Social Identification, Not Obedience, Might Motivate Unspeakable Acts

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120718164947.htm

ScienceDaily (July 18, 2012) — What makes soldiers abuse prisoners? How could Nazi officials condemn thousands of Jews to gas chamber deaths? What's going on when underlings help cover up a financial swindle? For years, researchers have tried to identify the factors that drive people to commit cruel and brutal acts and perhaps no one has contributed more to this knowledge than psychological scientist Stanley Milgram.

Just over 50 years ago, Milgram embarked on what were to become some of the most famous studies in psychology. In these studies, which ostensibly examined the effects of punishment on learning, participants were assigned the role of "teacher" and were required to administer shocks to a "learner" that increased in intensity each time the learner gave an incorrect answer. As Milgram famously found, participants were willing to deliver supposedly lethal shocks to a stranger, just because they were asked to do so.

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This obedience explanation, however, fails to account for a very important aspect of the studies: why, and under what conditions, people did not obey the experimenter.

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The researchers hypothesized that, rather than obedience to authority, the participants' behavior might be better explained by their patterns of social identification. They surmised that conditions that encouraged identification with the experimenter (and, by extension, the scientific community) led participants to follow the experimenters' orders, while conditions that encouraged identification with the learner (and the general community) led participants to defy the experimenters' orders.

As the researchers explain, this suggests that participants' willingness to engage in destructive behavior is "a reflection not of simple obedience, but of active identification with the experimenter and his mission."

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The results of the study confirmed the researchers' hypotheses. Identification with the experimenter was a very strong positive predictor of the level of obedience displayed in each variant. On the other hand, identification with the learner was a strong negative predictor of the level of obedience. The relative identification score (identification with experimenter minus identification with learner) was also a very strong predictor of the level of obedience.

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These new findings suggest that social identification provides participants with a moral compass and motivates them to act as followers. This followership, as the authors point out, is not thoughtless -- "it is the endeavor of committed subjects."

Looking at the findings this way has several advantages, Reicher, Haslam, and Smith argue. First, it mirrors recent historical assessments suggesting that functionaries in brutalizing regimes -- like the Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann -- do much more than merely follow orders. And it simultaneously accounts for why participants are more likely to follow orders under certain conditions than others.