Social Psychology: Obedience, Conformity, and Prejudice

Introduction: The Scope of Social Psychology

Social psychology is a broad field that encompasses the many varieties of group dynamics, perceptions, and interactions. Its origins date back to the late 19th century, but it became a major discipline during and after the Second World War, as scholars sought to explain phenomena such as aggression, obedience, stereotyping, mass propaganda, conformity, and the attribution of positive or negative characteristics to outgroups. Among the most famous social psychological studies are the obedience experiments of Stanley Milgram and the groupthink research of Irving Janis (Feenstra, Chapter 1).

Authority figures are critically important in influencing the behavior and attitudes of groups, as advertising pioneer Edward Bernays and Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels recognized early in the 20th century. Human beings naturally categorize others into groups, attribute values, attitudes, and stereotypes to them, and tend to favor members of their own group (Feenstra, Chapter 2). Social psychologists have long known that groups are capable of committing violent and destructive acts that individuals would never consider on their own (Feenstra, Chapter 15). The attribution of negative characteristics to a group, constantly repeated through mass media images and slogans, can have decidedly lethal effects (Feenstra, Chapter 4).

Social control theorists have also demonstrated that most people are conditioned from an early age to accept the rules, attitudes, and expectations of their society and community—with the exception of deviants and delinquents who lack strong bonds to society or realistic expectations of succeeding within it. Many common attitudes, prejudices, and stereotypes may not even be held consciously, yet they still affect behavior. Others are quite overt, such as law enforcement's use of racial profiling.

Discovering the Self: Social Control and Conformity

Social control theorists maintain that most people obey the laws, rules, and regulations of mainstream society because they have been trained and socialized to do so and have developed an internal moral sense. If they break the law, they fear that the consequences will harm their families, result in the loss of status, employment, and job opportunities, and damage their standing in the community. Their behavior is controlled by "attachment and commitment to conventional institutions," while those who lack this will not be deterred from deviance by threats of punishment because "they have little to lose" (Siegel 244).

In his classic work Causes of Delinquency (1969), Travis Hirschi expanded on these ideas, arguing that considerations of morality were important for some people but not for others. Like all social control theorists, he assumed that criminal behavior was amoral or immoral rather than culturally determined, and that criminals are effectively cut off from society and community. People with strong social and community ties were less likely to engage in crime, which Hirschi characterized as amoral and purely self-interested. Crime and delinquency occurred "when an individual's bond to society is weak or broken" (Hirschi 15–16).

Sociopaths and psychopaths have exceptionally weak links to family, friends, neighbors, and society. By contrast, those who build strong attachments are less likely to engage in behavior that would endanger their social position. Numerous studies of juvenile delinquents over the past four decades have confirmed Hirschi's insight that such youths feel detached from society and conventional morality and maintain weak attachments to family, friends, and school. Research also shows that youths with strong religious attachments are less likely to use drugs or become involved in criminal behavior, as are those with a commitment to "future success and achievement" (Siegel 247).

Obedience and Authority: The Milgram Experiment and Eichmann

Social psychology expanded greatly in the 1950s and 1960s, driven in large part by the events of the Second World War. Classic studies from this era examined obedience, groupthink, cognitive dissonance, aggression, and conformity. Perhaps the most disturbing was Stanley Milgram's obedience experiment, in which a "learner" was actually an actor while the "teacher" was the real subject. The teacher would ask the learner questions about memorized word pairs; if the learner answered incorrectly, the teacher was instructed to administer an electric shock ranging from 15 volts up to 450 volts, with two levels beyond that marked simply "XXX" on the machine.

The teacher did not know that the learner was only pretending to be injured—no actual shocks were delivered. The teacher's willingness to continue would reveal the extent to which ordinary people would follow authority even at the apparent cost of another person's well-being. As the experiment progressed and voltages increased, the learner would cry out in pain, complain of a heart condition, and beg for the experiment to stop. At the highest voltages, the learner fell silent and stopped responding. Most teachers expressed tremendous stress and indicated they did not want to continue inflicting pain. Yet as long as an authority figure in a white lab coat was present to issue instructions, 60–85% of participants continued until they had good reason to believe the learner was dead or severely injured.

Milgram's experiment was conducted in the immediate aftermath of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, who was tried and sentenced to death in Jerusalem for his role in deporting millions of Jews to Nazi death camps. As a mid-level bureaucrat who committed most of his crimes behind a desk, Eichmann struck political philosopher Hannah Arendt as a "banal" figure. He probably never killed anyone personally, and as Milgram noted, he was "sickened" by what he personally witnessed of the gas chambers and mass shootings (Milgram 11).

Eichmann was not overtly violent, bloodthirsty, or sadistic, and he did not present himself as a Nazi ideologue or fanatic. His entire defense rested on the claim that "he did his duty, as he told the police and court over and over again; he not only obeyed orders, he also obeyed the law" (Arendt 135). He maintained that these duties were personally repugnant—that his own preference had been to deport Jews to Madagascar or some other foreign destination. He claimed to have sought a transfer to other duties but to have been ordered to remain in his post, and he acknowledged that mass murder violated fundamental moral law. Eichmann even cited the ethics of Immanuel Kant as an example of the universal moral code that he and his fellow Nazis were no longer following, arguing that in this case the state itself and its leaders were the true criminals. Hitler, Himmler, and the other Nazi leaders bore full responsibility for "crimes legalized by the state," while ordinary men like him could only obey (Arendt 136). He therefore carried out his duties thoroughly and efficiently, and his conscience troubled him only when he made occasional exceptions to the "law" that all Jews were to be killed. From 1941 to 1945, "that Eichmann had at all times done his best to make the Final Solution final was…not in dispute" (Arendt 146).

Conclusion

Recent incidents like the Trayvon Martin shooting and the killing of five Black Americans at random in Oklahoma demonstrate that issues of stereotyping, prejudice, and the negative attribution of characteristics to groups are still very much present in contemporary society. Social psychology performs its most valuable service when it researches the origins and effects of these phenomena, which have produced such lethal and genocidal consequences throughout history. Human beings are probably born with the capacity to stereotype and categorize others into groups and to attribute negative qualities to outsiders, although society, culture, education, and mass media largely determine the actual content of those prejudices. That is why racial profiling remains a critically important area for future research, since it occurs every day in American society.

People are also born with a capacity for obedience and deference to leaders and authority figures, and social control theorists are correct that most individuals are socialized to conform to the laws, morality, and expectations of society, and to fear the consequences of failing to conform. When a society's goals are criminal, racist, or genocidal, however, this socialization also produces large numbers of potential Adolf Eichmanns—or "teachers" in Milgram's experiment—who are ready and willing to carry out virtually any order that authority figures issue. They will be all the more eager to obey when the targeted groups are already subject to intense stereotyping and prejudice, as Jews in Germany were and as Black Americans always have been.

Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin Books, 2006.

Cooper, S. "A Closer Look at Racial Profiling." In S.J. Muffler (ed.), Racial Profiling: Issues, Data and Analyses. Nova Science Publishers, 2006, pp. 25–30.

Ewen, Stuart. PR!: A Social History of Spin. Basic Books, 1996.

Feenstra, Jennifer. Introduction to Social Psychology. Bridgepoint Education, Inc., 2011.

Herf, Jeffrey. The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust. Harvard University Press, 2006.

Hirschi, T. Causes of Delinquency. Transaction Publishers, 2002.

Kops, D. Racial Profiling. Marshall Cavendish, 2007.

Milgram, Stanley. The Perils of Obedience. Available at:

Siegel, L. Criminology, 11th ed. Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012.