The Milgram Experiment

The Milgram experiment was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. Milgram first described his research in 1963 in an article published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,<1> and later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.<2>

The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiments to answer this question: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"<3>

Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.<4>

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment



Eichmann in Jerusalem

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is a book written by political theorist Hannah Arendt, originally published in 1963. Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany during Hitler's rise to power, reported on Adolf Eichmann's trial for The New Yorker.

Arendt states that aside from a desire for improving his career, Eichmann showed no trace of antisemitism or psychological damage. Her subtitle famously referred to the "banality of evil," and that phrase is used quite abruptly as the final words of the final chapter. In part, at least, the phrase refers to Eichmann's deportment at the trial, displaying neither guilt nor hatred, claiming he bore no responsibility because he was simply "doing his job" ("He did his duty...; he not only obeyed orders, he also obeyed the law." p. 135).

Arendt takes Eichmann's court testimony and the historical evidence available, and makes several observations about Eichmann:

Eichmann stated himself in court that he had always tried to abide by Kant's categorical imperative (as discussed directly on pp. 135-137). She argues that Eichmann had essentially taken the wrong lesson from Kant: Eichmann had not recognized the "Golden Rule" and principle of reciprocity implicit in the categorical imperative, but had only understood the concept of one man's actions coinciding with general law. Eichmann attempted to follow the spirit of the laws he carried out, as if the legislator himself would approve. In Kant's formulation of the categorical imperative, the legislator is the moral self, and all men are legislators; in Eichmann's formulation, the legislator was Adolf Hitler. Eichmann claimed this changed when he was charged with carrying out the Final Solution, at which point Arendt claims "he had ceased to live according to Kantian principles, that he had known it, and that he had consoled himself with the thoughts that he no longer 'was master of his own deeds,' that he was unable 'to change anything' (p. 136).
Eichmann's inability to think for himself was exemplified by his consistent use of "stock phrases and self-invented clichés." This "officialese" (Amtssprache) demonstrated his unrealistic worldview and crippling lack of communication skills,
Eichmann was a "joiner" his entire life, in that he constantly joined organizations in order to define himself, and had difficulties thinking for himself without doing so. As a youth, he belonged to the YMCA, the Wandervogel, and the Jungfrontkämpfeverband. In 1933, he failed in his attempt to join the Schlaraffenland (a branch of Freemasonry), at which point a family friend (and future war criminal) Ernst Kaltenbrunner encouraged him to join the SS. At the end of World War II, Eichmann found himself depressed because "it then dawned on him that thenceforward he would have to live without being a member of something or other" (p. 32-3).
Despite his claims, Eichmann was in fact a highly unintelligent person. As Arendt detailed in the book's second chapter, he was unable to complete either high school or vocational training, and only found his first significant job (traveling salesman for the Vacuum Oil Company) through family connections. Arendt noted that, during both his SS career and Jerusalem trial, Eichmann tried to cover his lack of skills and education up, and even "blushed" when these facts came to light.
Arendt confirmed several points where Eichmann actually claimed he was responsible for certain atrocities, even though he lacked the power and/or expertise to take these actions. Moreover, Eichmann made these claims even though they hurt his defense, hence Arendt's remark that "Bragging was the vice that was Eichmann's undoing" (p. 46). Arendt also suggested that Eichmann may have preferred to be executed as a war criminal than live as a nobody.
Eichmann, in his peripheral role at the Wannsee Conference (so Arendt argued), witnessed the rank-and-file of the German civil service heartily endorse Reinhard Heydrich's program for the Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe. Upon seeing members of "respectable society" endorsing Hitler's most reprehensible crime, and enthusiastically participating in the planning of the solution, Eichmann felt that his moral responsibility was relaxed, as if he were "Pontius Pilate".
During his imprisonment before his trial, the Israeli government sent no less than six psychologists to examine Eichmann. Not only did these doctors find no trace of mental illness, but they also found no evidence of abnormal personality whatsoever. One doctor remarked that his overall attitude towards other people, especially his family and friends, was "highly desirable," while another remarked that the only unusual trait Eichmann displayed was being more "normal" in his habits and speech than the average person (p. 25-6).
Arendt suggested that this most strikingly discredits the idea that the Nazi criminals were manifestly psychopathic and different from common people. From this document, many concluded that situations such as the Holocaust can make even the most ordinary of people commit horrendous crimes with the proper incentives, but Arendt adamantly disagreed with this interpretation, as Eichmann was voluntarily following the Führerprinzip. Arendt insisted that moral choice remains even under totalitarianism, and that this choice has political consequences even when the chooser is politically powerless:

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem

The Shock Doctrine
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine