This article contains excerpts of chapter 33 of the book "You are not so smart why you have too many friends on facebook, why your memory is mostly fiction, and 46 other ways you're deluding yourself" by David McRaney.
On a sunday service, a pastor commanded members of his congregation to stand, wiggle their arms and repeat words he uttered. All members of the congregation did as told, after the ordeal was over, he told them, it was a joke as he wanted to get their full attention. Everyone bursted out in laughter, including me who also partook in the act. Retrospecting on the event, it struck me on what length humans would go to obey an authority figure and how society drives that. David McRaeny chapter on conformity came to my mind, and these are my thesis.
On April 4, 2004, a man calling himself Officer Scott called a McDonald’s in Mount
Washington, Kentucky. He told the assistant
manager, Donna Jean Summers, who
answered the phone, there had been a report
of theft and that Louise Ogborn was the suspect.
Ogborn, eighteen, worked at the McDonald’s in question, and the man on the other
line told Donna Jean Summers to take her
into the restaurant’s office, lock the door,
and strip her naked while another assistant
manager watched. He then asked her to describe the naked teenager to him. This went on for more than an hour, until Summers
told Officer Scott she had to return to the
counter and continue her duties. He asked
her if her fiancé could take over, and so she
called him to the store. He arrived shortly after, took the phone, and then started following instructions. Officer Scott told him to
tell Ogborn to dance, do jumping jacks, and
stand on furniture in the room. He did. She
did. Then, Officer Scott’s requests became
more sexual. He told Summer’s fiancé to
make Ogborn sit in his lap and kiss him so he
could smell her breath. When she resisted,
Officer Scott told him to spank her naked
bottom, which he did. More than three hours
into the ordeal, Officer Scott eventually convinced Summers’s fiancé to force Ogborn to
perform oral sex while he listened. He then asked for another man to take over, and when a maintenance worker was called in to
take the phone, he asked what was going on.
He was shocked and skeptical. Officer Scott
hung up.
The call was one of more than seventy
made over the course of four years by one
man pretending to be a police officer. He
called fast-food restaurants in thirty-two
states and convinced people to shame themselves and others, sometimes in private, sometimes in front of customers. With each
call he claimed to be working with the parent
corporation, and sometimes he said he
worked for the bosses of the individual franchises. He always claimed a crime had been
committed. Often, he said investigators and
other police officers were on their way. The employees dutifully did as he asked,
disrobing, posing, and embarrassing themselves for his amusement. Police eventually
captured David Stewart, a Florida prison security guard who had in his possession a calling card that was traced back to several fastfood restaurants, including one that had been hoaxed. Stewart went to court in 2006
but was acquitted. The jury said there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him. There were
no more hoax phone calls after the trial.
What could have made so many people follow the commands of a person they had never met and from who they had no proof of his
being a police officer?
Most people, especially those in Western
cultures, like to see themselves as individuals, as people who march to a different beat.
You are probably the same sort of person.
You value your individuality and see yourself
as a nonconformist with unique taste, but ask yourself: How far does this nonconformity go? When other people applaud, do you
clap your feet together and boo? To truly refuse to conform to the norms of your culture
and the laws of the land would be a daunting
exercise in futility. You may not agree with
the zeitgeist, but you know conformity is part
of the game of life. Chances are, you pick
your battles and let a lot of things slide. If
you travel to a foreign country, you look to
others as guides on how to behave. When
you visit someone else’s home, you do as that
person does. In a school classroom you sit
quietly and take notes. If you join a gym or
start a new job, the first thing you do is look
for clues as to how to behave. You shave your
legs or your face. You wear deodorant. You
conform.
As psychologist Noam Shpancer explains
on his blog, “We are often not even aware
when we are conforming. It is our home
base, our default mode.” Shpancer says you
conform because social acceptance is built
into your brain. To thrive, you know you
need allies. You get a better picture of the world when you can receive information
from multiple sources. You need friends because outcasts are cut off from valuable resources. So when you are around others, you
look for cues as to how to behave, and you
use the information offered by your peers to make better decisions. When everyone you
know tells you about an awesome app for
your phone or a book you should read, it
sways you. If all of your friends tell you to
avoid a certain part of town or a brand of
cheese, you take their advice. Conformity is a
survival mechanism.
The most famous conformity experiment
was performed by Stanley Milgram in 1963.
He had people sit in a room and take commands from a scientist in a lab coat. He told
them they would be teaching word pairs to
another subject in the next room, and each
time their partner got an answer wrong they
were to give them an electric shock. A control
panel on a complicated-looking contraption clearly indicated the power of the shock.
Switches along a single row were labeled
with increasing voltages and a description.
At the low end it read “slight shock.” In the
middle the switch was labeled “intense
shock.” At the end of the scale the switch read “XXX,” which implied death. The man
in the lab coat would prompt the subject
pressing the buttons to shock the partner in
the next room. With each shock, screams
emanated from next door. After the screams,
the scientist in the lab coat asked the subject
to increase the voltage. The screams would get louder, and eventually subjects could
hear the guy in the other room pleading for
his life and asking the psychologist to end
the experiment. Most subjects asked if they
could stop. They didn’t want to shock the
poor man in the next room, but the scientist would urge them to continue, telling them
not to worry. The scientist said things like
“You have no other choice; you must go on”
or “The experiment requires that you continue.” To everyone’s surprise, 65 percent of
people could be prompted to go all the way
to right below the “XXX.” In reality, there
were no shocks, and the other person was
just an actor pretending to be in pain. Milgram’s experiment has been repeated many
times with many variations. The percentage
of people who go all the way can be dropped
to zero just by removing the authority figure, or it can be raised into the 90 percentile
range by having someone else give the test
while the subject has only to deliver the
shocks. Again, with Milgram’s experiment
there was no reward or punishment involved—just simple conformity.
Milgram showed when you can see your
actions as part of just following orders, especially from an authority figure, there is a 65
percent chance you will go to the brink of murder. Add the risk of punishment, or your
own harm, and chances of conformity increase. Milgram’s work was a response to the Holocaust. He wondered if an entire nation
could have its moral compass smashed, or if
conformity and obedience to authority were
more likely the root of so much compliance to commit unspeakable evil. Milgram concluded his subjects, and probably millions of
others, saw themselves as instruments instead of people. When they became extensions of the person doing the terrible act,
their own will was put aside where it could
remain clean of sin. Conformity, therefore,
can be manufactured when the person looking for compliance convinces others they are
tools instead of human being.
The restaurant employees hoaxed by Officer Scott would later say this was what
happened to them. Officer Scott’s demands
started small and bumped up incrementally,
just like Milgram’s shocks. By the time it was
uncomfortable, the situation had grown in
power. They feared retribution if they didn’t
follow new orders, and once they had crossed
the line into territory their morality couldn’t
condone, they phased out of their own personality and into the role of an instrument of
the law.
You see how conformity has to do with authority figures and how society/norm pushes one to be tools. Ones desire to conform is strong
and unconscious. Sometimes, like at a family
dinner, the desire to keep everyone happy
and to adhere to social conventions is a good
thing. It keeps you close and connected to
the norms that make it easier to work together in the modern world. But also beware of
the other side—the dark places that conformity can lead to. Never be afraid to question
authority when your actions could harm
yourself or others. Even in simple situations,
like the next time you see a line of people
waiting to get into a classroom or a movie or
a restaurant, feel free to break norms—go
check the door and look inside.
Tags:
Psychology