"We like to think that seeing is believing," observes neuroscientist Gregory Berns, "but the study's finding shows that seeing is believing what the group tells you to believe. (The Lucifer Effect, pp 263 - 265)."
Jason Brennan divides the citizenry into three groups: hobbits, hooligans, and vulcans. Hobbits are apathetic non-voters. They have little or no knowledge of current affairs, economics or politics - and no interest in these matters. Hooligans are passionate about politics, well-informed but biased. They cherry-pick information to suit their party-political views. "For them, belonging to the Democrats or Republicans, Labour or Tories, or Social Democrats or Christian Democrats matters to their self-image in the same way being a Christian or Muslim matters to religious people's self-image." Vulcans are the rarae avis, unbiased and rational; they proportion their belief to the evidence. Their views are grounded in the social sciences and philosophy. Most people are either hobbits or hooligans (Against Democracy, pp 4 - 5).
However, hooligans don't kill each other, so we need a fourth category for Bangladesh: student thugs. Hooligans in Bangladesh provide moral support to the student thugs. Obedience to authority perceived as legitimate - authority which is legitimised by hooligans and the democratic process - galvanise students to commit the vilest of acts. We have seen how, in the experiment by Muzafer Sherif, ingroup-outgroup hostility can occur even in the absence of any material stake. And group pressure overrides the individual's autonomy. All of us are capable of extreme evil in an obedient herd.
During the 1960s, Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments destined to be famous - or infamous - in New Haven, Connecticut. These were investigations of 'blind obedience to authority". Milgram's motivation was to understand how readily the Nazis had obediently killed Jews during the Holocaust (being a Jew himself, he had an acute interest in the subject).
Milgram put an advertisement in the newspaper offering $4 (plus 50 cents care fare) for approximately one hour to help 'complete a scientific study of memory and learning'. Participants were told that they were to help scientific psychology to improve people's learning and memory through the use of punishment (electric shocks). The shocks were graduated at thirty levels, each switch increasing the shock by 15 volts, so the maximum was 450 volts (labelled XXX). The participant, the 'teacher', had to administer the shocks to a 'learner' every time he got an answer wrong, going up one switch each time. The 'learner' was a confederate, and the shocks were simulated, but the 'teachers' didn't know that. The learner would complain verbally and scream out his words of agony at high levels of shock.
Prior to the experiment, Milgram asked forty psychiatrists what percentage of Americans would go to each of the thirty levels of the experiment. On average, they predicted that less than 1% would go all the way to the end, that only sadists would engage in such behaviour, and that most people would drop out at the level of 150 volts.
In the event, 2 out of 3 (65%) volunteers went all the way up to the maximum shock level of 450 volts - even though they could hear nothing from the learner-victim assumed to be unconscious or dead (The Lucifer Effect, pp 267 - 271).
David Mantell, who repeated Milgram's study in Munich, Germany found an obedience rate of 85% - 20 percentage points higher than in New Haven. David Houghton tentatively attempts to understand the Rwandan genocide of 1994 in terms of obedience to authority. He quotes a lawyer from Kigali, with a Hutu father and a Tutsi mother: "Conformity is very deep, very developed. In Rwandan history, everyone obeys authority. People revere power, and there isn't enough education. (Political Psychology, p 52)."
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