Social Thoughts for the Week

War – Obedience to Authority March 18, 2006

War has always been something that intrigued me. The killings disgusted me; the cries saddened me; yet there was a far bigger question underlying it all. How could these people do it? It was something that one could go on pondering over for years and still not get an answer.

Certainly, war has evolved over the years – from fighting one-on-one in the battlefield literally to the mere pressing of a button to drop a missile or bomb on a target from up above – all of these certainly have implications on the actors. It’s much more difficult to inflict hurt, assuming one is normal and has a heart, when the intended victim is so much nearer as compared to when there is a distance between you and the victim. This is why it is so much easier (for the lack of a better word) to drop a bomb on a target. You won’t know immediately if you missed it and accidentally hit a village filled with innocent people, women and children. You won’t see immediately the horrifying consequences of your actions right in front of your eyes. The same I would say of those high-ranking officials hiding in camps and offices barking orders to just-enlisted teenage soldiers shooting in the frontline and suffering the physical and psychological consequences instead. The same I would say of governments who decide to invade/declare war/insert-euphemism-here one fine day and remain unaware of the real situation at ground zero. Power is a dangerous tool for people who do not know how to use it. Then again, who knows?

There is the principle of “obedience to authority” in war which attempts to answer the perennial question of why these ordinary people turn into heartless killers in times of war. They were not madmen; rather to quote Aronson et. al. (2005), “ordinary people exposed to extraordinary social influences” (p. 273). In the My Lai massacre, there was informational influence when the behaviour of the other soldiers made the killing seem like the right thing to do and there was normative influence when the soldiers wanted to avoid rejection by their peers and superior officers (Aronson et. al., 2005). Forget rejection, a stronger reason to obey authorities would be for personal safety reasons, ie. survive and preserve thy life. Nevertheless, the thought of how strong these pressures of conformity can be is certainly worrying; and you begin to wonder about the ramifications of obeying the wrong authority.

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Reference: Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D. and Akert, R. M. (2005). Social Psychology: Fifth Edition. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.  

For a little inspiring reading on a mother writing about My Lai Massacre to her kids, read this. Spread the peace, love and joy.