WEBVTT - Ep21 "How far would you follow authority?" 0:00:05.559 --> 0:00:09.000 Would you electrocute someone if you were told to by 0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:14.520 an authority figure? Would you torture a prisoner just because 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:17.400 you were put in the uniform of a prison guard? 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:21.600 How much of your behavior is a function of your situation? 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:23.880 And what does any of this have to do with 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:28.400 matching the length of a line, or soldiers posing with 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:33.919 dead bodies of their enemies, or propaganda or dehumanization or 0:00:34.000 --> 0:00:41.120 how we should educate our children. Welcome to Inner Cosmos 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:44.360 with me David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and an author 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:48.040 at Stanford and in these episodes, I examine the intersection 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:52.360 between our brains and our lives, and we sail deeply 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:56.160 into our three pound universe to understand why and how 0:00:56.240 --> 0:01:06.600 our lives look the way they do. In last week's episode, 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:12.199 we talked about dehumanization and how your brain can dial 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:15.040 up and down the degree to which you view another 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:18.800 person as human. And I gave you a particular example 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:22.840 of empathy, which is where you're simulating what it is 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:26.400 like to be someone else, and we saw how empathy 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:29.760 can be modulated based on whether those people are in 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:32.600 your in group or your outgroup. For today, I want 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:35.720 to drill down a little bit deeper into the heart 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:38.840 of a related issue, which is that when you look 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:43.160 at people who are behaving in these very violent acts 0:01:43.200 --> 0:01:46.400 throughout history, the assumption has been for a long time 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:50.800 that it's something about the disposition of those people. In 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:55.080 other words, there's something really wrong with those people. But 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:58.840 this started coming into questions some years ago because there 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:02.760 were so many hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of people 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:07.440 participating in these violent acts, and it's a strange theory 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:10.160 to say that all of them had something wrong with 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:14.840 their brains. Instead, what researchers started thinking about is maybe 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:19.880 there are situational forces that make people behave in these 0:02:20.200 --> 0:02:24.240 incredibly awful ways. So there's something to be understood here 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:28.839 about the social context that people find themselves in that 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:31.720 cause them to behave a certain way. And of course 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:35.680 this leads to the question of could you behave this 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:39.680 way if you found yourself in that situation? And this 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:42.520 makes us all very uncomfortable to even think about it, 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:45.320 because we know we're good people and we're not going 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:49.120 to behave in these terrible ways. But the reason it's 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:53.040 important to ask these questions is because social psychologists got 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:56.840 really interested in what was happening with what came to 0:02:56.880 --> 0:03:01.320 be known as the finality of evil. So after World 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:05.280 War two, for example, Adolf Eikman was on trial. He 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:09.079 was one of the main coordinators of the final solution 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:12.320 for the Jewish population. He personally had the blood of 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:17.079 hundreds of thousands, or maybe millions of people on his hands. 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:21.040 And the thing is, as the journalist Hannah Errand put 0:03:21.080 --> 0:03:23.919 it as she covered his trial, she called this the 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:29.960 banality of evil, because there was nothing particularly special about 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:33.000 Adolf Eikman. He was on the stand and he said, 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:36.120 I was just doing my job. He was part of 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:40.040 this machinery. He had this opportunity to impress his wife 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:42.840 and the people around him. There were all kinds of 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:47.240 situational forces at play here. Now this is no defense 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:50.480 of his behavior, but what it does encourage us to 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:55.240 do is try to understand what are these situational forces 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:59.880 that steer whole populations of people to do incredibly off 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:05.240 then in other situations you wouldn't even consider. And this 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:10.520 is why the whole research question about situational forces came 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:13.840 to the forefront. So right after World War two there 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:18.320 was a research psychologist named Solomon ash and he decided 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:23.000 I want to understand how it is that social forces 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:26.640 can change people's decision making. So he did a very 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:30.880 simple experiment. You come in to participate in the lab, 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:33.880 and you see there are seven other people that are 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:36.680 there to participate as well, just like you, And you're 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:40.520 all shown a line on the screen of a certain length, 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:44.800 and then you're shown three more lines marked AB and C, 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:49.279 and you're asked which one matches the original line in 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:52.640 terms of length. But it just so happens that you're 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:55.800 sitting in the eighth chair, and so the first person 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:59.640 registers his answer, and the next person calls out her answer, 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:01.520 and so go on, and it goes down the line, 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:06.080 and it turns out that all these people are shills. 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:09.280 That means there are plants from the experimenter. They're not 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:11.200 just like you, even though they appear to be just 0:05:11.279 --> 0:05:14.440 like you. And sometimes what they'll do is they'll all 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:19.120 say the wrong answer, but they'll say it confidently. They'll 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:23.040 maybe pick the shortest line over there, and they'll say, oh, yeah, 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:26.800 it's definitely line C, and you stare at it and 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:30.920 you think it's line B. But person number one, person 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:33.800 number two, number three, they all are picking line C 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:36.400 and so what do you do when it comes time 0:05:36.839 --> 0:05:39.680 for your turn? Are you going to say, you know what, 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:42.839 you guys are all wrong, it's line B. Or do 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:45.640 you think, gosh, maybe there's something wrong with me in 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:50.200 the way that I'm seeing this Now. Solomon Ash didn't 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:52.640 think this would work. He figured people would go ahead 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:55.279 and stick with what they thought was the right answer. 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:59.479 But the results were really surprising because what happened is 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:04.279 that almost almost everybody conformed to the group whatever the 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:09.520 group was saying. The experimental subject was reluctant to say otherwise, 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:13.240 even though this was a clear, easy perceptual task with 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:17.520 a right and wrong answer. So this was a surprising result. Now, 0:06:17.560 --> 0:06:20.600 as it turns out, Ash had a student in his lab, 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:25.520 a young man named Stanley Milgram, who watched this, and Milgram, 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:29.320 being Jewish just like Ash, and having just seen what 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:33.040 happened in World War two, was very interested in these issues. 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:36.560 And Milgram noticed something, which is there was no social 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:41.120 consequence to this line experiment. It wasn't a moral decision 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:44.440 of any sort. It was just a very simple perceptual decision. 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:48.880 So Milgram decided to launch an experiment that drilled a 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:51.560 lot deeper and it's one of the most famous experiments 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:54.720 in psychology, but not everyone knows the details. So let's 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:59.120 just walk through this. First, you see an ad that's 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:02.560 advertising for pe people to participate in a study about memory. 0:07:02.880 --> 0:07:05.280 It says, we will pay five hundred men to help 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:09.120 us complete a scientific study of memory and learning. The 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:11.400 flyer says that you will get paid for one hour 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:14.480 of your time and there's no further obligation. So you 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:17.800 show up. It's this laboratory at Yale University, and you're 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:20.680 told that in this experiment you're going to play the 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:24.640 role of the teacher. And there's another volunteer over on 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:27.280 the other side of the wall, and you're told this 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:30.480 is a study on the effect of punishment on how 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:33.400 well people can learn. And so it's explained to you 0:07:33.840 --> 0:07:37.920 that the learner will be asked to memorize arbitrary pairs 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:41.120 of words, and he's going to be continuously quizzed on it, 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:45.080 and he's just been strapped to a chair that can 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:48.280 give him a small electrical shock. So if he gets 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:51.640 an answer right, the experimenter moves on to the next problem. 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:55.040 But if the guy gets the answer wrong, your job 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:58.880 is to deliver a small electrical shock. Now you're sitting 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:01.360 in front of this device which he has thirty switches 0:08:01.520 --> 0:08:03.960 in a row on it, and these switches are marked 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:07.320 at the left side as slight shock, all the way 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:11.760 up to the right side where it says danger extreme shock. 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:16.320 And so you hear the experiment begin. The job of 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:18.960 the learner is to learn these associations between the words, 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:21.040 and he gets the first answer right, and then he 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:24.080 gets the second answer right and so on. But finally 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:27.400 he can't remember some pairing and he gets the answer wrong. 0:08:28.000 --> 0:08:30.520 So now the experimenter and the white coat says to you, 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:33.040 I want you to press the button for the lowest 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:35.679 level of shock, level one. So that's all you need 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:38.200 to do. You press the button that reads slight shock. 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:40.480 And even though it seems like the kind of thing 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:43.880 you might not normally do, you're being instructed by a 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:47.800 professional researcher, and so you hit the button. You can't 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:50.199 see the learner and you don't hear anything, so the 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:53.280 whole thing is pretty straightforward. Okay, So he's going along 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:57.920 and he gets another wrong answer, and you're told to 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:00.680 give him a tiny shock again, and this goes on, 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:03.679 but the guy isn't performing that well at memorizing the 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:06.480 pairs of words, and so the experimenter tells you at 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:10.080 some point, okay, each time he gets another wrong answer, 0:09:10.880 --> 0:09:13.880 I want you to increase the level of the shock. 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:17.520 So the learner gets it wrong and you're told to 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:20.160 hit the second button, and this goes on, and every 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:23.040 time he gets the wrong answer, you have to move 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:25.679 up in the level of shock. So you work your 0:09:25.720 --> 0:09:29.160 way up along the buttons, and it changes from mild 0:09:29.200 --> 0:09:33.320 shock up to extreme intensity shock and over on the 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:37.000 right side the buttons read danger severe shock, and in 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:39.760 fact the last few buttons are past that danger sign 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:44.000 and they're unlabeled. So you're getting a little worried about this, 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:47.320 And as the learner is going along, you're hoping that 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:49.800 he'll get the right answers so you won't have to 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:52.360 keep going up very high. But the guy gets a 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:56.160 wrong answer, and then another, and eventually another, and the 0:09:56.280 --> 0:10:00.440 experimenter very calmly tells you to give him these higher 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:04.480 and higher shocks. And what's happening by midway up this 0:10:04.600 --> 0:10:07.280 scale is that when you give a shock, you hear 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:09.960 the learner in the other room say ow. And as 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:12.440 you're going up higher than that, he says, ow, that 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:15.000 really hurt. And as you go up higher, he says, 0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:17.240 let me out of here. I don't want to be 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:22.000 part of this experiment. So you look pleadingly to the experimenter, 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:26.040 and the experimenter in his white coat, says, keep going. 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:29.840 So maybe you keep going and the guy says, OW, 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:32.040 I want out of here, let me out, And the 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:36.599 experimenter says to you, keep going, and you say I 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:39.560 don't want to keep going. He's obviously in pain, and 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:43.880 the experimenter says, don't worry. I take full responsibility. You 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:46.440 are not responsible for any of this. You are just 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:51.679 participating in an experiment. So the question is how high 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:55.440 do you keep going? Because at some point, when you 0:10:55.480 --> 0:11:03.640 reach a pretty high level, the learner stops responding. You 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:06.960 press the shock button, but you don't hear any cries anymore. 0:11:07.440 --> 0:11:11.840 Is he unconscious? Is he dead? There's nothing but silence now, 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:16.160 And the question is will you keep going even beyond 0:11:16.320 --> 0:11:21.400 that level? Will anybody go all the way to the top? Now, 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:25.320 As it turns out, the learner was a shill. He 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:28.800 is not a real volunteer. He was working with the experimenter. 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:52.360 You were the experimental subject. So Stanley Milgram talked to 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:55.880 a group of psychiatrists, and he said, what's your prediction. 0:11:56.160 --> 0:11:59.520 How high will people go? How many people do you 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:01.360 think will go all the way to the top and 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:05.640 will give somebody the strongest electrical shock, even though the 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:09.360 learner seems to be unconscious at this point or maybe dead. 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:14.120 So the psychiatrists concluded that their prediction was one percent 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:17.720 of people will do this because psychiatrists are experts in 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:22.280 human nature, and they're thinking about this in a dispositional way, 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:26.280 in other words, who has that disposition? Who's the kind 0:12:26.320 --> 0:12:30.160 of person that would allow them to do that? And 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:32.560 they figured, well, the only person who would do that 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:36.280 is somebody who is psychopathic, and psychopaths make up about 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:40.679 one percent of the population. But as it turned out, 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:45.640 sixty five percent of Milgrim's volunteers went all the way 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:49.880 to the top. They delivered four hundred and fifty volt 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:54.400 shocks to the learner. Why It's simply because they were 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:58.800 asked to. So Milgram wrote a famous book after this, 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:03.880 called Obedient to Authority, because he couldn't believe what he 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:07.280 had just found. He couldn't believe that people would listen 0:13:07.320 --> 0:13:09.840 to him all the way up to the very top 0:13:10.160 --> 0:13:13.439 where they were perhaps killing somebody, and somebody who was 0:13:13.480 --> 0:13:16.480 a total stranger to them, who had done nothing to them. 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:21.120 And in his book he describes nineteen different versions of 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:24.800 the experiment that he did. He tweaked every possible parameter. 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:28.200 He figured out the details of our behavior, like if you, 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:30.920 the teacher, actually have to be close to the learner 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:35.400 where you can see him, then compliance goes down. Or similarly, 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:38.320 if the experimenter, the guy in the white coat, is 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:42.959 farther away from you, then compliance also goes down. And 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:45.960 in the extreme case, when the experimenter is just talking 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:50.600 to you on a telephone, compliance only drops to twenty percent. Now, 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:55.920 twenty percent is still really awfully high for delivering these 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:59.360 strong electrical shocks. And by the way, he ran the 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:04.000 experiment also with female participants instead of male and even 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:07.680 though the women expressed more stress about it, they still 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:10.920 did exactly as much. Shocking sixty five percent of them 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:14.440 went up to the top most switch. Now, I want 0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:18.120 to make a quick note here about the thirty five 0:14:18.160 --> 0:14:21.200 percent those people who did not go all the way 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:24.320 up to four hundred and fifty volts. Thank goodness, there's 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:27.720 that thirty five percent those are the people that we 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:30.960 need a socially model. Those are the people who were 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:34.760 perhaps raised in households where they were always asked to 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:38.120 question why they were doing something. And even though we 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:41.760 talked in the last episode about all these bloody events 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:45.640 in the past century, there were always people who hid 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:49.960 Jewish families in the Holocaust, or protected Chinese women during 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:53.479 the invasion of Nan King, or people who sheltered Tutsi 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:57.880 in Rwanda. So thank goodness those people exist. And our 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:01.880 job really is to take that thin radio signal to 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:05.440 the world and amplify it, to work every day to 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:09.720 cultivate that kind of bravery in ourselves and our children. 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:12.760 And I'm not talking about acting like we know what's 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:15.520 right and wrong and going and hurting people. I'm talking 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:18.480 about being the kind of people who don't allow that 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:22.240 to happen, no matter who is doing the hurting. Okay, 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:25.480 So back to Milgram's experiments. He wanted to make sure 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:28.320 that this had nothing to do, in particular with the 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:32.000 academic prestige of Ale University, where he was from, So 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:35.760 he rented some random office space in downtown New Haven, 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:39.120 Connecticut and just said he was a random researcher and 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:43.680 people still comply just as much. So. Milgram's experiments were 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:48.040 a shocking illustration of how easy it is to get 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:52.160 people to listen to authority. Now, it turns out there 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:56.120 is another kind of social influence also besides authority, and 0:15:56.160 --> 0:16:00.840 that is the influence of your peers. Happens that Milgram 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:04.920 had a high school friend named Philip Zimbardo. Milgrim ended 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:07.760 up at Yale and Zimbardo ended up working at Stanford. 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:12.160 Zimbardo was interested in how prison systems run and why 0:16:12.200 --> 0:16:19.920 people behave the way they do in prisons, so he 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:22.680 recruited people for a two week study, and he made 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:26.480 sure to do full psychological tests on them to ensure 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:30.240 they were all in a normal range essentially random normal 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:34.040 research participants. Then he assigned them to the role of 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:38.240 a prisoner or the role of a guard. For the guards, 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:41.720 he gave them things like sunglasses to cover their eyes 0:16:41.920 --> 0:16:45.080 and billy clubs to carry, and for the prisoners, he 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:48.080 stripped them of all their clothing except for a simple gown, 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:53.480 and he made things as realistic as possible, so he 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:56.920 actually picked up the prisoners in police cars and brought 0:16:56.920 --> 0:17:01.920 them in and had them handcuffed and checked in and 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:05.080 he had three different shifts of guards who would switch 0:17:05.119 --> 0:17:08.919 off every eight hours, whereas the prisoners actually lived there 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:11.639 in this basement, which was set up to be just 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:14.160 like a jail cell. And you may have heard about 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:18.639 the outcome of this experiment. The guards started acting like 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:26.280 bullies to the prisoners, making them do arbitrary things just 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:29.280 for the sake of punishment. So, for example, they had 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:32.000 to lineup to count off in the morning, and that 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:34.080 was a perfect time for the guards to make up 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:37.719 arbitrary rules like okay, now you have to do it backwards. 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:41.280 Now you have to sing. Now you're not singing sweetly enough, 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:43.240 you have to do it again. And they would do 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:46.080 this kind of thing for hours just to persecute these guys. 0:17:46.400 --> 0:17:50.439 But it just kept magnifying. The guards started becoming so 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:54.800 creatively evil in coming up with punishments and rules, and 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:58.760 this all happened quite quickly. The guards started taking away 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:02.000 food from them, taking their beds away, locking them in 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:08.080 solitary confinement, and everybody involved became psychologically a bit traumatized, 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:11.600 and the experiment had to shut down early because essentially, 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:15.480 right away the prisoners and guards fell into these roles 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:19.840 and what happened was the community was shocked by what 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:22.800 had just transpired in this experiment, because these were just 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:26.240 normal young men who just by dint of being put 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:34.120 in these roles, ended up behaving so differently. And Zimbardo 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:36.920 wrote a great book on this called The Lucifer Effect, 0:18:37.320 --> 0:18:41.360 about how people can turn into such bad actors depending 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:44.760 on the situation in which they find themselves. And what 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:49.800 Zimbardo emphasized is the situational nature of our behavior. In 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:53.560 other words, it matters what role you're playing, and beyond 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:56.280 a particular situation, he said, you have to understand whole 0:18:56.640 --> 0:19:01.119 systems to understand how humans behave you have to understand 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:04.560 more than their disposition, in other words, the kind of 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:08.320 person that individual is, and you have to understand more 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:10.439 than the situation they're in right now. You have to 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:14.400 understand the whole system they're in. Because what happens in prisons, 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:17.760 for example, is not unique to the Stanford prison experiment. 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:21.040 It's typical of what happens in prisons where the system 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:23.760 is set up with guards and prisoners and they've each 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:28.280 got their roles, and the guards want total compliance and 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:31.360 the prisoners want to resist that, so the guards will 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:34.199 keep upping the arms race until they're certain that they 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:37.320 can get compliance from the prisoners. And in this light, 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:40.959 it's no real surprise what happened, for example, in Abu 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:46.360 grab where photographs emerged of torture and humiliation of the 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:49.400 insurgents that were being held there by the US forces. 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:53.560 It's exactly the character of interaction that happened in the 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:56.240 Stanford prison experiment. So you may have seen some years 0:19:56.240 --> 0:20:01.520 ago where photos surfaced of prisoners being stripped, naked and humiliated, 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.159 or another was of a man being terrorized by the 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:08.160 US guard dogs, or there's a photo of a man 0:20:08.240 --> 0:20:11.199 standing on a small box and he's draped in a 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:14.200 sheet with his head covered, and he has two electrode 0:20:14.200 --> 0:20:17.000 wires attached to his fingers, and he was told that 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:20.040 as soon as he loses his strength and falls off 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:23.560 the box, he's going to be electrocuted. Zimbardo's point is 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:25.919 it's not as easy as thinking about this as a 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:28.439 few bad apples in the system, which is how the 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:31.840 Army worked to portray this. The army said, we are 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:34.920 shocked at what happened in Abu Ghrab. There were obviously 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:38.840 some bad apples who behaved badly, Zimbardo's point is that 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:42.360 it's not really a few bad apples that's a systemic problem. 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:46.320 It's a system that sets up particular situations like the 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:49.520 Stanford prison experiment. He wasn't making a defense of the 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:53.320 soldiers who behaved badly like this, torturing their prisoners, but 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:57.080 it's important to try to figure out how to build 0:20:57.200 --> 0:21:01.119 or repair these systems so that it does happen. And 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:05.440 shortly after that, eighteen pictures emerged of American soldiers who 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:09.200 are posing with dead members of the Taliban and making 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:11.720 it look like the bodies were doing things like having 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:14.480 their hand on their shoulder. And so what I thought 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:18.959 was interesting is the headlines the La Times said photo 0:21:19.080 --> 0:21:24.520 of US soldiers posing with Afghan corpses prompts condemnation, and 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:28.800 in the subtitle, American officials denounce the actions of troops 0:21:28.880 --> 0:21:32.920 photographed with dead insurgents. But this condemnation is a little 0:21:32.920 --> 0:21:36.080 hard to understand because the army tells you, look, we 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:38.000 want you to go over there, we want you to 0:21:38.119 --> 0:21:41.080 kill these guys, to wreck their roads and burn their bridges, 0:21:41.560 --> 0:21:44.439 but don't take any pictures with them, because that's disrespectful. 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:50.120 This condemnation is complicated because the soldier's behavior was part 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:54.400 of the system, part of the situational variables that were 0:21:54.440 --> 0:21:56.919 set up. You get these young men and women to 0:21:56.960 --> 0:21:59.960 have vim and vigor and go out to kill the enemy, 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:04.640 give them propaganda, you dehumanize the enemy, and then you say, hey, 0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:08.800 we're outraged that you didn't treat this corpse respectfully. And 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:10.720 by the way, just as a side note, it turns 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:15.280 out that with modern communication channels, these photographs surfaced quickly 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:18.760 and everyone thought this was some awful new sign of 0:22:18.800 --> 0:22:22.400 the times. But this is as old as war itself. 0:22:22.480 --> 0:22:25.520 People have always posed with the dead bodies of their 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:28.679 enemies for as long as there have been cameras, and 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:31.960 before photography, they would do things like cut off people's 0:22:32.040 --> 0:22:34.440 ears or take out teeth or stuff like that, and 0:22:34.440 --> 0:22:37.560 make belts and necklaces out of them. So there's nothing 0:22:37.640 --> 0:22:41.080 new going on here. Again, this is not a defense 0:22:41.119 --> 0:22:44.119 of that behavior, but it is to say there's something 0:22:44.160 --> 0:22:48.840 about the systemic variables in wartime that change the way 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:53.040 people make decisions in these situations. And I want to 0:22:53.040 --> 0:22:54.880 be clear about one point, which is that when I'm 0:22:54.920 --> 0:22:58.760 talking about with these situational variables, this doesn't get rid 0:22:58.840 --> 0:23:02.640 of individual respons responsibility, but it gives us the tools 0:23:02.640 --> 0:23:08.000 to understand the variables that chronically cause situations like this. 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:11.840 People who behave badly in Abu grad, prison or any 0:23:11.840 --> 0:23:15.440 place else, they still have to face punishment for many reasons, 0:23:15.480 --> 0:23:19.080 because justice, it turns out, tries to accomplish many things 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:23.320 at the same time, such as slaking public bloodlust and 0:23:23.359 --> 0:23:26.399 setting up examples for the next people. So the people 0:23:26.400 --> 0:23:29.600 who commit bad acts still have to get punished. The 0:23:29.800 --> 0:23:34.520 importance of studying all the variables that steer human behavior 0:23:34.560 --> 0:23:36.679 is not to let people off the hook. It's to 0:23:36.760 --> 0:23:40.000 prevent the next generation from ending up in the same 0:23:40.119 --> 0:23:45.119 situation and performing as badly. Now. In this episode and 0:23:45.160 --> 0:23:50.160 the last one, we talked about dehumanization and its neural underpinnings, 0:23:50.359 --> 0:23:53.280 and in this episode we talked about the situational variables 0:23:53.600 --> 0:23:56.480 which play a role in it. So the question is 0:23:57.200 --> 0:24:00.960 what can we do about dehumanization As we come to 0:24:01.040 --> 0:24:04.639 understand the neural basis and the psychological basis and the 0:24:04.720 --> 0:24:08.919 contextual basis, how does that steer us? So I'm need 0:24:08.960 --> 0:24:13.760 to propose three lessons that emerge for us. The first 0:24:14.400 --> 0:24:20.359 is the unspeakably important role of education education, specifically about 0:24:20.440 --> 0:24:25.920 propaganda and dehumanization and the social context that influences us. 0:24:26.320 --> 0:24:29.760 It's critical for us to teach the Milgrim experiments and 0:24:29.800 --> 0:24:33.920 the Zimbardo experiments to our children and to ourselves, such 0:24:33.920 --> 0:24:37.359 as this becomes part of our background knowledge. Everyone knows 0:24:37.400 --> 0:24:40.280 and talks about these sorts of experiments, and they know 0:24:40.440 --> 0:24:43.720 what to do about it, because, after all, in his 0:24:43.920 --> 0:24:47.840 book Obedience to Authority, Milgrim said, look, I'm going to 0:24:47.920 --> 0:24:50.159 take what we've learned here and distill it down to 0:24:50.240 --> 0:24:54.320 all the rules that people use when they want other 0:24:54.359 --> 0:24:57.640 people to do their bidding. So he said, first of all, 0:24:57.800 --> 0:25:01.000 if a person wants you to be obedient to them, 0:25:01.200 --> 0:25:06.040 first they're going to pre arrange some form of contractual obligation. 0:25:06.600 --> 0:25:08.760 In this case, it was we're going to pay you 0:25:08.840 --> 0:25:13.240 four bucks, and then you're going to participate in this experiment. Next, 0:25:13.520 --> 0:25:17.280