Can psychology explain Obedience in conflict

• Issuify

  • conflicts = battles or wars between two or more groups in society
  • in order for an army to fight successfully and win a conflict, obedience is essential - it is needed to ensure that orders will be followed and plans will be actioned so not all obedience in conflict is negative
  • however, some instructions in conflict are not legal or moral and in those moments, psychology can help us to understand why these orders are followed
  • examples = soldiers who ran and organised concentration camps in holocaust or soldiers in charlie company who massacred over 500 old men, women and children in the massacre at My Lai in vietnam war
  • it is essential we try to understand why people follow these orders to make sure it does not happen again in the future
• Agency theory - Ao1

  • we have two states of mind: autonomous state and agentic state.
  • people undergo an 'agentic shift' when in the presence of authority, and move into the agentic state.
  • This means that they surrender their free will - removing their responsibility of their actions from themselves and believing they are acting on the behalf of the authority figure.
  • however, after being in this state and following orders that go against their moral compass, individuals may suffer from moral strain
• Agency theory - Ao2

  • the soldiers at My Lai, once interviewed afterwards, attributed responsibility for their actions to their officers - showing that they were in an agentic state during the massacre and do not hold themslves at fault for what they did
  • there were clear signs of moral strain - soldiers suffered from anxiety, PTSD and took medications
• Agency theory Ao3

  • Milgram's study showed the 65% of participants were obedient and went through with their instructions whereas 35% of the participants did not obey instructions
  • this is shown to be true by the fact that only the helicopter pilot, and two foot soldiers refused to obey the orders
  • this means that the majority showed complete obedience, the same as Milgram's findings
• Social impact theory

  • AO1- explains how strength, number and immediacy have effect on obedience having a strong superior nearby = likely to be obedient, but if their power is split between a large group = less power over each individual - obedience decreases.
• Social impact theory

  • AO2- My Lai: soldiers = on ground w/ superiors - strengthened immediacy of order due to close proximity of authority.
  • a soldier described being unsure about following the order, but seeing everyone else obey encouraged him to obey. shows large numbers of soldiers obeying influences others to obey despite uncertainty. shows factors in SIT explains why the soldiers obeyed at My Lai.
• Social impact theory

  • AO3- Sedikes & Jackson Zoo experiment - Visitors told to not lean on railing using different figures to test effect of strength, immediacy and number on obedience. S - Uniformed: 58% obeyed, Non-uniformed: 35% obeyed I - Same room: 61% obeyed, Next-door: 7% obeyed. N - Small group asked to obey: 60% obeyed, Bigger group: 14% obey
• Realistic conflict theory

  • AO1: 

  1. Competition between groups  over the same resources 

  2. Negative stereotyping against the outgroup and resultant discrimination 

  3. Scarce resources when groups have equal status prejudice is more likely when the resource is finite or zero-sum

  4. Zero-sum is a situation where only one competing group can win because the resource is finite (military glory).

  5. Scarcity of the resource impacts the length of the conflict 
• Realistic conflict theory

  AO2: - In My Lai, the USA and Vietnam were already in a conflict, the vietnam war, which caused heightened tensions between the two groups. However, the aspect of winning the war and obtaining military victory is a status that only one group is able to achieve, making it a scarce symbolic resource, this creates a hostile ‘Zero-sum’ situation which may have influenced the US troops and lieutenants  to go ahead with the massacre as it could’ve given them an upper hand and higher chance of winning.  

  Negative stereotyping, they assumed anyone that looked Vietnamese was the Viet Cong, regardless of if they were unarmed, a child, a woman, or elderly.
• Realistic condlict theory

  AO3: Robert’s cave - Sherif
• Social identity theory

  • AO1 Ingroups and outgroups are all that is needed in order for people to form prejudices and negative thoughts about the outgroup. There are three stages to this process : Social identification, Social Classification and Social comparison. In  order to protect your self esteem you must see those in your out group as less than the ingroup at all times 
• Social identity theory

  • AO3 However Tajel argued that simply being a member of a group was not enough to form a prejudice and a competition was also needed for this to happen. This suggests this theory is simplistic and give more credibility to the realistic conflict theory 
• Social idwntity theory

  • AO2 In My Lai the soldiers clearly identified as American soldiers and the classification of this membership was clear as they look and spoke differently to the Vietnamese soldiers., They struggled to identify the friendly from the enemy within Vietnam so only stuck to those they could classify as American . They would then see the Vietnamese as less important and their lives worth less than the American soldiers which led to the massacre