Complicity is dependent on what from the ordinary people?
Even with the magnitude of the Holocaust serving as a reminder of humanity’s complicity to sadistic values, genocide continues to be an enduring issue that challenges our core beliefs of right and wrong. The Bosnian genocide, the East Timor genocide, and the Darfur genocide—these are some of the mass killings committed after the Holocaust, and despite those lessons learned from the atrocities in Auschwitz, genocide is a nationwide concern that has motivated many scholars and researchers to understand the social context of such behaviors in hopes of fore-fronting changes.
According to Dr. Rousseau, genocide is dependent on the complicity of ordinary people, but to what extent (2021)? While complicity emphasizes the involvement with others in an activity considered as wrong, how subjective is this threshold when measuring someone’s contribution? Though the parameters can vary from active engagement to the bystander effect, both ends of the spectrum ascertains that free will has a strong influence on complicity and its connection to moral judgment in a genocide context (Adelman, 2003).
In the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE), scholar Philip Zimbardo exploited a controlled observational experiment to examine the focus of social influences and perception through the psychological effects of power and conformity between the prisoners and the prison guards (1971). Conveyed as the main highlight, upon provided a new fictitious identity, both prisoners and guards disengaged their moral values and immediately embraced their new characters, accepting the psychological abuse and power without hesitation (Alvarez, 2015). Reiterated by Elie Wiesel’s autobiographical account, Night, concepts of “right” and “wrong” disappear the moment the first transport arrived in Auschwitz (2006). Does the setting have any influences over the nature of cognitive awareness on moral values? According to Zimbardo’s findings, the study highlighted the observed behaviors from the undergraduate students as a situational occurrence—reinforcing that it is not always of a dispositional attribute or innate behavior (McLeod, 2012).
Additionally, in the Milgram Experiment, scholar Stanley Milgram extended Zimbardo’s situational finding by studying obedience to authority. In its entirety, if placed in the right situation, people will comply to authoritative directives even when it challenges their moral values (Syzdykova, 2014). While the study highlights a selective characteristic that qualifies responsibility as the determining factor for such involvement, the study really sheds light on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. In its face-value, obedience to authority takes on Zimbardo’s analysis of situational attribution, meanwhile, the path to decisions falls on the phenomenon of free will—the ability of oneself to cognitively decide. As a result, which theory best answers one’s complicity to behaviors like genocide—situational or dispositional?
While the Reserve Battalion 101, a paramilitary formation during the Holocaust responsible for the expulsion of Poles to the mass shootings of Jews, operated on a mechanistic view of moral judgment that describes both situational and dispositional patterns, how does our understanding of the SPE and the Milgram Experiment describe which attribute best explains the threshold of complicity to genocide? According to Browning, Zimbardo’s study was more relevant to the Reserve Battalion 101 given many of the men in the battalion were ordinary people, with no criminal records or history of murderous and heinous beliefs (1992). Similarly to the undergraduate students, the results shed light on their ability to selectively engage and disengage moral standards (Alvarez, 2015). The selectively engagement and disengagement is seen through their hesitation. Characterized by Browning, “while the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were willing to shoot Jews too weak or sick to move, they still shied for the most part from shooting infants, despite their orders” (1992). This behavior of feeling “shied” is the inner moral workings and conflicts of obedience to authority, willingness to participate, and deferment in responsibilities.
Although some may argue the environment offers a situational attribute that persuades one to behave in a certain manner, these decisions to engage or to disengage are part of a constant rationalization that occurs in a person’s free will. Doing the right thing versus becoming self-preserved in order to avoid the apathy of fear and embarrassment—these are some of the thought processes that are passively being sourced through a cost-benefit analysis to determine which action is more suitable for the person, in the specific environment. As a result, despite situational factors, dispositional best supports that genocide is dependent on the complicity of the individual, arguing that everyone passively engages in rationalizing for their own benefit.
References
Adelman, H. (2003). Review: Bystanders to genocide in Rwanda. The International History Review. Taylor & Francis, Ltd. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40109323
Alvarez, K. P. (2015). The Stanford prison experiment. IFC Films.
Browning, C. R. (1992). Ordinary men: Reserve police battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland. HarperCollins.
McLeod, S. (2012). Attribution theory. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/attribution-theory.html
Rousseau, D. (2021). Module 5: Trauma, Genocide, and the Holocaust. Boston University Metropolitan College: Blackboard.
Syzdykova, K. (2014). The Milgram experiment. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=760lwYmpXbc
Zimbardo, P. (1971). The Stanford prison experiment: A simulation study of the psychology of imprisonment conducted August 1971 at Stanford university. Stanford University. https://web.stanford.edu/dept/spec_coll/uarch/exhibits/Narration.pdf