Investigating Social Dynamics: Power, Conformity, and Obedience
CHAPTER TWELVE Investigating Social Dynamics: Power, Conformity, and Obedience I believe that in all men's lives at certain periods, and in many men's lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside.... Of all the pas sions the passion for the Inner Ring is most skilful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things. —C. S. Lewis, "The Inner Ring" (1944)1 Motives and needs that ordinarily serve us well can lead us astray when they are aroused, amplified, or manipulated by situational forces that we fail to recognize as potent. This is why evil is so pervasive. Its temptation is just a small turn away, a slight detour on the path of life, a blur in our sideview mirror, leading to disaster. In trying to understand the character transformations of the good young men in the Stanford Prison Experiment, I previously outlined a number of psy chological processes that were pivotal in perverting their thoughts, feelings, per ceptions, and actions. We saw how the basic need to belong, to associate with and be accepted by others, so central to community building and family bonding, was diverted in the SPE into conformity with newly emergent norms that enabled the guards to abuse the prisoners.2 We saw further that the basic motive for consis tency between our private attitudes and public behavior allowed for dissonant commitments to be resolved and rationalized in violence against one's fellows.3 I will argue that the most dramatic instances of directed behavior change and "mind control" are not the consequence of exotic forms of influence, such as hypnosis, psychotropic drugs, or "brainwashing," but rather the systematic ma nipulation of the most mundane aspects of human nature over time in confining settings,4 It is in this sense, I believe what the English scholar C.
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