The Lucifer Effect III — Debriefing and Other Ways to Deal with Situational Forces

This third blog post on Philip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect looks at some ways to deal with situational forces.

Recognizing Our Limitations
One of the college students who played a guard in the Stanford Prison Experiment said later, "I was actually beginning to feel like a guard and had really thought I was incapable of this kind of behavior. ... [W]hile I was doing it I didn't feel any regret. I didn't feel any guilt. It was only afterwards, when I began to reflect on what I had done, that this behavior began to dawn on me and I realized that this was a part of me I had not noticed before."

It is a part of most of us. But if we refuse to recognize this, as most of us do, we can do nothing to control it. This is the first-level act individuals are responsible for when they take a position of authority:  recognizing that they are capable of acting unethically in that position. This can be very difficult. People need help recognizing this, and they usually don't get it.

The second thing government officials need to recognize is that they probably do not have the strength to resist situational forces, at least not as much as they would like to think. Our individual belief that we have this strength is "little more than a reassuring illusion of invulnerability. Paradoxically, maintaining that illusion only serves to make one more vulnerable to manipulation by failing to be sufficiently vigilant against attempts of undesired influence subtly practiced on them."

Debriefing
One of the most important parts of the Stanford Prison Experiment was debriefing the college students after it was all over. This allowed them to openly express their reactions and their emotions. It allowed Zimbardo to make it clear to them that they had acted under the power of the situation rather than out of their own personal pathology. And it was a way to explore the moral choices that had been available to the participants, and how they could have handled them differently.

How useful it would be if an ethics commission could debrief the participants in an ethics proceeding after it was dismissed, settled, or decided, no matter what the outcome. A public discussion that looked at the greater situation in which the conduct occurred and the choices that were made or not made would be incredibly useful to the participants as well as to other officials and to the public.

At the end of an ethics proceeding, there is usually an "I told you I was innocent" when a matter is dismissed, personal attacks when an official is found in violation, and often nothing when a matter is settled other than the settlement agreement itself. Sometimes there is an apology or a resignation. Almost never is what happened analzyed, and rarely is the entire story told. There is closure, but it often doesn't fell like closure. It's a legal closure, but not the sort of closure we seek, the kind we find in movies or in the stories we tell each other.

After a proceeding in which an official's principal mode is defensive, it can be refreshing to open up other possibilities, such as analysis, storytelling, and shame. Without a debriefing, there is a tendency to put the whole thing out of your mind and not to talk to anyone about it. In other words, a continuation of the defensive mode. In a debriefing, there can be recognition and sincere apology, a coming to terms with what occurred, an easing of tensions between the people involved.

There can also be valuable revelations. For example, one of the most abusive guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment said at the debriefing, "It surprised me that no one said anything to stop me. No one said, 'Jeez, you can't say those things to me.'" When no one says anything, people keep acting the way they're allowed to act. Nothing empowers someone, in the worst sense, as much as silence, especially silence due to fear. Zimbardo quotes someone who played the head butler in a British reality show as saying, "Suddenly you realize that you don't have to speak. All I had to do was lift my finger up and they would keep quiet."

Officials who are not accused of ethics violations, but had knowledge of what was going on, might also be included in the debriefing. One of the guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment who was considered a "good guard," because he was nice to the prisoners, said in the debriefing that when prisoners thanked him for being nice, "I knew inside I was a shit. ... I failed myself. I let cruelty happen and did nothing except feel guilty and be a nice guy. I honestly didn't think I could do anything. I didn't even try. I did what most people do." It would be great to offer people the opportunity to recognize this and share it with others. It would be a great learning experience.

According to Zimbardo, referencing the work of Lawrence Kohlberg (see my blog post on Kohlberg's theory), such discussions are "the primary, perhaps the only way to increase an individual's level of moral development." They are also the best way to increase a government organization's level of moral development.

I would love to see an ethics commission experiment with debriefings. I think it would be valuable for everyone.

Inaction
Most people in a poor ethics environment do not violate ethics provisions. But most of them do fail to act or report when their colleagues violate them. Like the "good" guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment, they say nothing when their colleagues abuse their positions. And sometimes they even act supportive, nodding at justifications, smiling when an official intimidates a subordinate or a member of the public, voting for weaker ethics provisions or against an increase in the ethics commission's budget. Sometimes they even join in, feeling safety in numbers. Sometimes the cause is nothing more than feeling ashamed of one's "weakness" in not acting like the others.

One thing that happens to nearly all of us is that we accept others' definition of the situation we are in, rather than considering other options. For years the public comments portion of the meetings of my town's major board meetings were not televised on the local community cable channel. The blame was placed on the television channel, and nearly all the other officials accepted this. Therefore, since few members of the public attended the meetings and newspaper coverage was uncritical, the board members, and other officials, could say anything to citizens at the meetings and no one would know.

Finally, a group of us filmed the public comments portions of a few meetings and put them up on You Tube. Soon thereafter, magically, the local government channel started filming and televising the public comments portion of the meetings. The situation had existed only because no one had publicly challenged it. Once an alternative to the situation existed, the situation (lack of transparency and the abuse of citizens) changed.

Acting at the System Level
In my first post on this book, I referred to the possibility of an ethics commission treating the creation of situational pressures as aggravating circumstances with respect to the misconduct of high-level officials. Zimbardo employs a three-part analysis, adding to the individual and the situation what he calls "the system," the forces that create the situation, that give legitimacy to the unethical norms in a poor ethics environment. "The system" is not just the current leaders, because systems, their norms and unwritten rules have a history. But each set of new leaders chooses whether to allow the unwritten rules to continue, and they also determine the level of pressure that is placed on subordinates to play by the rules, as opposed to the laws or the ethics, and how to create this pressure, that is, through intimidation, setting an example, making examples of those who don't play by the rules, etc.

It is at the system level that long-term changes can best be made. As long as the rules remain, are kept secret, and are accepted and enforced by those who rule, an ethics program cannot make a great difference. The greatest difference can be made if the unwritten rules are publicly discussed, if officials must defend them in public and make public decisions regarding them. The result of this process should be either to change the unwritten rules so that they become consistent with the written rules, or to change the written rules. To get this process going requires dealing not only with individuals, but also with the situational forces under which they act, and with the system under which those situational forces are created and maintained.

In his book, Zimbardo observed that if someone in the Milgram experiment had stood up to authority and not delivered increasing shocks to people (shockingly, no one did), this would have had no effect on the other 999 participants. Disobedience in such a situation is good, but it is not good enough. The disobedience has to be systemic to force change in the situation. That is, it must go up to the next level, not the next level of command (the situation), but rather to the system level. In the government ethics context, an official must report the misconduct or, at least, demand an open discussion of it. Otherwise, the disobedience is nothing but an isolated event.

See the other blog posts on The Lucifer Effect:
I–A Situational Approach to Local Government Ethics
II–Situational Forces
IV–Miscellaneous Observations

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

203-859-1959