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The Lucifer Effect IV — Miscellaneous Observations
Friday, October 14th, 2011
Robert Wechsler
This fourth blog post on Philip Zimbardo's book The
Lucifer Effect 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 the Milgram experiment, 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 my blog posts on Giving Voice to Values.
In addition, Zimbardo has a Lucifer Effect website, which among other things has a section on Resisting Influence. This includes 20 hints about resisting unwanted influences. One that is especially relevant to local government is:
Also see Zimbardo's Ten-Step Program to Build Resistance and Resilience.
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:
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:
I–A Situational Approach to Local Government Ethics
II–Situational Forces
III–Debriefing and Other Ways to Deal with Situational Forces
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
203-859-1959
An Ethics Commission With Lips
Zimbardo raises an interesting thought experiment. What if there were a reverse Milgram authority experiment? In the Milgram experiment, 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 my blog posts on Giving Voice to Values.
In addition, Zimbardo has a Lucifer Effect website, which among other things has a section on Resisting Influence. This includes 20 hints about resisting unwanted influences. One that is especially relevant to local government is:
-
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.
Also see Zimbardo's Ten-Step Program to Build Resistance and Resilience.
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:
-
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...
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:
I–A Situational Approach to Local Government Ethics
II–Situational Forces
III–Debriefing and Other Ways to Deal with Situational Forces
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
203-859-1959
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