The Questionable Ethics of Social Influence - Essay Example

The Questionable Ethics of Social Influence Studies Introduction Human behaviour is affected by so many factors. Among these factors is the social influence of other people which may be responsible for leading people into doing kind things as well as pushing them to do activities which may harm others. One kind of social influence is brought about by obedience to an authoritative figure. Milgram (1963) has noted that “obedience is the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose. It is the dispositional cement that binds men to systems of authority” (p. 20). This implies that obedience is one foundation of order in society that needs to be strengthened and emphasized so that society functions properly. The quality of authoritative figure is another issue altogether. Another kind of social influence comes from conformity to social behaviour. Whatever behaviours observed in others can create an impact on an individual and if conformity to socially accepted behaviours is aimed for, it means that similar behaviours may be expected from each member of a group. Psychologists have put this theory to the test with various social psychological experiments. This paper will discuss the impact of authority on the obedience of an individual in Milgram’s (1963) very controversial social experiment as well as the effects of an environment and culture of abusive behaviour on the ‘victims’ of the situation in Zimbardo’s (2007) equally controversial study. Main Body Everyone wants to feel accepted and belonging to a social group. Some people would do anything just to achieve that. Conformity to a group’s thinking, attitude, behaviour or practice is one way to make one feel accepted and part of the majority. Zimbardo’s (2007) Prison Study was borne from his observation of a dearth of social science research on the direct confrontation of good vs. evil. Specifically, he designed an experiment to pit good people (students acting as prisoners) against the forces inherent in situations considered bad (students acting as abusive prison guards). The situation of cruel prison guards inflicting abuse on prisoners were simulated by the participants picked out for the study and overseen by Zimbardo himself. For the participants, it seemed that the main authority figure, the author of the research, was tolerant of their negative behaviour, and since “everyone was doing it”, it seemed fine to join the bandwagon of abuse. Zimbardo’s experiment showed that social influence greatly shaped people’s practices, judgments and beliefs. In contrived environments employing accomplices that serve as conforming individuals regardless of whether the behaviour is right or wrong, experimental subjects were observed of their behaviours. The “guards” were instructed to make the “prisoners” conform to the rules they make up notwithstanding the apparent resistance of the prisoners. Being given free reign of their power, the guards came up with atrocious demands, to the point of humiliation with simulated sex play among the all-male participants of the study. The study showed how the creation of a negatively stimulating environment can increase people’s conformity to negative behaviour in a matter of days making them question their own values in the long run. It was only with the objective eyes of Zimbardo’s guest, his former graduate student, who pointed out to him that his experiment was getting out of hand and the cruelty was being pervasive without Zimbardo even realizing it. Zimbardo’s study paved the way for strengthening the rules of the International Research Board on the use of human subjects in psychological experiments because of the adverse effects it had on the majority of the participants of the study. All the participants were considered physically healthy and psychologically stable right before they joined the experiment. However, by the fifth day, five of the student prisoners had to be released from the experiment due to extreme stress. Those left behind adopted a zombie-like attitude and posture and learned to be totally obedient to the prison guards even with their escalating inappropriate demands. Zimbardo (2007) acknowledged the power that fed the guards in this situation to sustain their cruelty to the prisoners. According to him, “We have created a dominating behavioural context whose power insidiously frayed the seemingly impervious values of compassion, fair play and belief in a just world.” (p. 203) The power situation empowered the guards in a negative way especially power without any supervision or restriction. It brought about evil, which is a “demonstration of power and domination over others” (Zimabardo, 2007, p. 203). Zimbardo points out that the situation or system in which bad people live in is equally to blame for the bad behavior of people and not just the sole responsibility of the person guilty of the said behavior. Social influence is also brought about by a person of authority. This person has the power to make others obey his command. Milgram’s (1963) experiment on the extent an individual will yield to an authority figure has become another controversial study that goes beyond the borders of propriety in social psychological research. In terms of methodology, the essential variables of the study can be manipulated at different points in the experiment. These include the source of the command, the instrumentalities for the execution of the command, the target object, the social setting, among others. It is the choice of variables to use and how they are combined to best show the process of obedience that matters in socio-psychological studies. Milgram’s study included much deception to see how people responded to obedience to authority to the detriment of another person. The participants, as teachers, were asked to “shock” the learner (an accomplice in the experiment) whenever he made a mistake in the lesson they are supposedly learning. The learner was an accomplice to the experiment and acted as if he was being tortured in the other room every time the teacher in the other room shocked him. The shock level increased as the session wore on, even reaching supposedly dangerous levels. Of the 40 subjects, 26 carried out the commands of the experimenter to shock the learner until the end. The rest of the subjects refused to obey at some point and were labelled as deviants. When signs of hesitation and requests to terminate their participation were manifested, the experimenter had ready “prods” to encourage them to go on, even refusing to let them go and making them feel they are obliged to continue. Milgram found that obedience can be a strong component of human nature, and in the experiment, it was given more priority than the value of not hurting others. At the same time, the circumstance wherein the subjects were made to obey created tremendous stress and yet the majority of them continued to obey. Both studies of Zimbardo and Milgram on the impact of social influence on people’s behaviour were considered unethical because it put the participants at risk of psychological breakdown. In Zimbardo’s prison experiment, the participants who were simulating prisoners were subjected to extreme stress from the abusive treatment of the simulated prison guards that some of them had to be relieved of their duties as they neared nervous breakdown. Even the onlookers and observers of the experiment could not bring themselves to stop the experimenter from conducting the experiment even if they were aware that there were unethical practices that were being done. It was only Christina Maslach, Zimbardo’s former student and current girlfriend who had the guts to tell him off and pointed out how the experiment was going beyond ethical procedures. Her criticism was powerful enough to make Zimbardo halt the experiment. In the interest of social psychology, there was much to learn from the experiment, at the expense of the experimental subjects. It was not fair to them to undergo torture for the sake of scientific research as their humanity and personal welfare should have been prioritized. Still, the conclusions derived from Zimbardo’s study regarding the social influence of conformity are valuable lessons. In addition, the situation wherein the subjects were transformed from being good to bad is worth examining. Zimbardo notes that research should also focus on the situation apart from human behaviour per se. The dilemmas experienced by the subjects in Zimbardo’s experiment may be likened to the dilemmas of people with inconsistent feelings regarding their behaviours. Situations which make people uncomfortable such as in the social experiments discussed thus far, force people to find ways to ease themselves of the burden. For some, they learn to justify or rationalize the situation to make them feel better. In a study by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959), subjects were tried out for their cognitive dissonance, or the inconsistency they feel from what they say with what they actually feel or hold as their honest opinion. It has been assumed that in order to bring back the self to consonance or unity of what one says with what one truly thinks, a person will adjust his behavior or thinking to match what he says, just so he gains back consonance, ridding himself of the uncomfortable dissonance felt earlier. The onlookers in Zimbardo’s study felt cruelty was being done to the subjects but rationalized that it was a social experiment that they shouldn’t interfere with. They had to find a reason to quell their discomfort in the thought that they could not do anything to maintain their consonance. With Milgram’s obedience experiment, the idea of deception was unethical enough, what more subjecting the participants to high anxiety and attacks of conscience as they were made to believe they were inflicting pain to another with the goal of making him learn an educational concept. The subjects who opted out of their participation were even forced to continue, when ethically, they were free to withdraw their participation at any time they felt any discomfort. The subjects were made to shock an erring learner upon the command of the experimenter, with the aim of making the learner master the concept being taught. What if the subject had a different educational philosophy that did not include punishment, should that not be respected in the interest of observing his or her obedience tendencies? Milgram’s experiment on the helplessness of the subjects to obey the command to shock another person may be compared to Manning, Levine and Collin’s 2007 article on the collective inaction of 38 witnesses to the Kitty Genovese murder. These 38 neighbors openly witnessed a woman being terrorized and murdered, as they watched in fascination, unmoving, and not even lifting a finger to call for help. It was as if these people shared a trance-like state of inaction. Although it was not a study on obedience, it also showed how being a witness to cruelty can render an individual to be helpless and unmoving to cause a change. Milgram reported that there was a debriefing session wherein the subjects were interviewed and made to recover from the stress experienced during the experiment. They were assumed to have left the laboratory in a state of well-being and reconciliation with the learner they thought they shocked. However, it cannot be detected at that time if there was damage done to the psyche of the subjects and to what extent. Conclusion Although considered to go against some ethical tenets, the value of these two studies lies in the fact that they pushed research boards to tighten their standards on research integrity and ethical considerations. In the area of social psychology, much was learned about obedience and conformity as factors of social influence. Generally, in negative environments where obedience and conformity are demanded, people yield most of the time in order to protect themselves and yet they know that injustice is being done to others. Not all social psychological experiments share unethical components with Zimbardo’s and Milgram’s controversial studies. Not all focus on the human tendency to do bad things. However, in contemporary Psychology, these two stand out as courageous attempts to explain human frailty which other studies have been unable to achieve. References Asch, S. E. (1955). Opinions and social pressure. Scientific America, 193, 31-35. Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 203-210. Manning, R., Levine M., & Collins, A. (2007) The Kitty Genovese murder and the social psychology of helping. American Psychologist, 62, 555-562. Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371-378. Zimbardo, P.G. (2007) Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment, The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 30, 2007, B6-B7. Read More