The Lucifer Effect IV — Miscellaneous Observations

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Fri, 10/14/2011 - 03:04

Book Reviews

This fourth blog post on Philip Zimbardo's book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lucifer-Effect-Understanding-Good-People/dp/08129…; target="”_blank”">The

Lucifer Effect</a> is a miscellany of various ideas in the book
that have relevance to local government ethics.

An Ethics Commission With Lips 
Zimbardo raises an interesting thought experiment. What if there
were a reverse Milgram authority experiment? In <a href="http://www.experiment-resources.com/stanley-milgram-experiment.html" target="”_blank”">the

Milgram experiment,</a> individuals shocked people more and more
despite not wanting to, just because an authority figure told them
to and said he would take full responsibility. What if authority
were used to get people to do more and more good, even if they
didn't really want to? What if justifications and role models were
used to further compassionate and altruistic behavior? 
 
One of the unfortunate aspects of government ethics programs is
that, while ethics commissions are usually given the authority to
penalize those who violate the ethics code, they are not given the
authority to reward those who withstand the situational forces in
order to report ethical misconduct or not indulge in it themselves.
Perhaps ethics commissions should be given not only "teeth," but
also "lips" to give a metaphorical smooch to those with the courage
to stand up to intimidation, resist temptation, and recognize that
their loyalty is to the public. A metaphorical smooch would also be
in order for those who quickly admit to their misconduct and help
the ethics commission, and therefore the public, understand the
origins of such misconduct in the unwritten rules of the local
government's ethics environment.

Cognitive Disssonance 
Zimbardo raises an important issue regarding how we participate in
behavior that is difficult for us to do because it goes against our
beliefs about the kind of person we are. He refers to this conflict
as cognitive dissonance. Participating in such behavior causes a serious tension within us,
which can either change the way we act or change the way we view how
we act (rarely does it change our belief about the kind of person we
are, at least not for long). We need to make sense of our behavior, to rationalize it to
ourselves and, if need be, to others. Zimbardo wrote, "People will
go to remarkable lengths to bring discrepant beliefs and behavior
into some kind of functional coherence." Cognitive dissonance
increases, as do attempts to reduce it, when people do not notice or
fully appreciate the situational pressures on them, when they feel
they are in control of their behavior. 
 
It is important to recognize when we are in a state of cognitive
dissonance, and see that we are rationalizing rather than explaining
our behavior to ourselves and to others. Otherwise, we will continue
to act, or fail to act, in ways that would otherwise deeply upset
us. 
 
Resisting Influences on Our Behavior 
What should a local government official or employee's goal be with
respect to dealing with situational forces? It's good to be involved
with our environment and to trust those we work with and for. But we
also need to distance ourselves to some extent. One advantage
government officials have is that there is someone in our
organization other than superiors, colleagues, and subordinates.
There is the public. Distancing oneself from other officials and
employees can take the form of feeling responsible to the public,
trying to look at things from their point of view. Taking the
public's point of view will cause you to look for appearances of
impropriety, which are the core of government ethics. 
 
If you feel something would appear as improper to the public and say
this to a colleague or boss, and you are told that you can't worry
about appearances or "What do citizens know?", at least you have a good
reason not to trust them and to question the rules under which they
operate. If you try to discuss the matter openly and people refuse,
then it is clear that they are not comfortable with the way they are
acting. If they were, they would be willing to defend their conduct
in ways that are not dismissive or derogatory to the public. 
 
At this point, you have freed yourself to some extent from harmful situational
forces by recognizing them for what they are. The next question is whether to try to change things and, if
so, how. For some good tips on this from another book, see <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/giving-voice-values-i">my
blog posts on Giving Voice to Values</a>. 
 
In addition, Zimbardo has a <a href="http://lucifereffect.com/" target="”_blank”">Lucifer Effect
website</a>, which among other things has a <a href="http://lucifereffect.com/guide.htm" target="”_blank”">section on Resisting
Influence</a>. This includes <a href="http://lucifereffect.com/guide_hints.htm" target="”_blank”">20 hints</a> about
resisting unwanted influences. One that is especially relevant to
local government is:<ul>

Rules are abstractions for controlling behavior and eliciting
compliance and conformity – challenge them when necessary: ask, who
made the rule? What purpose does it serve? Who maintains it? Does it
make sense in this specific situation? What happens if you violate
it? Insist that the rule be made explicit, so it cannot be modified
and altered over time.</ul>

The rules that need to be challenged are not ethics rules (although
they too should be challenged if they don't seem to be serving their
stated purposes), but rather the unwritten rules of the game.
Because they are unwritten (although not always unspoken) and can
therefore be denied, they are harder to challenge. But the first
step in changing the unwritten rules is to put them on the table and
discuss them. When they are denied, you then have to challenge the
denial of the rules. It can be like dealing with an alcoholic. 
 
Also see Zimbardo's <a href="http://lucifereffect.com/guide_tenstep.htm" target="”_blank”">Ten-Step Program
to Build Resistance and Resilience</a>. 
 
Moral Disengagement 
Zimbardo lists four ways, what he calls "mental mechanisms," in
which we tend to disengage morally from our misconduct. 
 
1. Redefining our behavior as honorable through justification (e.g.,
everyone does it), the adoption of moral imperatives (e,g, my family
comes first), comparisons between one's behavior and the behavior of
others (e.g., I rarely do it; they do it all the time), and
euphemistic language (e.g., "constituent service"). 
 
2. Diffusing or displacing responsibility onto others (e.g., I did
what I was told). 
 
3. Ignoring, distorting, minimizing, or disbelieving the negative
consequences of our conduct (e.g., it won't cost the city a dime). 
 
4. Dehumanizing or even blaming the victims or, in the case of
government ethics, the public (e.g., they'd think we were crooks no
matter what we did). 
 
Zimbardo notes that only by making these mental mechanisms explicit
can we do something about this process. None of these ways of
thinking comes as a surprise, but how often are these mechanisms
openly discussed in a local government meeting or even during an
ethics proceeding? 
 
"You Can't Teach Ethics" – The Abu Ghraib Version 
It is a commonplace for people to say, "You can't teach ethics," that government ethics
education is worthless, because everyone learns ethics from their
families and religions. It was enlightening to learn that this same
argument was made about what happened at Abu Ghraib, by none other
than Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "[I]f someone doesn't
know that doing what is shown in those photos is wrong, cruel,
brutal, indecent, and against American values, I am at a loss as to
what kind of training could be provided to teach them." Of course,
the Reservists he was referring to were given no relevant training
by the Defense Department, not in ethics nor in guarding prisoners.
Nor were there written rules or operating procedures for them to
follow. All the Reservists learned was from those who were
interrogating the prisoners. That's where their norms came from. And
where else do you think they got their props? 
 
Most government officials get their ethics training from their
superiors and colleagues. What they learn are the norms, the
unwritten rules. The props are all around them. 
 
Zimbardo's Conflict 
One interesting aspect of the Stanford Prison Experiment was the
fact that Zimbardo, the researcher who created the experiment, also
played the role of the Prison Superintendent in the experiment. This
created a conflict, which had serious consequences:<ul>

It was surely my mistake to embrace the dual roles of researcher and
superintendent because their different, sometimes conflicting,
agendas created identity confusion in me. At the same time, those
dual roles also compounded my power, which in turn influenced the
many 'outsiders' [such as parents of the participants] who came into
our setting but did not challenge the System...</ul>

Being Your Own Guard 
I've focused exclusively on the guards in the Stanford Prison
Experiment, because they are effectively in the position of
government officials: the people with power. But there is
something to be learned from the way the prisoners acted. As
Zimbardo says, they "became their own guards." They accepted and
internalized the rules that were imposed on them, and even when they
were given the chance to leave prison, they walked right back in. 
 
This is true, to some extent, of the public. It has the true power
in our system of government, and yet it accepts the rules that
officials place on them and usually feels powerless. This can best
be seen by the failure to attend public meetings and even to vote.
But even among those who vote and attend meetings, it can be seen by
the acceptance of decisions without explanations and the acceptance
of explanations that are seriously inadequate. It can be seen in
such statements as, "They're all crooks." It can be seen in the
tendency not to stand up to irrational limitations, unless they are
seen as partisan. It even takes the form of open support for
unethical behavior, especially when one is member of a group that
has finally taken power and has, one feels, the right to take what
is "rightfully ours," even if what is taken are one's own taxes. 
 
See the other blog posts on The
Lucifer Effect: 
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/lucifer-effect-i-%E2%80%94-situationa…–A
Situational Approach to Local Government Ethics</a> 
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/lucifer-effect-ii-%E2%80%94-situation…–Situational
Forces</a> 
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/lucifer-effect-iii-%E2%80%94-debriefi…–Debriefing
and Other Ways to Deal with Situational Forces</a> 
 
Robert Wechsler 
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics 
 
203-859-1959

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