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.