direct approach the HUMINT
collector
|asks direct questions The initial questions may be administrative or
|non-pertinent but the HUMINT collector quickly begins asking
pertinent
|questions The HUMINT collector will continue to use direct questions
as
|long as the source is answering the questions in truthful manner When
|the source refuses to answer avoids answering or falsely answers
|pertinent question the HUMINT collector will begin an alternate
approach
|strategy. (ref 27)
NOTE: The report does not define the term HUMINT but by inference one
can
assume it means "human intelligence".
| Statistics from interrogation operations in World War II show that
the direct
|approach was effective 90 percent of the time In Vietnam and in
Operation
|Urgent Fury Grenada 1983 Just Cause Panama 1989 and Desert Storm
Kuwait
|and Iraq 1991 the direct approach was 95 percent effective The
|effectiveness of the direct approach in Operations Enduring Freedom
and
|Iraqi Freedom are still being studied however unofficial studies
indicate
|that in these operations the direct approach has been dramatically
less
|successful. (ref 28)
(from page 13 of the PDF)
No waterboarding or stress positions or sleep deprivations or whatever
garbage
Mitchell and Jessen came up with in order to develop a state of
"learned
helplessness" in detainees. If they thought they were helping the
U.S., they
were proven wrong after the world found out about Abu Ghraib. See:
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/07/torture200707
I quote from this article:
| Soon, the reverse-engineered SERE tactics that had been designed by
|Mitchell and Jessen, road-tested in the C.I.A.'s black sites, and
|adopted in Guantánamo were being used in Iraq as well. One
intelligence
|officer recalled witnessing a live demonstration of the tactics. The
detainee
|was on his knees in a room painted black and forced to hold an iron
bar
|in his extended hands while interrogators slapped him repeatedly.
|The man was then taken into a bunker, where he was stripped naked,
|blindfolded, and shackled. He was ordered to be left that way for 12
hours.
|
| At the Abu Ghraib prison, military policemen on the night shift
adopted
|the tactics to hideous effect. In what amounted to a down-market
parody
|of the praise heaped on Mitchell and Jessen, Specialist Charles A.
Graner Jr.,
|a former prison guard from Pennsylvania, received a commendation for
|his work "softening up" detainees, according to the documentary The
Ghosts
|of Abu Ghraib. He appears repeatedly in photographs, smiling and
giving
|thumbs-up before human pyramids of naked detainees. In 2005, he was
|convicted on charges of abuse. In their statement, Mitchell and
Jessen
|said that they were "appalled by reports" of alleged abuses at Abu
Ghraib
|and Guantánamo and had not been involved with them in any way.
Oh, the documentary film "The Human Behavior Experiments" by Alex
Gibney
has Zimbardo making the connection between the Stanford Prison
Experiment
and what went on at Abu Ghraib. It also has the photos mentioned
above of
Charles Graner. For background on this film see:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0822813/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
A video that I think is edited is available on YouTube (I have a copy
and the
original is longer than the version on YouTube):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVpV73wSyG8
>Or they might have even thought that the procedures required to
>extract
>useful information might be less harsh or damaging with their
>involvement than without.
Again, if you're talking about Mitchell and Jessen, guys who had no
idea about
how to conduct a proper interrogation, trying to figure out how to get
potential
vital information from a detainee, then you're doing the equivalent of
asking
an
undergraduate psych student to conduct brain surgery and slice the
corpus
callosum of a person with severe epilepsy. Also, explain to me how an
interrogation philosophy based on creating a state of "learned
helplessness"
in a
detainee would be "less harsh or damaging".
If you're talking about people like Graner, then the "obedience to
authority"
argument holds. In the military, it has to hold all the way up the
chain of
command.
>And is "submission to authority" related at all to loyalty?
Ah, the "Nuremberg Defense". The U.S. hung people for that.
See the Wikipedia entry on the Nuremberg trials:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials
Quoting the entry:
"Of the 12 defendants sentenced to death by hanging, two were not
hanged
[NOTE: one was killed while trying to escape, the other was a
suicide]...The
remaining 10 defendants sentenced to death were hanged". From:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials#Executions
>After all, shooting people and dropping bombs have devastating
>physical
>and psychological effects on others, and are accepted practices at
>war.
I believe you are wrong on this from a legal perspective. See:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/war/just/whom_1.shtml
>I'm not personally endorsing these views, but I think it is dangerous
>to assume that people who engage in horrendous acts necessarily are
>acting for horrendous reasons.
I don't know. Though I understand the power of the situation (see the
Alex
Gibney documentary mentioned above), I generally think that it takes a
horrendous person to do horrendous things. Ted Bundy comes to mind.
But I
can see why someone might want to excuse the horrendous things a
person may
do, the U.S. did it with Nazis and the Japanese after the WW II when
the new
enemy was "Old Uncle Joe". For one example, see the following article
on
Nazis
helping to establish the U.S. space program:
http://www.csmonitor.com/1985/0904/ateam1.html
Busy, busy, busy. So many people in the same device.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raU2HByZY5M
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
P.S. http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/personal/bokonon.html
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