Milgram's obedience experiments and attribution theory

¶ … attribution error helps explain, not only why people are surprised by the results of Milgram's experiment, but also why people are surprised whenever other seemingly good people go bad things. They fundamental attribution error refers to a person's tendency to blame internal characteristics when evaluating someone else's behavior. Generally, this means that when someone else engages in negative behaviors, the observer is likely to believe that behavior is the result of internal characteristics and not look for the external characteristics that could cause that behavior. Furthermore, this allows people to suggest that people who do bad things are bad people, which makes it easy to conclude that one would never engage in that same behavior. When one can see an experiment like Milgram's, in which presumably average people engage in behavior that is really somewhat horrific, it becomes easier to understand how social pressure helps contribute to negative behaviors.

However, I am not certain that I agree with the notion that the fundamental attribution error is correct. It seems that the fundamental attribution error depends upon the notion that most human beings are, at their core, decent. As a result, these people may engage in behavior that is troubling, but they will evidence distress at being asked to do so. In Milgram's experiment, many of the people who engaged in the shock administration seemed to experience a high amount of distress at engaging in the behavior. They even made attempts to avoid having to engage in the behavior, suggesting that their interior feelings about the experiment were in direct conflict with their exterior behavior. However, there are other studies, such as the famous prison experiment, which revealed normal people seeming to enjoy engaging in sadistic behavior, despite there being no reason to believe, at the start of the experiment, that a large number of the guards would enjoy this behavior. This leads me to question the underlying premise of the fundamental attribution error, which means that I cannot consider it very important. Instead, I think it may be, at best, only a partial explanation of behavior.

In fact, rather than looking at experimental scenarios meant to mimic the horrific conditions that existed in Nazi Germany or other locations where genocide and horrific treatment of groups of people were commonplace, I think it is critical to look at actual scenarios and actual people. I think of people like the Grimke sisters, who were noted abolitionists, though they were privileged white women who had grown up in the plantation system, in a family that owned slaves. Despite being surrounded by this, not just on a socio-cultural level, but also at a family level, they put themselves at risk to advocate for others. One sees multiple examples of this during slavery in the United States. Moving to Nazi-controlled parts of Europe, there were numerous examples of people putting themselves at risk in order to help others, despite a prevailing atmosphere that was not only anti-Semitic, but encouraged people to turn in anyone that would challenge the status quo. What this appears to suggest to me is that internal characteristics are critical in some behaviors. In fact, in altruistic, heroic, and self-sacrificing behaviors, it seems like internal characteristics may be more important than external characteristics.