Guilt transfer in mass following

Nivedhitha MathanAshish Gour

Crowd psychology● Differs from and interacts with that of the individuals within it.● Influenced by

○ Loss of responsibility of individual○ Universality of behaviour

Group following can both

○ Suppress individual response

○ incite individual response

Deindividuation vs. Convergence

Freud’s Theory:

Restraints of super-ego relaxed.

Jedwabne MassacreMurder of Jewish neighbours by the non- Jewish citizens of Jedwabne.

Ordinary people - able to participate in genocidal mass murder

A central argument is that role of Nazi officers in the events at Jedwabne have been underestimated, that the Jews had behaved badly when the Soviets were in power, leading their neighbors to turn on them, that the numbers of victims were not as great as have been claimed and that the proportion of townspeople who participated in the killing is smaller than has been estimate.

● Manifests in○ Groupthink○ Social Loafing○ Following superiors’ commands-obedience

Suppression of individual response

Deindividuation:

● Reduced ○ Personal identity/ attention○ Concern for social evaluation

● Weakens personal controls (guilt, shame)

Eg. Bystander effect

● More the bystanders, less likeliness to help

● Diffusion of responsibility● Group cohesiveness● Ambiguity of situations

Bystander Effect

Incitation of individual responseGroup polarization

● when placed in group situations, people will make decisions and form opinions to more of an extreme than when they are in individual situations

● Terrorism, college violence● Studied on judges, who gave harsher punishment for the same crime

when they were in groups rather than while giving decisions alone

Social ConformityAdjusting behaviour to match that of/ norms of the group

Asch Conformity Experiment

Eg. Groupthink-

● Uncritical conformity to perceived majority view ● Eg. Bay of Pigs Invasion-JFK (Many generals knew plan would backfire)● Eg. American media on Sadam Hussain- only voiced Bush’s justification.

Americans eager to launch attack

Attribution Errors

● Experienced when there exists discrepancy between attitude and behaviour.● Strive to eliminate dissonance.

Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

● Tendency to overestimate influence of situational factors for self and vice- versa for others.

● Majority- rationalize negative actions/ attitudes

Community reinforcementObserved in terrorists

● Group mentality of a terrorist organization solidifies the mission of the group through communal reinforcement.

● Members are more likely to stay dedicated and follow through with the event of terror if they receive support from fellow terrorist members.

● An individual might abandon the mission in terror, but with the reinforcement of his peers, he is more likely to stay involved.

Group polarization: large scale conflicts● Group polarization has been reported to occur during war time.● During a conflict, individuals with the same views spend all of their time together, their

viewpoints become stronger and more extreme.● Group polarization can also help in explaining violent behaviour.

❖ E.g Holocaust➔ Hitler united a group of like-minded individuals, Nazis, who shared the common belief that

Jews should be exterminated. ➔ Once these individuals united into a group, they viewed anyone who didn’t hold Nazi beliefs as

outsiders, thus demonstrating polarization.➔ Their sense of unity increased and their Nazi pride intensified➔ causing them to engage in the violent behaviour.

Superior orders and guilt shift: Nuremberg trials★ The Nuremberg trials(1946) were a series of military tribunals, held by the Allied forces after

World War II, which were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in The Holocaust and other war crimes.

★ One of the most noted uses of this plea, or defense Superior orders, is a plea in a court of law that a person, whether a member of the armed forces or a civilian, not be held guilty for actions which were ordered by a superior officer.

★ The defense of superior orders was no longer considered enough to escape punishment; but merely enough to lessen punishment.

★ A dozen of senior military officers were hanged and others given life imprisonment.

Obedience● Adhering to instructions from higher authority● Transfers burden of accountability to superiors● Stanley Milgram Experiment

"Personally I have no hatred against a Jew, I have never personally had a bad experience with a Jew; [but] when I switched from being a military to a police officer, I had to carry out all the orders I was given. I am one of those men who carry out orders without reservation, according to my oath of loyalty."

Adolph Eichmann

Milgram experiment(1963): superior orders● Authority of the instructor● Anonymity of the participant(teacher) and their accountability shed off● Fake shock administered to the learner (real wrt the participant)★ Shocking results from the ‘shock’ expt.

In an opinion poll before the expt, MIlgram polled 14 ‘senior year psychology majors’ to predict the behaviour of 100 hypothetical teachers. Poll predicted an avg of 1.2 teachers(out of 100) giving maximum shock of 450 V

But in reality, 65 % of the teachers administered final massive shock of 450 V

Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and

they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to

resist authority

Stanford Prison Experiment(1971)● Anonymity● Diffusion of responsibility

End of experiment-

● Fake prisoners- breaking down, rebelled, resigned● Guards exhibited genuine sadistic tendencies● Some fake guards- angry when expt called off

Anger

● Form of guilt transfer● Thanatos -destructive form of energy

Conclusions● Dehumanization & loss of personal identity of prisoners● Prisoners accepted their roles as less important human beings● The result of the expt favour situational attribution of behaviour rather

than dispositional (internal) attribution

★ Situations,rather than individual personalities caused the participants’ behaviour

Zimbardo aborted the experiment early when Christina Maslach, a graduate student in psychology whom he was dating (and later married),objected to the conditions of the prison after she was introduced to the experiment to conduct interviews. Zimbardo noted that, of more than 50 people who had observed the experiment, Maslach was the only one who questioned its morality. After only six days of a planned two weeks' duration, the Stanford prison experiment was discontinued

Abu Gharib prison tortureZimbardo was paying close attention to the prisoner torture and abuse news at Abu Gharib and was

struck by the similarity with his own experiment.

He was dismayed by official military and government representatives' shifting the blame for the

torture and abuses in the Abu Ghraib American military prison on to each other rather than

acknowledging the possibly systemic problems of a formally established military incarceration

system.

Eventually, Zimbardo became involved with the defense team of lawyers representing one of the Abu Ghraib prison guards and helped him lessen his sentence by using the superior order defense.

Mass prejudice in the modern world: IslamophobiaAn exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from social, political, and civic life.

Nearly six in 10 Americans think the religion is prone to violent extremism, nearly half regard it unfavorably, and a remarkable one in four admits to prejudicial feelings against Muslims and Arabs alike.

Increase in hate crime rates against Muslims and Arabs after Sep 11.

There are growing instances of Islamophobia in Hindi cinema, or Bollywood, in films such as Aamir (2008), New York (2009) and My Name is Khan (2010)

Asch : “Opinions and Social Pressure”:1955:This is a chilling text that should be carefully read and remembered whenever we think we are swayed by the mass, against our deepest feelings and convictions.

Life in society requires consensus as an indispensable condition. But consensus, to be productive, requires that each individual contribute independently out of his experience and insight. When consensus comes under the dominance of conformity, the social process is polluted and the individual at the same time surrenders the powers on which his functioning as a feeling and thinking being depends. That we have found the tendency to conformity in our society so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct.

Thank you