POL311: Political Psychology

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


The mild-mannered, likeable gentleman gets strapped into the “electric chair”

Would you disobey? At what shock level?


How did Milgram’s subjects respond?


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


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


Proximity of victim:

(subject and learner in same room)




Touch proximity:

(subject and learner in same room; subject must force learner’s hand

onto shock plate)




Absent experimenter:

(experimenter leaves lab and gives directions by telephone)


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)


Ordinary man giving orders:

(experimenter leaves lab and hands his role to a confederate posing

as another volunteer)




Authority as victim; ordinary man giving orders:

(lab technician is receiving the shocks, a confederate posing as

another volunteer is giving the orders)


No one goes past 150 volts


Authority as victim; authority giving orders:

(one lab technician is receiving the shocks, another lab technician is

giving the orders)




Two authorities; contradictory orders:

(one lab technician says shock, the other says don’t shock)


None went past 165 volts


Theory of obedience and disobedience:


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

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html



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.

POL311: Political Psychology

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