October 28, 2005
Queens, NY - Why did the Holocaust occur? Why did guards abuse
prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq? Why do some people commit
heinous crimes such as torture or murder? What influences do
television and video games have on young people’s behavior?
These are some of the questions social psychologists are
attempting to answer by studying societal influences on behavior,
says Yale University Psychology Professor John A. Bargh, director
of Yale’s Graduate Program in Social Psychology, in a lecture
sponsored by St. John’s University Faculty Group for Phi Beta
Kappa. (St. John’s faculty is in the process of organizing a
chapter of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor
society.)
“There’s a bias against social psychology—the study of how
societal influences affect behavior—but there shouldn’t be,” he
says. “Understanding the societal influences on behavior doesn’t
mean excusing bad, abusive or criminal behavior. Rather, you’re
trying to prevent the behavior from recurring. People are still
responsible for their behavior, and will be dealt with for
wrong-doing by the criminal justice system.”
Psychologists don’t really know why some people commit heinous
crimes; it could be a combination of genetic predisposition and
external influences, Professor Bargh told the students, faculty and
staff who attended his presentation. Conducting social psychology
research can help us uncover the reasons for both positive and
negative behaviors, he says. Learning why and how some people are
influenced by power, for example, can help us understand what
motivates some people in positions of authority to abuse prisoners
or to authorize genocide.
Studies show that many people will inflict pain on others when
instructed to do so by an authority figure, Bargh says, citing the
5- to 420-volt shocks given to people who answered questions
incorrectly in a study run by psychologist Stanley Milgram at Yale
in the 1960s, and the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by
psychologist Philip Zimbardo in the late 1970s. “More than 60
percent of the people who were authorized to give the shocks did so
even if they thought their subjects were unconscious or near
death,” he says. “The staged-prison experiment at Stanford
University resulted in so much prisoner abuse by the students who
were playing the roles of guards that the experiment had to be
halted after five, rather than 14, days.”
People are influenced by other people’s behavior, says Professor
Bargh. “They take on the behavior and mannerisms of those they’re
involved with over time. That’s why so many married couples begin
to look like one another after many years together. They take on
similar expressions, and similar lines are etched in their faces
over time.”
What does social psychology say about evil behavior? Professor
Bargh asks. This is the discipline’s position:
- Evil that is conscious and intentional is bad
- Human behavior is multiply determined (there’s no single
cause)
- Many of these causes are non-conscious
- Some of these causes are contagious
“There are always external causes influencing evil behavior,” he
says. “These causes are not merely excuses. We ignore them at our
own peril.”
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gallery.