ChapteR 10 Behavior in Social and Cultural Context 347prisoners. Then they “helped” beat up prisoners.
Once they had obediently followed these orders
and became actively involved, the torturers found
their actions easier to carry out. Similar proce-
dures have been used around the world to train
military and police interrogators to torture politi-
cal opponents and criminal suspects, although tor-
ture is forbidden under international law (Conroy,
2000; Huggins, Haritos-Fatouros, & Zimbardo,
2003; Mayer, 2009).
From their standpoint, torturers justify their
actions because they see themselves as good guys
who are just doing their jobs, especially in war-
time. And perhaps they are, but such a justification
overlooks entrapment. This prisoner might be a
terrorist, but what if this other one is completely
innocent? Before long, the torturer has shifted
his reasoning from “If this person is guilty, he
deserves to be tortured” to “If I am torturing this
person, he must be guilty.” And so the torture
escalates (Tavris & Aronson, 2007).
This is a difficult concept for people who
divide the world into “good guys” versus “bad
guys” and cannot imagine that good guys might
do brutal things; if the good guys are doing it,
by definition it’s all right to do. Yet in everyday
life, as in the Milgram study, people often set out
on a path that is morally ambiguous, only to find
that they have traveled a long way toward violat-
ing their own principles. From Greece’s tortur-
ers to members of the American military, from
Milgram’s well-meaning volunteers to the rest
of us, people face the difficult task of drawing a
line beyond which they will not go. For many, the
demands of the role and the social pressures of the
situation defeat the inner voice of conscience.police during the authoritarian regime that ended
in 1974 (Haritos-Fatouros, 1988). A psychologist
interviewed the men, identifying the steps used in
training them to torture prisoners in the hope of
gaining information. First, the men were ordered
to stand guard outside the interrogation and tor-
ture cells. Then they stood guard inside the deten-
tion rooms, where they observed the torture of
In 2003, photos of American guards at Abu Ghraib
prison in Iraq, shown abusing and humiliating their
prisoners, shocked the world. Lynndie England was con-
victed of maltreating Iraqi detainees and served half of
a three-year sentence. “She was following orders,” said
England’s sister, who said Lynndie was “a kind-hearted,
dependable person.” Were the Abu Ghraib guards good
people who were “just following orders”? Or were they
bad people? Social psychologists explain how otherwise
good people can do bad things because of the roles they
are assigned, the norms of the situation, entrapment,
and self-justification.
Recite & Review
Recite: Step into your role of student and say aloud what you know about norms, roles, conver-
sational distance, the Milgram experiment, the Stanford prison study, and entrapment.
Review: Next, read this section again.Now take this Quick Quiz:
- About what proportion of the people in Milgram’s obedience study administered the highest
level of shock? (a) two-thirds, (b) one-half, (c) one-third, (d) one-tenth - Which of the following actions by the “learner” reduced the likelihood of being shocked by the
“teacher” in Milgram’s study? (a) protesting noisily, (b) screaming in pain, (c) complaining of
having a heart ailment, (d) nothing he did made a difference - A friend of yours, who is moving, asks you to bring over a few boxes. As long as you are there
anyway, he asks you to fill them with books. Before you know it, you have packed up his
kitchen, living room, and bedroom. What social-psychological process is at work here?
Answers:
Study and Review at MyPsychLabentrapment3. d2. a1.