From: "Margaret Tarbet" Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 10:50:50 +5 Subject: Re: SURVEY: (US) Army Times: To Shoot or Not? A Vexing Issue > The question given to the Marines was hypothetical: > Would you shoot at U.S. citizens who have disobeyed a federal > order to surrender banned firearms? But Navy Lt. Cmdr. Ernest G. > Cunningham found the answers seriously disturbing. > > More than one-quarter, or 26 percent, of the 300 Marines > Cunningham surveyed for his master's thesis said yes, they would shoot. > Sixty-one percent said they would not. The rest had no opinion on > the question, which ignited a firestorm when the survey, done in > May 1994, leaked to the news media. Had Lt. Cdr. Cunningham done his homework before running his survey, he might have been spared those "seriously disturbing" feelings. Or perhaps not: the reality is almost certainly worse than he found it to be. But at least he might have been somewhat better-prepared. In the early 1960s, the social psychologist Stanley Milgram at Yale began a series of experiments designed to test how resistant US citizens are to Authority and its demands. We've always prided ourselves that the Holocaust could never have happened here because ordinary americans would have resisted, unlike those weak, over-subservient germans. The late sociologist Hannah Arendt was severely criticised, at the time of Adolf Eichmann's trial, for her characterisation of Eichmann as less an inhuman monster than an unimaginative bureaucrat who was, indeed, "just following orders". We desperately want to believe that only a monster could do the things he did. But as Milgram determined experimentally, Arendt was much more perceptive than her critics. Which is - or should be - scary as hell to the rest of us. Milgram's experiment was beautifully subtle: adult subjects were recruited for a test of learning. The subjects represented the full spectrum of education and occupation, and included both women and men. Subjects were selected in pairs, and randomly chosen to be either the learner or the proctor. The experimental conditions required that increasing levels of electrical shock be given to learners for failing to respond correctly, up to and including a level labled "danger - severe shock". In reality, the conditions were completely rigged such that the one assigned the role of "proctor" was the only actual subject. The "learner" and "experimenter" were confederates of Milgram's and no actual shocks were ever given. The actual goal of the experiment was to find out at what point the subjects' ethical resistance would kick in and cause them to stop obeying the "experimenter". In a related experiment - similar to Lt. Cdr. Cunningham's - , a large group of people, including psychiatrists and psychologists, heard the nominal experiment described (learning experiment, randomly-chosen volunteer participants, shocks for failure) and then were asked to estimate how far they themselves would be willing to go in giving shocks. EVERY person was sure that they would break off before reaching the "danger" level. They felt no doubt about that. They were also asked to predict the responses of other people, and again they predicted that only a pathological few, one or two percent, would carry on through the whole range of shocks. The actual results were so disturbing that the experiment was replicated with reduced contextual support until finally it was conducted in a seedy storefront completely dissociated from any academic setting or potential legitimacy. The results didn't change. TWO THIRDs of all subjects carried on through the whole range of shocks. Even when the learner made increasingly-distressed pleas for mercy and demanded to be released, 62% went on to administer the maximum shock. And even when the proctor had to force the learner's hand onto the shock plate, 30% were willing to do that in order to give the maximum, dangerous shock. There was no coercion. The lab-coated "experimenter" responded to any expression of resistance with simple, dispassionate phrases such as "the experiment requires you to continue", "you must go on", and "you have no other choice". For reasons i won't attempt to characterise, no government funding could be obtained for a long time afterward for any experiment with similar methodology. It was even, for awhile, regarded as unacceptable merely to consider doing that kind of experiment. So if we presume that there should be no difference between civilian and military responses in a "free and democratic" society such as ours purports to be, then Lt. Cdr. Cunningham's experiment suggests that either (a) people are more self-aware today than a generation ago, or (b) it has become more socially acceptable to be unthinkingly obedient to authority. Milgram concluded his 1974 book[1] (in which he described the whole experimental series) with the observation: "The results...are disturbing. They raise the possibility that human nature, or -- more specifically -- the kind of character produced in American democratic society, cannot be counted on to insulate its citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of malevolent authority. ***A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitmate authority.***" [emphasis added] He ends by quoting Harold Laski on "The Dangers of Obedience": "Our business...is to accept nothing which contradicts our basic experience merely because it comes to us from tradition or convention or authority. It may well be that we shall be wrong; but our self-expression in thwarted at the root unless the certainties we are asked to accept coincide with the certainties we experience. That is why the condition of freedom in any state is always a widespread and consistent skepticism of the canons upon which power insists." margaret ------- [1] Milgram, S. Obedience to Authority: an Experimental View. NY, 1975: Harper & Row Torch