A visionary thinker, writer and philosopher, William James was much more than just the founding father of American psychology. His interdisciplinary way of thinking allowed his theories to be built upon by a variety of different and often diverging schools of psychology from behavioural and educational psychology to radical embodied cognitive science today. This wide scope of influence is unsurprising as James was more than just an empiricist yet never a pure idealist: he believed that truth is made through the way we selectively interact with the world.
James can be best described as a philosopher-psychologist who throughout his life and work remained open to an array of ideas and perspectives. This personal and professional openness is what made him such a unique, divergent thinker who refused to subscribe to one form of absolute truth or essentialism. His eclectic upbringing enriched his mind with an array of cultural and intellectual experiences that would go on to influence his psychological theories. Gifted and skilled in various fields, from drawing to medical science, James found it difficult to find one ultimate calling. This process of testing his place in the world and dabbling in different pursuits is perhaps what led him to become such a prolific lecturer and the founder of the psychology department at Harvard University.
His masterwork The Principles of Psychology combined philosophy, psychology and physiology to form an incredibly rich account of how the human mind works. At the core of his work was the idea that we shape the world through our experience and interaction with it; in turn the world, as we perceive it, shapes us. His theory of mind focused on the plasticity of our physio-psychology and our ability to live and even change our selves to a significant degree owing to our functions of habit, attention and the ever-changing yet unifying ‘stream of consciousness’ that characterises our mental life. This interest in the ‘functions’ of our mental states and their purpose in our everyday life reveals James’ functionalism but is only one facet of his highly nuanced approach; he also valued the power introspection as a way of examining one’s own behaviour. Furthermore, James rejected scientific determinism and claimed that, by our own free will, we could selectively focus our attention to alter our thoughts and form good habits, thereby rewriting our physical and mental selves. Neuroscientific research today has confirmed many of his theories on brain plasticity and how even as adults we can work on making allies out of our nervous systems.
James’ most important contribution to psychology is perhaps his refusal to reduce the human experience to one clear-cut label or category. Psychology continues to draw upon a rich amalgam of various disciplines. The fusion of pluralism, pragmatism and radical empiricism is something that frustrates James’ critics who claim his theories lacks systematicity and consistency. Nevertheless, James’ work continues to inspire and stimulate those curious about the messy workings of our wonderfully malleable minds and how best to navigate a world that has the tendency to overwhelm.
Why do we obey? A short psychology of obedience
After the end of World War II many psychologists tried to make sense of the horrors of the Holocaust by attempting to understand what could lead a person to commit and take part in the atrocities of genocide (Adorno, 1950). This essay will examine the dark side of obedience and the reasons why people obey appalling orders that result in the harming or killing of fellow human beings. The psychology of obedience will be explored by drawing parallels between human behaviour in Milgram’s studies and real-world historical crimes of obedience from the Nazi era. A multiplicity of influences affecting obedience will be discussed, including the idea of followership, as a way of reframing and better understanding the significance of Milgram’s studies and the differences in the levels of obedience across the experiment’s variations.
Milgram’s studies on obedience in the 1960s showed that a group of forty people were all willing to administer electric shocks to another human being (at least once) simply because that is what was asked of them by an apparent authority figure in a white lab coat (Milgram, 1974). Concurrently with these studies, Hannah Arendt wrote her report on Eichmann where she coined her ‘banality of evil’ thesis that presented him as nothing more than a career civil servant mindlessly obeying bureaucratic orders (Arendt, 1963). In fact, the historical facts present us with an ideologically driven man who was well-aware of his crimes. The atrocities of the Holocaust have shown us that obedience can be the result of committed, conscious action: Eichmann obeyed because he wanted to obey (Glover, 1999). Paradoxically, by stripping perpetrators of all responsibility and agency by focusing too much on the power of the situation we risk re-echoing Eichmann’s very own excuse of ‘following orders’ and normalising evil behaviours. Despite their valuable insight, both Milgram’s idea of the agentic state (blind obedience to authority) and Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’ thesis fail to fully consider the multidimensional workings of obedience and the interactionism of situational and dispositional factors (Haslam, & Reicher, 2007).
The participants in Milgram’s studies could be described as acting in an ‘acritical’ way rather than blindly obeying authority. The failure to criticise what they were being asked to do is clearly not due to their lack of awareness. The fact that participants showed signs of stress and discomfort suggests they were conscious and aware of the consequences of their actions and actively chose to proceed despite their feelings of moral concern (Staub, 2014). Participants struggled with their social identification with the experimenter on one hand and their human duty to the learner on the other (Haslam & Reicher, 2007). A overtly situational account of obedience in Milgram’s studies fails to explain the resistance of a substantial number of participants who refused to administer the greatest shock (as well as those who refused to continue at a much earlier stage in the experiment). Among the officers of Battalion 101 there were also those who refused to participate in atrocities and had the courage to disobey (Browning, 1992). Other factors must be at play allowing people to resist the power of the situation. One such factor might be dispositional: those who resisted tended to have more empathic and less authoritarian personalities (Burger, 2009).
Adorno’s work on authoritarian personality types has provided social psychology with a strong dispositional explanation of obedience. His personality tests discovered that people with authoritarian personalities displayed submissiveness to authority and were more likely to obey (Adorno, 1950). Furthermore, they are characterised by qualities such as rigidity, conformity, aggression and of course, unquestioning obedience (Glover, 1999). Another crucial factor in shaping authoritarian personalities is the individual’s upbringing; authoritarian personalities tended to have strict, dominant father figures who punished them cruelly in childhood. Many Nazi leaders, including Hitler, had exactly this type of upbringing which could have contributed to the development of their authoritarian personalities (Glover, 1999). Adorno’s findings are supported by more recent studies around ‘authority orientation’ in both families and cultures and how it makes individuals more likely to be obedient and to even seek out new authorities to follow (Staub, 2014). Therefore, personalities with a tendency to obedience are also formed by external factors like upbringing and wider culture (Staub, 2014). Individuals with authoritarian tendencies have been described as ‘sleepers’ because their behaviours are activated by circumstances which bring out and complement their tendency to obedience and following orders (Staub, 2014).
Interestingly, Milgram’s studies show that obedience is possible in the absence of direct commands; in fact, there is only one direct command given as the ‘fourth prod’ by the experimenter (Haslam, Reicher, & Smith, 2012). A recent reconceptualization of Milgram’s studies by Haslam, Reicher and Smith has redefined obedience as followership: the idea that people actively please and work with and towards figures of authority. Various historians have commented on the influence of leadership on obedience in Nazi Germany and how rather than conforming ‘thoughtlessly’, people strongly identify with authority and their perceived duties and obligations towards their leaders (Kershaw, 1993). This is evident from the social referencing that takes place when subjects in Milgram’s studies seek guidance from the experimenter after learners cry out in pain (Milgram, 1974). Followership involves identification with an authority figure and a sense of having shared goals as part of a relationship. However, once this relationship breaks down, with the giving of a direct command for example, the subject feels that the experimenter is no longer working with them but against them (Haslam, Reicher, & Smith). Followership facilitates obedience as it gives people a sense of purpose and engagement with what they deem to be a worthy cause. Furthermore, followership decreases the sense of personal responsibility and culpability. Many Nazi officers from Battalion 101 who committed crimes against humanity didn’t want to be labelled as cowards by their superiors (Browning, 1992). Furthermore, the conditioning and training they received from their officers might have made them more likely to obey appalling commands. Even though Milgram’s subjects hadn’t been conditioned in the same way, they were afraid of disappointing their new ‘leader’ and appearing inconsistent or incompetent in a task they had agreed to take part it (Zimbardo, 1969)
An important parallel between the real world and Milgram’s studies is the role of ideology in reinforcing obedient behaviour. In Nazi Germany, many people believed in serving the ‘greater good’ of the nation above anything else and had internalised duty and obedience as moral values (Glover, 1999). From a psychological perspective, ideology can be defined as the gradual process of internalisation of beliefs over time. People obey what is asked of them because it is no longer perceived as immoral according to a new system of beliefs and its inverted norms and morality (Glover, 1999). As a representative of ‘Science’ the experimenter in Milgram’s studies is perceived as the authority figure of a highly valued and trusted ideology. The idea of doing one’s part for the goals of science could have strengthened obedience in subjects who saw this as a higher value than not harming another human being. Instead of seeing obedience as a ‘slippery slope’ that people sleepwalk into, we ought to see perpetrators of atrocities and those who obey them as ‘alpinists of evil’ who are conscious and zealous in their execution of cruelty (Lozowick, 2002). The ‘teachers’ in Milgram’s studies are gradually influenced through an incremental stepping up of demands resulting in more effective levels of compliance (Burger, 2009). Dehumanisation also plays its part in reinforcing obedience by creating psychological distance between a perpetrator and a victim: as the psychological and physical distance between learner and teacher increased so did levels of obedience (Milgram, 1974).
From Milgram’s variations we can observe the interdependent dynamic between conformity and obedience. Conformity tends to increase the likelihood of uncritical obedience while a break in conformity can result in a dramatic decrease in obedience, as demonstrated in one of Milgram’s variations where two confederates refused to obey (Milgram, 1974). In real-world situations, however, this type of change in conformity may not always be enough to prevent violent, especially in cases of mass conformity involving crowds where individuals are more likely to obey due to deindividuation. Nazi officers who were part of Battalion 101 may have been more prone to obedience due to the combination of deindividuation as well as the anonymity provided by their uniforms which may have made them feel ‘freer’ to perform violent and aggressive roles (Zimbardo, 1969). Nevertheless, there is evidence that passive bystanders can influence the actions of perpetrators by becoming active bystanders and providing scope for modes of resistance by disrupting the process of obedience (Staub, 2014)
An awareness of our potential to obey as humans can help us cultivate a critical consciousness towards authorities as well as the readiness to resist and disobey when people in authority and their policies become authoritarian (Glover, 1999). History has shown that forms of disobedience, such as civil disobedience, are justified when governments become tyrannical. A more nuanced understanding of obedience (and the vital role of disobedience) and its relationship to political and social spheres can help promote positive values such as moral courage, critical thinking, and personal responsibility (Staub, 2014). Reminding ourselves that free will and moral agency are never completely absent in the face of authority can empower us to stand up against authoritarianism and potentially safeguard humanity against future atrocities.
