pol311: political psychology
TRANSCRIPT
Professor Lerman
T/TH 10-10:50
POL311: Political Psychology
Obedience to Authority, Mass Atrocities
and Genocide
John Palmer
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
22 April 2010
Obedience: The Case of Adolf Eichmann
SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann during
Nazi period.
Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem, 1961.
Obedience: The Case of Adolf Eichmann
Why did Eichmann oversee the expulsion of millions of men,
women and children to Nazi extermination camps?
Material self-interest?
Prejudice?
Aggression?
Conformity?
Obedience?
Obedience: Milgram Experiment
Obedience: Milgram experiment
The mild-mannered, likeable gentleman
Obedience: Milgram Experiment
The mild-mannered, likeable gentleman gets strapped into the “electric chair”
Obedience: Milgram Experiment
Would you disobey? At what shock level?
Obedience: Milgram Experiment
How did Milgram’s subjects respond?
Obedience: Milgram Experiment
Regular voice-feedback experiment:
(subject can hear learner protesting and screaming in separate room)
Mean stopping point: 405 volts
65% went all the way to the end
Obedience: Milgram Experiment
Subject’s choice:
(subject gets to choose shock level)
Mean stopping point: 75-90 volts
2.5% (one person) went all the way to the
end
Obedience: Milgram Experiment
Proximity of victim:
(subject and learner in same room)
Mean stopping point: 300-315 volts
40% went all the way to the end
Obedience: Milgram Experiment
Touch proximity:
(subject and learner in same room; subject must force learner’s hand
onto shock plate)
Mean stopping point: 255-270 volts
30% went all the way to the end
Obedience: Milgram Experiment
Absent experimenter:
(experimenter leaves lab and gives directions by telephone)
Mean stopping point: 270-280 volts
18.15% went all the way to the end
Some subjects started “cheating”
(telling experimenter they were raising
shocks when in fact they were keeping
them at lowest level)
Obedience: Milgram Experiment
Ordinary man giving orders:
(experimenter leaves lab and hands his role to a confederate posing
as another volunteer)
Mean stopping point: 240-255 volts
20% went all the way to the end
Obedience: Milgram Experiment
Authority as victim; ordinary man giving orders:
(lab technician is receiving the shocks, a confederate posing as
another volunteer is giving the orders)
Mean stopping point: 150 volts
No one goes past 150 volts
Obedience: Milgram Experiment
Authority as victim; authority giving orders:
(one lab technician is receiving the shocks, another lab technician is
giving the orders)
Mean stopping point: 345-360 volts
65% went all the way to the end
Obedience: Milgram Experiment
Two authorities; contradictory orders:
(one lab technician says shock, the other says don’t shock)
Mean stopping point: 150 volts
None went past 165 volts
Obedience: Milgram Experiment
Theory of obedience and disobedience:
Obedience: Milgram Experiment
Agentic
state
Antecedent
conditions
Resolution of strain
(r)Strain (s)Consequences
Binding factors (B)
Obedience: B>(s-r)
Disobedience: B<(s-r)
Obedience: Stanford Prison Experiment
Obedience: Abu Ghraib
U.S. treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib
prison, Iraq.
Obedience: Bagram
A sketch by Thomas V. Curtis, a Reserve
M.P. sergeant, showing how Dilawar was
chained to the ceiling of his cell.
From -- Tim Golden, ”In U.S.
Report, Brutal Details of 2
Afghan Inmates' Deaths.” The
New York Times, May 20, 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05
/20/international/asia/20abuse.h
tml
Obedience: Guantanamo
U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
Genocide
Buchenwald
concentration
camp, Germany,
April 16, 1945.
Genocide
Remains of the victims of the Rwanda genocide of 1994.
Genocide
Remains of Srebrenica victims, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1995.