One of the most provocative ideas about business in this decade so far surfaced in a most unlikely place. The forum wasn’t the Harvard Business School or one of those $4,000-a-head conferences where Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists search for the next big thing. It was a convention of Canadian cops in the far-flung province of Newfoundland. The speaker, a 71-year-old professor emeritus from the University of British Columbia, remains virtually unknown in the business realm. But he’s renowned in his own field: criminal psychology. Robert Hare is the creator of the Psychopathy Checklist. The 20-item personality evaluation has exerted enormous influence in its quarter-century history. It’s the standard tool for making clinical diagnoses of psychopaths — the 1% of the general population that isn’t burdened by conscience. Psychopaths have a profound lack of empathy. They use other people callously and remorselessly for their own ends. They seduce victims with a hypnotic charm that masks their true nature as pathological liars, master con artists, and heartless manipulators. Easily bored, they crave constant stimulation, so they seek thrills from real-life “games” they can win — and take pleasure from their power over other people.

The Dilbert Principle refers to a 1990s satirical observation stating that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management (generally middle management), in order to limit the amount of damage they’re capable of doing. The term was coined by Scott Adams, an MBA graduate from U.C. Berkeley and creator of the Dilbert comic strip. Adams explained the principle in a 1995 Wall Street Journal article. Adams then expanded his study of the Dilbert Principle in a satirical 1996 book of the same name, which is required or recommended reading at some management and business programs. In the book, Adams writes that, in terms of effectiveness, use of the Dilbert Principle is akin to a band of gorillas choosing an alpha-squirrel to lead them. The book has sold more than a million copies and was on the New York Times bestseller list for 43 weeks.

Although academics may reject the principle’s veracity, noting that it is at odds with traditional human resources management techniques, it originated as a form of satire that addressed a much-discussed issue in the business world. The theory has since garnered some support from business and management.

The Dilbert Principle is a variation of the Peter Principle. The Peter Principle addresses the practice of hierarchical organizations (such as corporations and government agencies) to use promotions as a way to reward employees who demonstrate competence in their current position. It goes on to state that, due to this practice, a competent employee will eventually be promoted to, and remain at, a position at which he or she is incompetent. The Dilbert Principle, on the other hand, claims that incompetent employees are intentionally promoted to prevent them from doing harm (such as reducing product quality, offending customers, offending employees, etc.) The Dilbert Principle draws upon the idea that in certain situations, the upper echelons of an organization can have little relevance to the actual production and the majority of real, productive work in a company is done by people lower in the power ladder. It is possible for both Principles to be simultaneously active in a single organization.

The Peter Principle is a colloquial principle of hierarchiology, stated as “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” Formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1968 book The Peter Principle, the principle pertains to the level of competence of the human resources in a hierarchical organisation. The principle explains the upward, downward, and lateral movement of personnel within a hierarchically organised system of ranks.

The Peter Principle is a special case of a ubiquitous observation: anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails. This is “The Generalized Peter Principle.” It was observed by Dr. William R. Corcoran in his work on Corrective Action Programs at nuclear power plants. He observed it applied to hardware, e.g., vacuum cleaners as aspirators, and administrative devices such as the “Safety Evaluations” used for managing change. There is much temptation to use what has worked before, even when it may exceed its effective scope. Dr. Peter observed this about humans.

In an organisational structure, the Peter Principle’s practical application allows assessment of the potential of an employee for a promotion based on performance in the current job, i.e. members of a hierarchical organisation eventually are promoted to their highest level of competence, after which further promotion raises them to incompetence. That level is the employee’s “level of incompetence” where the employee has no chance of further promotion, thus reaching his or her career’s ceiling in an organisation.

The employee’s incompetence is not necessarily exposed as a result of the higher-ranking position being more difficult — simply, that job is different from the job in which the employee previously excelled, and thus requires different work skills, which the employee usually does not possess. For example, a factory worker’s excellence in his job can earn him promotion to manager, at which point the skills that earned him his promotion no longer apply to his job.

Wikipedia

Obedience to destructive authority was indeed a crucial social issue in 1962. The Holocaust had ended less than two decades earlier. Adolf Eichmann recently had been sentenced to death for expediting it, despite his plea than he had just been “following orders.” American military advisers were being ordered to Vietnam in increasing numbers to forestall Communist control of Southeast Asia. Whether destructive obedience could reasonably be described as the crucial issue of the time is a judgment call; surely other issues offered competition for that status. But there can be little argument that Stanley Milgram’s experiments were indeed “the first efforts to understand this phenomenon in an objective, scientific manner.”

Milgram was not seeking to develop a grand theory of obedience. His main concern was with the phenomenon itself. He advised his graduate students that as they began their own research, “First decide what questions you want to answer.” For him those first questions were typically substantive, not theoretical. He also told his students he sought to collect data that would still be of interest 100 years later, whatever theoretical interpretations might be made of the data. For his data on obedience, we are a third of the way through that 100 years. Those data remain of high interest indeed, offering continual challenges to our theories and to our confidence as psychologists that we really understand important aspects of human social behavior.

Milgram eventually proposed his own theoretical interpretations. But what most people still remember are the data themselves, the sheer numbers of research volunteers who obeyed every order to the very end. Before Milgram, creative writers had incorporated striking incidents of obedience into novels, poems, and screenplays. Historians had written factual accounts of remarkably obedient individuals and groups. Psychologists had developed F- and other scales to measure inclinations toward authoritarian tyranny and subservience. Milgram instead established a realistic laboratory setting where actual obedience and its circumstances might be closely studied.

The Obedience Paradigm

For those who have forgotten the details, and for the few who have never read them, here is the basic situation that Milgram devised. First, he advertised in the New Haven (Connecticut)  daily newspaper and through direct mail for volunteers for a study of memory and learning. Volunteers were promised $4.00 for an hour of their time, plus 50 cents carfare. (At the time, $4 was well above minimum wage for an hour of work; 50 cents would have paid for a round-trip bus ride to and from most areas of New Haven.) Most of those who volunteered were scheduled by telephone to come at a given time to a laboratory on the Yale University campus.

In the basic experiments, two volunteers arrived at the laboratory at about the same time. Both were invited into the lab by the experimenter. The experimenter explained that one volunteer would be assigned the role of teacher and the other would become the learner. The teacher would administer an electric shock to the learner whenever the learner made an error, and each additional shock would be 15 volts higher than the previous one. By drawing slips of paper from a hat, one volunteer became the teacher. His first task was to help strap the arms of the other volunteer to the arms of a chair, so the electrodes from the shock generator would not fall off accidentally. The teacher was given a sample 45 volt electric shock from the shock generator, a level strong enough to be distinctly unpleasant. Then the experimenter asked the teacher to begin teaching the learner a list of word pairs. The learner did fairly well at first, then began to make frequent errors. Soon the teacher found himself administering higher and higher shock levels, according to the experimenter’s instructions. (Male pronouns are used here because most volunteers were male; in only one experimental condition out of 24 were female subjects used.)

After a few shocks the learner began to object to the procedure. After more shocks and more objections, he loudly refused to participate further in the learning task, and stopped responding. If the teacher stopped giving him electric shocks at this point, the experimenter ordered the teacher to continue, and to administer stronger and stronger shocks for each failure to respond—all the way to the end of the graded series of levers, whose final labels were “Intense Shock,” “Extreme Intensity Shock,” “Danger: Severe Shock,” and “XXX,” along with voltage levels up to 450 volts. In the first experimental condition, the teacher was separated from the learner by a soundproofed wall; the learner could communicate his distress only by kicking on the wall. In subsequent conditions, teachers could hear the learner’s voice through a speaker system, or sat near the learner in the same room while the learning task proceeded, or sat next to the learner and had to force his hand down onto a shock grid if he refused to accept the shocks voluntarily.

Teachers were not told several important pieces of information until their participation in the experiment was finished. Number one, the experiment was a study of obedience to authority, not a study of memory and learning. Number two, the volunteer who assumed the role of learner was actually an experimental confederate. Number three, the only shock that anyone ever got was the 45 volt sample shock given to each teacher; the shock generator was not wired to give any shocks to the learner. Number four, the learner’s kicks against the wall, his screams, his refusals to continue, were all carefully scripted and rehearsed, as were the experimenter’s orders to the teacher. A number of variables could be (and were) added to the research design in different conditions (see Miller, Collins, & Brief, this issue), but these aspects were constant.

Observations from the Inside

The basic series of obedience experiments took place in the summer of 1961. Milgram was at that time a very junior assistant professor, 27 years old, with no professional publications yet in print. I had just finished my first year of graduate school when he hired me to be his research assistant for the summer. Stanley sent me a letter on June 27, a week before I was scheduled to return to New Haven from a brief summer vacation:

“Matters have been proceeding apace on the project. The apparatus is almost done and looks thoroughly professional; just a few small but important pieces remain to be built. It may turn out that you will build them, but that depends on factors at present unknown.” “The advertisement was placed in the New Haven Register and yielded a disappointingly low response. There is no immediate crisis, however, since we do have about 300 qualified applicants. But before long, in your role of Solicitor General, you will have to think of ways to deliver more people to the laboratory. This is a very important practical aspect of the research. I will admit it bears some resemblance to Mr. Eichmann’s position, but you at least should have no misconceptions of what we do with our daily quota. We give them a chance to resist the commands of malevolent authority and assert their alliance with morality. “. . . . The goal this summer is to run from 250-300 subjects in nine or ten experimental conditions. Only if this is accomplished can the summer be considered a success. Let me know if there is something I have overlooked.”

The summer was a success by any reasonable standards, if not fully by Milgram’s. He had not overlooked anything procedural; even at that early stage in his career, he was already the most well-organized researcher I have ever encountered. But he had hardly come close to anticipating the degree to which his subjects would yield to the commands of malevolent authority, or how readily they would abrogate their alliance with morality. Milgram knew he would get some obedience; in a pilot study the previous winter, he had found Yale undergraduates disturbingly willing to shock their victims. But he recognized that Yale undergraduates were a special sample in many ways; that the prototype shock generator was rather crude and perhaps not altogether convincing; and that the simulated victim’s displays of pain were fairly easy to ignore. For the main experiments, Milgram auditioned and rehearsed a victim whose cries of agony were truly piercing. He recruited a larger and diverse sample of nonstudent adults from the New Haven area, ranging from blue-collar workers to professionals and from 20 to 50 years in age. He constructed a professional-looking shock generator and purchased other high-quality equipment, including a 20-pen Esterline Angus Event Recorder that registered the duration and latency of each “shock” administration to the nearest hundredth of a second. He had decided that his main dependent variable would be the mean shock level at which subjects refused to go further in each experimental condition, but he wanted to be able to examine more subtle differences in their performance as well.

In early August the curtains went up on the first official obedience experiment. (More accurately, the curtains were drawn aside; Yale’s new Social Interaction Laboratory, on temporary loan from the Sociology Department, was enclosed by two-way mirrors and heavy soundproofing curtains.) Would subjects be convinced of the reality of the learning-and-memory experiment, the shock generator, the victim’s suffering? They were. Would subjects obey the experimenter? They did. How far would they go? On and on up the sequence of shock levels. Would any subjects go all the way to the end of the shock board’? Yes indeed.

Behind the two-way mirrors, Stanley Milgram and I (as well as occasional visitors) watched each early subject with fascination and with our own share of tension. Stanley had made broad predictions concerning the relative amounts of obedience in different conditions, but we paid little attention to the gradual confirmation of those predictions. Instead we tried to predict the behavior of each new subject, based on his initial demeanor and the little we knew about his background. We were gratified when any subject resisted authority. Sometimes it was quiet resistance, sometimes noisy, but it was exciting each time it happened. As more and more subjects obeyed every command, we felt at first dismayed, then cynically confirmed in our bleakest views of humanity. We were distressed when some volunteers wept, appalled when others laughed as they administered shock after shock. The experimenter gave each subject a standard debriefing at the end of the hour, to minimize any continuing stress and to show that the “victim” had not been injured by the “shocks.” When a subject appeared especially stressed, Milgram often moved out from behind the curtains to do an especially thorough job of reassurance and stress reduction. When a subject did something truly unexpected during the experiment—an especially resolute show of resistance, for instance, or a long laughing jag—Milgram would join the experimenter in giving the subject a detailed cross-examination about why he had displayed such behavior. For us as well as for the subjects, the situation quickly became more than an artificially structured experiment. Instead it presented slice after slice of real life, with moral decisions made and unmade every evening.

The Most Prominent Results

As matters turned out, Milgram did not need equipment sensitive enough to measure shock intervals in hundredths of a second. By the end of the second run of 40 subjects, if not before, his main dependent variable had become simply the percentage of subjects who obeyed the experimenter’s commands all the way to the end of the shock series, contrasted with the percentage who disobeyed by quitting at any point in the whole long sequence of shock levels. In the first condition, a substantial majority of subjects (26 out of 40, or 65%) obeyed completely. That was the condition with minimal feedback from the learner—a few vigorous kicks on the wall. But wouldn’t obedience drop substantially if the teacher could actually hear the learner screaming and demanding to be set free? It didn’t. Twenty-five out of 40 were fully obedient in this second condition. Even when Milgram tried to encourage disobedience by having the learner claim a preexisting heart condition (“It’s bothering me now!”), obedience remained at a high level: 26 of 40 subjects again (Milgram, 1974, pp. 56-57). Putting the victim in the same room and near the teacher reduced obedience somewhat, but 40% still obeyed fully. Indeed, even when teachers were ordered to press the hand of the screaming victim down onto a shock plate to complete the electrical circuit, a majority did so at least twice before quitting, and 30% obeyed in this fashion to the end of the shock board (Milgram, 1974, p. 35).

Milgram ran more than 700 subjects through various obedience conditions in less than a year. (The National Science Foundation, which financed the research, got its money’s worth from two grants totaling about $60,000.) Each subject was run through the procedure individually, then was subjected to both immediate and follow-up questionnaires of various kinds. Milgram looked at the effects not only of the victim’s physical proximity to the subject but of the experimenter’s proximity, the amount of group support either for obedience or for defiance, and the learning experiment’s apparent institutional backing. He made a variety of interesting findings—enough to fill a book, and more. But the data that carried the greatest impact, on other psychologists and on the general public, came from those first few experimental conditions: two-thirds of a sample of average Americans were willing to shock an innocent victim until the poor man was screaming for his life, and to go on shocking him well after he had lapsed into a perhaps unconscious silence, all at the command of a single experimenter with no apparent means of enforcing his orders.

Reactions to the Research

Once these data appeared in professional psychological journals (after initial resistance from editors), they were rather quickly disseminated through newspaper and magazine stories, editorials, sermons, and other popular media. With few exceptions, the nonprofessional citations of the experiments emphasized their social relevance: Milgram had revealed in ordinary Americans the potential for behavior comparable to that of the Nazis during the European Holocaust. (According to a TV Guide ad for a docudrama with William Shatner as a fictionalized Milgram, the research revealed “A world of evil so terrifying no one dares penetrate its secret. Until now!” [August 21, 1976, p. A-86.])

Psychologists responded in more diverse ways. Authors eager to enliven their introductory and social psychology textbooks soon made the obedience experiments a staple ingredient (see Miller, this issue). Other psychologists seemed to regard Milgram’s results as a challenge of one sort or another: conceptual, ethical, theoretical, political. The obedience studies were related, historically and procedurally, to earlier studies of social influence, but they did not fit readily into current theoretical models or research trends. Because of their rapidly achieved visibility inside and outside the field, they were soon treated as fair game for elucidation or attack by psychologists with a multitude of orientations.

Ethical Concerns

One type of response to the disturbing results of the obedience studies was to shift attention from the amounts of obedience Milgram obtained to the ethics of putting subjects through such a stressful experience. The first substantial published critique of Milgram’s studies focused on the presumed psychic damage wreaked on his subjects by their ordeal (Baumrind, 1964). Milgram was not altogether surprised by such criticism; similar concerns had been expressed by several Yale faculty members during or soon after the experiments, and ethical questions had been raised about the research when Milgram first applied for American Psychological Association membership. But he was disappointed that his critics did not recognize the care he had put into responding to his subjects’ high stress levels immediately after their participation, as well as into checking on any lingering effects over time (Milgram, 1964). Milgram was a pioneer in the debriefing procedures that are now a matter of course in psychological experiments on human subjects—debriefing in the sense not only of questioning the subject about his or her perception of the experiment, but of providing the subject with information and encouragement that will counteract any reactions to participation that might damage the subject’s self-esteem. As Milgram told me later,

“My membership application to APA was held up for one year while they investigated the ethicality of the obedience experiment. In the end, they gave me a clean bill of health and admitted me to membership. Whenever any group has seriously considered the merits and problems of the experiment, they have concluded that it was an ethical experiment. Nonetheless, isolated individuals still feel strongly enough to attack it.” (Personal communication, July 3, 1969)

One consequence of those individual attacks was a set of stringent federal regulations that made it virtually impossible ever again to conduct a close replication of the Milgram studies at any U.S. educational or research institution.

Many social scientists who have considered the ethics of the obedience studies in print have taken a neutral position or have come down on the side of Milgram. But outside the field, a similar perception of appropriate research and debriefing procedures is not widespread. When I participated in a conference on social science research ethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics 18 years after the obedience research was completed, several philosophers and professional ethicists devoted a large part of their energies to what struck me as rather crude Milgram bashing. The research scientists at the conference were not so inclined, but they had to work hard to communicate the virtues of a set of studies that had raised important issues about both the bad and the good in human nature (Beauchamp, Faden, Wallace, & Walters, 1982).

Questions of Belief

Among other early commentaries on the research, several psychologists argued that the results were not credible because the subjects did not believe they were actually harming the victim (e.g., Orne & Holland, 1968). Milgram’s own data, showing that during the experiment a very high percentage of subjects believed the victim was receiving extremely painful shocks (1974, pp. 171-174), were ignored or dismissed as attempts by the subjects to give Milgram the answers he wanted. Researchers’ descriptions of many subjects’ visible signs of high stress were also ignored, or were assumed to be evidence merely of the subjects’ enthusiastic play acting. Even a filmed record of several actual subjects (Milgram, 1965a), displaying either great stress or extraordinary improvisational acting ability, did not convince psychologists who took this dismissive position. Some critics may have assumed that the four subjects shown at length in the film, plus several others who appeared more briefly, were the most convincingly emotional subjects Milgram could find among his thousand participants. In fact, Milgram chose all of them from the 14 subjects who happened to be “selected in the normal manner for recruitment” during the two days he brought movie cameras to the laboratory (Milgram, 1965c, p. 5).

Theoretical Alternatives

Many social psychologists have accepted the ethical appropriateness of Milgram’s procedures and the believability of the experimental context. Even they, however, have often redirected attention away from the specific phenomenon of destructive obedience by subsuming it under a broader theoretical approach or alternative hypothetical constructs.

Milgram was slow to offer a comprehensive theoretical account of his own. His definitions of obedience to authority, from his first to his final writings on the subject, drew upon no theoretical assumptions. Rather, they were commonsense or dictionary definitions: “Every power system implies a structure of command and action in response to the command” (Milgram, 1961, p. 2); “If Y follows the command of X we shall say that he has obeyed X; if he fails to carry out the command of X, we shall say that he has disobeyed X” (Milgram, 1965b, p. 58); “[I]t is only the man dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond, through defiance or submission, to the commands of others” (Milgram, 1974, p. 1). In his grant proposals he referred to “internal restraints” or “internal resistances” that were pitted against the acceptance of authoritative commands, but he did not specify the nature of these internal processes (Milgram, 1961, p. 3; Milgram, 1962a, p. 1). He raised the possibility of predispositional factors and of “highly complex, and possibly, idiosyncratic motive structures” (1962a, p. 17), but in the research itself he directed his efforts mainly toward identifying situational factors that increased or decreased obedience. In his most extensive early discussion of his results (Milgram, 1965b, largely written in 1962), he cited such midlevel hypothetical constructs as “empathic cues,” “denial and narrowing of the cognitive field,” and a varying “sense of relatedness between his [the subject's] own actions and the consequences of those actions for the victim” (pp. 61-63; his italics).

Though it took Milgram less than a year to run all his subjects and not much longer than that to write several papers on the results, he worked on his book about obedience for over five years. He attributed the slowness of the book’s writing in part to his becoming engaged in other sorts of research. But much of his struggle with the book appears to have centered on the difficulty of developing a general theory of obedience. The principal theoretical concepts he advanced in the book, including the agentic state (Milgram, 1974, pp. 133-134) and the evolution of a potential for obedience in humans (pp. 123-125), impressed many readers rather less than the results themselves–a reaction that both frustrated and pleased the data-centric Milgram. Though he had collected demographic information on all participants and had supported my collection of personality data from subsamples of obedient and disobedient subjects (Elms & Milgram, 1965), he gave short shrift to such data in his book, concluding that “It is hard to relate performance to personality because we really do not know very much about how to measure personality” (p. 205).

Others have usefully discussed the interaction of personality and situational variables in the obedience situations (e.g., Blass, 1991). A majority of the alternative explanations, however, have stressed cognitive processes, emphasizing ways in which the subject processed information about the situation that might have justified his obedience or strengthened his resistance. Milgram viewed such alternative explanations with interest, but took steps to rule out certain of them experimentally. One of the most obvious of these alternatives was the idea that subjects might be so awed by Yale University and so certain of its virtue that they would do anything they were told within those august halls, regardless of any general proclivity toward destructive obedience. Even before this environment-based explanation of his subjects’ obedience was first offered in print, Milgram had largely vitiated it by moving the experiments from the awe-inspiring Interaction Laboratory to a rather less impressive basement facility and then to the intentionally unimpressive office of a fly-by-night company in industrial Bridgeport, Connecticut. He got essentially the same results in all three locations. A number of alternative or additional explanations of Milgram’s results remain as operable hypotheses, but none has decisively carried the day. Their very diversity ensures that the larger audience for the research will continue to be concerned primarily about the subjects’ disturbing behavior rather than about the internal processes that may have produced it.

The Question of Relevance

Finally among ways in which psychologists have responded to Milgram’s findings are arguments concerning the social relevance of the experiments. Many psychologists, at least in their textbooks, have embraced his findings as being highly relevant to important social phenomena, including destructive obedience not only in totalitarian states but among American soldiers, Bosnian combatants, and suicidal religious cults. But others (including some who also argued that the research was unethical or experientially unconvincing) have denied any real social relevance. Even if subjects believed they were really shocking the victim, these psychologists say, they knew the situation must not be as bad as it appeared, because somebody would have stopped them if it was. Or the subjects were in a situation where the experimenter accepted responsibility for the effects of their behavior, so their behavior is not really relevant to real-world situations where blame is less readily transferred to another individual. Or some other rationale is advanced, presumably peculiar to the Milgram obedience situation, that somehow does not translate into real-world social dynamics. Milgram rightly dismissed all such explanations that had been advanced up to the time of his final writings, and very likely would have dismissed all subsequent ones, for two simple reasons: Any effective authority figure in the real world always finds ways to justify imposing his or her will on underlings. The underlings who obey authoritative commands in the real world always find rationales for their obedience. In most prominent real-world cases of destructive obedience that have been compared (or discompared) to the Milgram studies, the authorities were able to call upon a social rationale for their commands that was at least as strong as or stronger than that available to any psychological experimenter. In addition, they were often able to promise their followers much greater rewards for obedience and punishments for disobedience.

Stanley Milgram’s research on obedience tapped into psychological processes that ranked as neither new nor extreme in the history of human behavior. A “crucial issue of our time,” perhaps the crucial issue, obedience unfortunately remains. Though Milgram was proud that his studies were “the first efforts to understand this phenomenon in an objective, scientific manner,” he did not want them to be the last. This issue of the Journal of Social Issues gives strong evidence that the efforts of other researchers to expand upon his groundbreaking work will continue unabated.

Alan C. Elms

Well-meaning Americans are utterly convinced of their moral superiority and rights blindly seek to suppress the rights and freedoms of other fellow Americans, sometimes even believing that it’s all to the latter’s benefit. We should be always vigilant in protecting the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment; there will never arrive a time when this defense will become unnecessary; the liberties of the minorities will always have to be protected against depredations of majorities. Censorship can come from any point in the political spectrum to ban politically incorrect speech (anything that anyone who is not a white Eurocentric male could conceivably construe as offensive), speech that “oppresses” any recognized minorities or groups (e.g. women), etc. “Censorship is the strongest drive in human nature; sex is a weak second.”

“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” Justice Robert Jackson, 1943 (quoted on p. 233).This book is a magisterial compendium of bloodcurdling, hair-raising, and spine-chilling stories of censorship, muddled thinking, and zealotry that would put any self-respecting fundamentalist to shame regardless of creed, race, or sex. Mr Hentoff begins simply by quoting LA Times writer Phil Kerby, and since the quote summarizes neatly the content of the book, I will provide it here: “Censorship is the strongest drive in human nature; sex is a weak second.” This is what the book is all about: how well-meaning Americans who are utterly convinced of their moral superiority and rights blindly seek to suppress the rights and freedoms of other fellow Americans, sometimes even believing that it’s all to the latter’s benefit. This book provides no analysis, its purpose is to document the varieties of censorship, not to explain why they happen. Indeed, it would be hard to give an explanation except the one in Mr Kerby’s quote: it’s human nature. This, of course, is vacuous, but it also happens to be useful: if there’s any message one should take from the book, it is this: we should be always vigilant in protecting the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment; there will never arrive a time when this defense will become unnecessary; the liberties of the minorities will always have to be protected against depredations of majorities.

In a sense, Mr Hentoff gives us a balanced picture: censorship can come from any point in the political spectrum. Lefties want to ban politically incorrect speech (anything that anyone who is not a white Eurocentric male could conceivably construe as offensive), speech that “oppresses” any recognized minorities or groups (e.g. women), etc. Righties want to ban anything that offends their religious sensibilities (anything that hints at being contrary to Christian dogma) or moral prudishness (words that describe things we all do in our bedrooms and often outside them), etc. In all that zeal to protect themselves (and often even the offenders) from the evil consequences of free speech, these people want to trample on the First Amendment, all for the common good.

Examples range from attempts to banish Huckleberry Finn from schools (either because the boy’s behavior went against moral qualities the white establishment wanted to inculcate in their offspring or because the frequent use of the word “nigger” had a debilitating impact on overly impressionable African-Americans) to speech codes on university campuses to the doing in of a comedian with a penchant for calling things by their names. Mr Hentoff’s quick wit and sharp tongue dissect these examples, always coming back to the essential argument in the book: one should never seek to limit the First Amendment on the pain of undermining the liberties of all, including one’s most preferred group. In this, Mr Hentoff is what they call a First Amendment fundamentalist, and here I find myself in good company!

The essence of the argument is simple: the Bill of Rights rests almost entirely on freedom of speech, and without that bill, the American Constitution is nothing more than a clever way to organize government, neither better nor worse than many other ways to do so. Although Mr Hentoff does not go in depth on that, he mentions several times how the crucial concern in the late 18th century was to ensure the rights of the minority against assaults by the majority. Whereas checks and balances are all good because they limit the government’s ability to abuse its powers, the real concern is that local majorities could abuse local minorities, and this is what the Bill of Rights mostly sought to protect against. The combined power of the first and fourth amendments would be the bulwark against societal oppression of people who find themselves in the minority on some important issue. Even though it’s not very systematic, Mr Hentoff traces how the Supreme Court has given an ever more expansive interpretation of the First Amendment, perhaps in recognition of its fundamental importance for the functioning of this democracy.

Mr Hentoff argues that Americans do not really understand freedom of speech. They are content to allow for diverse opinions as long as they are harmless, but many seem to see no problem in suppressing speech that may injure the feelings or offend some people. Mr Hentoff, for example, supported ACLU’s defense of the American Nazi Party’s right to march in Skokie (Illinois) even though this town was majority Jewish, many of whom were Holocaust survivors. This was the incident that cost the ACLU about a fifth of its membership, presumably mostly comprising liberals dedicated to liberty (or, as it turned out, to some limited notion of it). It is not hard to imagine why many (most?) Americans would be opposed to granting the Nazis their right to free speech. Many (most?) perhaps feel that because a majority thinks it’s wrong to give them that right, then they should be deprived of it. Mr Hentoff convincingly (and repeatedly) lays bare the problems with that logic.

There are several interrelated questions here. First, should speech that offends someone be banned? Second, should speech that risks provoking violence be banned? Third, should speech by someone who, if successful, would ban free speech be banned? Fourth, if a majority finds such speech offensive/potentially harmful, should it be banned? I have to say that I was not sure how I would respond to some of these questions, mostly for two reasons: although I felt strongly that speech should not be banned on any of these grounds, I was not sure how to justify it. This book helps a lot.

For example, it was easy to answer the first question: nobody has the right not to be offended. Yes, I know that many students forget that. Yes, I know that many university administrators forget that. But if speech were inoffensive, then it would need no protection in the first place. It is precisely this speech that is in dire need of the First Amendment I am sure that saying that whites and blacks should be equal under the law offended a great majority several hundred years ago, but I do not believe anyone today would argue that it would have been correct to suppress that speech because of that! But, one might say, this is very different: we all know that racist speech is bad, so what’s wrong with making it verboten? Leaving aside that thorny issue that “we all know” something is a poor argument for accepting an idea (most people believed the earth was flat too), we are now exposing ourselves to someone dictating what is right and good, and what is not. Once we go down that road, we inevitably end with totalitarianism, with the rights of minorities trampled, and perhaps even their lives forfeit. In other words, the consequences of limiting speech because someone finds it bad are worse than the consequences of letting people exercise their rights to it: after call, if we all agree that racism is bad, then what possible horrible consequences can such speech have? It will be laughed at, denounced, and ignored. What sort of damage can it do?

Well, one might say, perhaps it can influence people and turn them into racists or perhaps it will harden existing racists making them even firmer believers in their idiotic credo. Hmmm… if you suppress speech, you drive it underground, where it can fester without the benefit of being exposed to counter-arguments. In other words, by depriving racists of their right to speak out, you are depriving anti-racists from showing why racism is wrong. You will never convert racists if you do not make them see why they are wrong, and how can you do that if you do not let them tell you what they think so you can rebut it? This now also means that people who favor censorship would seem to think that the only way to combat racism is by suppressing racist speech. That is, unless we shut up the racists, these poor helpless defenseless listeners will be exposed to that idea and they will all start burning crosses in some African-American’s lawn. This infantilizes listeners (people are not that stupid), but, perhaps more importantly, it sends the wrong message: it basically says that we are afraid of racist arguments, we cannot rebut them, we cannot provide compelling counter-arguments, so we cannot rely on the strength of our case, our idea is so weak that the only way to ensure its survival is to suppress its rival (p. 177). I am sorry, but I think than anti-racism can do much better than that. I think we can pulverize any racist argument openly and immediately, and I think this would do the cause much more good than driving racism underground. So, at the risk of offending people, I’d support the racist’s right to speak any day, as long as people can also be exposed to the counter-view. In the words of Justice William Douglass (quoted on p. 181), “a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech… may have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea.”

But what if this speech causes violence? Mr Hentoff gives several examples of such instances (the boycott of the South African rugby team comes to mind along with the Skokie case), in which people tried to use the “heckler’s veto.” The argument goes something like this: we all respect the rights to free speech of that obnoxious group but the authorities cannot guarantee the safety of its members because good Americans may be so incited by the content of that speech that they may turn to violence. This was one of the arguments that bothered me until I read about the Supreme Court decision that such a veto cannot be exercised. That is, the authorities must provide for the safety of those exercising their free speech rights. This includes arresting good Americans who try to use violence to stop them. In the Skokie case, this would imply that some Holocaust survivors could have been arrested for attempting to violently stop the Nazis from marching through their town. I know that it sounds awful, but this is what it may take to protect the rights of minorities that would ensure that we will never see people stuffed in ovens in this country. As Judge Warren put it, “There exist many situations where, in the short run, it appears advantageous to limit speech to solve pressing social problems such as discriminatory harassment. However, the suppression of free speech, even where the speech’s content appears to have little value and great costs, amounts to governmental thought control” (quoted on p. 182). This, of course, recalls the quote from Justice Jackson at the top of this review.

Ok, but the Nazis want to create a country where minorities would have no rights, certainly not the right to free speech. In other words, our system is protecting the rights of people who want to overthrow the system itself and put something abominable in its place. Does it not make sense that we protect ourselves from that? There are two answers to this, it seems. First, this (again) infantilizes the audience. Do we really think Americans’ moral compass is so fragile that a lot of them would shave their heads and vote for a Nazi regime? An idea can only prevail if a majority comes to believe in it: slavery expired because enough people came to see it as evil despite the attempt (vocal and physical) of others to kill off that idea. While it is true that enough Germans embraced Nazism to make it the order of the day, I very much doubt that the idea can triumph against overwhelming odds here in the US. But what if one could imagine it doing so? Should we not suppress it now while we still can? As they say, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Mr Hentoff answers (p. 253) that “nowhere in the First Amendment does it say that freedom of speech is limited only to ideas and symbols that further freedom, dignity, and nonviolence.” He then goes on to quote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who wrote in his 1925 dissent that “If in the long run the beliefs expressed… are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces of the community, the only meaning of free speech is that they should be given their chance and have their way” (p. 254). In other words, once you start banning ideas because they risk ending free speech in the long run, you have made the first step toward that end already.

Ok, so it’s a risk we probably have to accept. But what if the majority agrees that the speech is harmful? This was among the most sticking points for me, largely because I was unfamiliar with the thought behind freedom of speech. I was delighted to read Justice Jackson’s 1943 statement (quoted on p. 231) on the subject: “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” It was not until reading this that the full implications of all the preceding logic came into focus. For someone with a strong egalitarian bent, such a thing does not come easy, but I have to grant the necessity of such a protection. Not everything can or should be submitted to a vote.

Where does this all leave us? I have to admit that although I was a rather firm believer in the supremacy of the First Amendment, Mr Hentoff’s book made me ponder some of the uncomfortable implications such a position entails. I realized that I had allowed a sense of moral assurance, common to all the fine people who are the subjects to this unflattering narrative, to get the better of me on occasion. Surely, no sane person could honestly to subscribe to that (pick your favorite “obviously” nonsensical belief). Surely, it is in their best interest to be forced to realize the error of their ways. Surely, there’s nothing wrong with opening their eyes… But I was dead wrong. There is nothing wrong with trying to show someone the error of his ways, but there is plenty wrong with coercing him into uniformity.

In sum, Mr Hentoff is a fine and very persuasive writer. This book is enormously helpful in placing “obvious” things into perspective by forcing readers to go through the unpalatable consequences of the most well-intentioned suppression of free speech. The narrative is rather brisk, and Mr Hentoff’s language sparkles with biting sarcasm without any sort of meanness, a difficult thing to achieve when one is so close to the subject matter. The book is quite even-handed even if most examples seem to be about ideologues from the far Left suppressing people with more conservative views. Still, Mr Hentoff’s main message is abundantly clear: people lust to censor speech they disagree with, and this lust knows no political allegiance. Defense requires constant vigilance, including upsetting the would-be censors, often the very people who will probably find themselves eventually on the short end of the stick if their own policies get fully implemented.

The only thing I would probably change in this book is the organization: sometimes it’s not clear how the different parts relate to each other, and given the plethora of cases, it is quite difficult to keep track of the line of logic Mr Hentoff pursues at any given time. Still, an excellent read. Check out the hilarious case at the New York University law school when future lawyers refused to participate in moot court (hypothetical trial) involving a parent disputing his ex-wife’s ability to look after their child on the grounds that she is a lesbian and is living with another lesbian (pp. 202-218). The letter by Anthony Amsterdam, NYU law professor, is one of the most to-the-point incisive critiques of this “sensitivity” and its consequences.

Nat Hentoff

http://www.gotterdammerung.org/books/reviews/f/free-speech-for-me-but-not-for-thee.html

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing (Edmund Burke). Why not let people differ about their answers to the great mysteries of the Universe? Let each seek one’s own way to the highest, to one’s own sense of supreme loyalty in life, one’s ideal of life. Let each philosophy, each world-view bring forth its truth and beauty to a larger perspective, that people may grow in vision, stature and dedication (Algernon Black).

Anatole France: The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Elie Wiesel: It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment

Elie Wiesel: For one who is indifferent, life itself is a prison. Any sense of community is external or, even worse, nonexistent. Thus, indifference means solitude. Those who are indifferent do not see others. They feel nothing for others and are unconcerned with what might happen to them. They are surrounded by a great emptiness. Filled by it, in fact. They are devoid of all hope as well as imagination. In other words, devoid of any future.

Elie Wiesel: The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.

Eugene V. Debs: Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man’s business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ”Am I my brother’s keeper?” That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.

Yes, I am my brother’s keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death.

George Bernanos: The horrors which we have seen, and the still greater horrors we shall presently see, are not signs that rebels, insubordinate, untamable people are increasing in number throughout the world, but rather that there is a constant increase in the number of obedient, docile people.

George Bernard Shaw: Indifference is the essence of inhumanity.

Helen Keller: Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all — the apathy of human beings.

Joan Vinge:Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don’t stand a chance against it.

Martin Luther King, jr.: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Martin Niemöller: First they came for the Jews. I was silent. I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists. I was silent. I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists. I was silent. I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me. There was no one left to speak for me.

Paulo Freire: Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

Robert M. Hutchins: The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

Alexander Pope: In lazy Apathy let Stoics boast, Their Virtue fix’d, ’tis fixed as in a frost.

Elie Wiesel: It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real only proves their apathy and deeper degradation.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

George Bernard Shaw: Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.

Helen Keller: Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all — the apathy of human beings.

Henri Frederic Amiel: Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.

Jimmy Buffett : Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don’t know and I don’t care.

Mohandas Gandhi: The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.

Plato: The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

Robert M. Hutchins: The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

Thomas Carlyle: Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.

William Lloyd Garrison: The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.

http://www.wisdomquotes.com

The causes of social problems exist on many levels. When we ask why social problems such as poverty, crime, unemployment, and war exist, each time we determine a cause, we can ask “why” again, as children often do until they are hushed. Poverty exists because some folks can’t find jobs or the jobs pay poorly. But then why is the wage level so low? Because of the tax and land-tenure systems. Why do we have those systems? Because special interests pay to legislate it. Why do special interests get away with it? The voting structure lets them. Why does that structure exist? The voters don’t demand to change it. Why not?

When we dig down through all the layers to the roots of the causes, we find three fundamental causes of social problems: ignorance, apathy, and greed. The ultimate remedy for social problems therefore must confront all three root causes. It does little good to just run down the street shouting “share the rent!” or “stop war!”. Uttering a slogan does no good unless it arouses sympathy.

As an example of the interplay between ignorance, apathy, and greed, consider the problem of pollution. Suppose the most efficient preventative is a pollution charge based on the damage caused by each pollutant. However, the government regulates pollution instead, a policy failure that needlessly reduces employment and economic growth. One possible cause is ignorance.

But suppose the best policy is known. The owners of the polluting industries seek to influence legislation to prevent the best policy. Because of their campaign contributions and other favors, the government adopts the poorer policy. The cause in this case is greed, both by the influence seeker and by corrupted politicians.

Greed is wanting and taking more than one morally deserves. The mere desire for wealth is avarice, rather than greed. By itself, avarice does no harm, and may even do social good as a motivator to produce wealth. The desire of the owners and managers of polluting industries to avoid the social cost of their pollution is greed, a morally undeserved portion of income. Greed can take the form of seeking undeserved subsidies or privileges, or protection from competition. Greed also motivates dictators, politicians, and government officials to seek and maintain their power.

Greed alone is not sufficient for policy failure, since the question then is why the people do not organize to counter the influence of the greedy interests and power seekers. The answer is the apathy of the voters. With the benefits concentrated among a few interests, and the costs spread among the whole population, the incentives of the greedy dominate the incentives of the masses. For the average voter, the cost of organizing and lobbying is greater than his own benefit, since the benefit goes to everybody.

But these benefits and costs are still not sufficient to cause the policy failure. Voters could overcome their financial and time cost of getting informed and organizing an opposition if they were sufficiently interested and aroused to contribute resources to defeat the minority interests. Besides their low financial incentive, there is a low sympathetic incentive. Apathy combined with low commercial returns is sufficient to prevent social action.

Apathy, greed, and ignorance are mutually reinforcing. Some folks take more than they morally deserve, but in ignorance. Many people are apathetic about a social problem because they are not informed. People can be aroused to action with a well-formulated presentation of some problem that evokes their sympathy, as is done with appeals to charity. The reduction of ignorance is also related to greed, since sympathy can replace greed with giving. The desire of a person for the goods of others or goods that harm others can be reduced by any sympathy he has for the well-being of others. A greedy person might steal from strangers but not from a friend.

So, greed, apathy, and ignorance are all related. Greed depends on the absence of sympathy, and it benefits from ignorance about a social problem. Apathy can be reduced if there is less ignorance and less greed. Ignorance is reinforced by apathy, since apathetic folks don’t care to obtain the knowledge which would reduce their apathy. Greed exploits the ignorance of the majority who do not have sufficient sympathy to counter the greedy faction.

What can a social reformer do about these root causes? Henry George pointed to the answer, that sympathy is potentially a much stronger motivating force than self-interest:

“Shortsighted is the philosophy which counts on selfishness as the master motive of human action… If you would move men to action, to what shall you appeal? Not to their pockets, but to their patriotism; not to selfishness, but to sympathy. Self-interest is, as it were, a mechanical force – potent, it is true; capable of large and wide results. But there is in human nature what may be likened to a chemical force; which melts and fuses and overwhelms; to which nothing seems impossible. ‘All that a man hath will he give for his life’ [Job 2:4] – that is self-interest. But in loyalty to higher impulses men will give even life.” (Progress and Poverty, p. 462).

Social reformers must first eliminate their own ignorance to educate themselves to gain knowledge of the basic causes and remedies for social problems, including the economics, politics, and ethics of the problems and solutions. Then when they educate others, they must at the same time invoke their antipathy to the problem and arouse their sympathy with the remedy. When the masses are roused with sympathy and armed with knowledge of the remedy, the few greedy opponents will either be swayed themselves to join the righteous battle, or be overwhelmed by the greater force of the righteous revolution. To remedy social ills, replace ignorance, apathy and greed with knowledge, sympathy, and charity.

Fred E. Foldvary

http://www.progress.org/fold21.htm

Groupthink is a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. During Groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking. A variety of motives for this may exist such as a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, or a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group.

Groupthink may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside, for fear of upsetting the group’s balance. The term is frequently used pejoratively, with hindsight.

The term was coined in 1952 by William H. Whyte in Fortune: Groupthink being a coinage — and, admittedly, a loaded one — a working definition is in order. We are not talking about mere instinctive conformity — it is, after all, a perennial failing of mankind. What we are talking about is a rationalized conformity — an open, articulate philosophy which holds that group values are not only expedient but right and good as well.

Irving Janis, who did extensive work on the subject: A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.

Causes of groupthink:

Highly cohesive groups are much more likely to engage in groupthink. The closer they are, the less likely they are to raise questions to break the cohesion. The group isolates itself from outside experts. (In order to make a well informed decision, a group should invite qualified experts to help weigh the possible risks.) Strong leadership leads to groupthink, because the leader is more likely to promote his/her own solution.

Social psychologist Clark McCauley’s three conditions under which groupthink occurs:

1. Directive leadership.
2. Homogeneity of members’ social background and ideology.
3. Isolation of the group from outside sources of information and analysis.

Symptoms of groupthink:

In order to make groupthink testable, Irving Janis devised eight symptoms that are indicative of groupthink (1977).

1. A feeling of invulnerability creates excessive optimism and encourages risk taking.
2. Discounting warnings that might challenge assumptions.
3. An unquestioned belief in the group’s morality, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
4. Stereotyped views of enemy leaders.
5. Pressure to conform against members of the group who disagree.
6. Shutting down of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
7. An illusion of unanimity with regards to going along with the group.
8. Mindguards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting opinions.

Classic cases of groupthink:

Two classical cases studies by sociologists and psychologists are NASA prior to the Challenger disaster and the presidential cabinet during crisis periods. Both of these cases were government organization under extremely high stress, with direct leadership, a situation some theorists have stated contributes to groupthink . NASA actually funded sociologists in the aftermath of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster to examine how the groups failed in preventing the disaster (Giddens 114-15).

Also, take ’stoning’ for instance. A group of people would throw rocks at a man, and it seems just fine to the individuals, for everyone else is doing it. However, according to crowd psychology, if a man stood alone with a pile of rocks, he would be more likely to not throw the stones because he would be acting on a personal rather than group emotional level.

Space Shuttle Challenger disaster (1986):

The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster is a classic case of groupthink. The Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff on January 28, 1986 (Vaughan 33). The launch had been originally scheduled for January 22, but a series of problems pushed back the launch date. Scientists and engineers throughout NASA were eager to get the mission underway.[2] The day before the launch an engineer brought up a concern about the o-rings in the booster rockets.

Several conference calls were held to discuss the problem and the decision to go ahead with the launch was agreed upon. The group involved in making the Challenger decision met several of the symptoms of groupthink. They ignored warnings that contradicted the group’s goal. The goal was to get the launch off as soon as possible. They also suffered from a feeling of invulnerability, and therefore failed to completely examine the risks of their decision. Another factor that had suppressed the few engineers who were “going against the grain” and “sounding the alarm” was that all eyes were on NASA not to delay the launch and that Congress was seeking to earmark large funding to NASA given the large amount of publicity on the Teacher in Space program. These misjudgments led to the tragic loss of several astronauts, and a huge black mark on NASA’s near perfect safety record.

Bay of Pigs invasion (1959-1962):

Another closely-studied case of groupthink is the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion [3]. The main idea of the Bay of Pigs invasion was to train a group of Cuban exiles to invade Cuba and spark a revolution against Fidel Castro’s communist regime.

The plan was fatally flawed from the beginning, but none of President Kennedy’s top advisers spoke out against the plan. Kennedy’s advisers also had the main characteristics of groupthink: They had all been educated in the country’s top universities, causing them to become a very cohesive group. They were also all afraid of speaking out against the plan, because they did not want to upset the president. The President’s brother, Robert Kennedy, took on the role of a “mind guard”, telling dissenters that it was a waste of their time, because the President had already made up his mind.[4]

Preventing groupthink:

According to Irving Janis, decision making groups are not necessarily doomed to groupthink. He also claims that there are several ways to prevent it. Janis devised seven ways of preventing groupthink (209-15):

1. Leaders should assign each member the role of “critical evaluator”. This allows each member to freely air objections and doubts.
2. Higher-ups should not express an opinion when assigning a task to a group.
3. The organization should set up several independent groups, working on the same problem.
4. All effective alternatives should be examined.
5. Each member should discuss the group’s ideas with trusted people outside of the group.
6. The group should invite outside experts into meetings. Group members should be allowed to discuss with and question the outside experts.
7. At least one group member should be assigned the role of Devil’s advocate. This should be a different person for each meeting.

By following these guidelines, groupthink can be avoided. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, John F. Kennedy sought to avoid groupthink during the Cuban Missile Crisis.[5] During meetings, he invited outside experts to share their viewpoints, and allowed group members to question them carefully. He also encouraged group members to discuss possible solutions with trusted members within their separate departments, and he even divided the group up into various sub-groups, in order to partially break the group cohesion. JFK was deliberately absent from the meetings, so as to avoid pressing his own opinion. Ultimately, the Cuban missile crisis was resolved peacefully, thanks in part to these measures.

Criticism:

Robert S. Baron contends that recent investigation and testing has not been able to defend the connection between certain antecedents with groupthink. [6] This may simply be due to the fact that the groupthink theory is very difficult to test in a lab situation using a scientific method. Alfinger and Esser also came to the same conclusion.[7] After ending their study, they stated that better methods of testing Janis’ symptoms were needed. It is impossible to create in labs the same conditions under which important government groups work. It is impossible to create the same levels of stress and pressure experienced by high level government officials, with the future of the entire nation hanging in the balance. Baron also contends that the groupthink model applies to a far wider range of groups than Janis originally concluded. This remains to be tested. However, it can be speculated that many people who have worked in a group setting can identify some of the symptoms of groupthink.

References:

Janis, Irving L. Victims of Groupthink. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1972.
Feynman, Richard P. Feynman’s Appendix to the Rogers Commission Report on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident: Personal Observations on the Reliability of the Shuttle.
Giddens, Anthony, Mitchell Duneier, and Richard P. Appelbaum. Essentials of Sociology. New York. W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.
Baron, R. S. (2005). So Right It’s Wrong: Groupthink and the Ubiquitous Nature of Polarized Group Decision Making. In Zanna, Mark P (Ed.) Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 37. (219-253). San Diego. Elsevier Academic Press.
Richardson Ahlfinger, Noni, and James K. Esser. “Testing the Groupthink Model: Effects of Promotional Leadership and Conformity Predisposition.” Social Behavior and Personality (2001).
McCauley, Clark. “The Nature of Social Influence in Groupthink: Compliance and Internalization.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 57 (1987). 250-260.
Vaughan, Diane. The Challenger Launch Decison: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 1996.

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

Conduct prohibited by federal law regulating relations between employers, employees, and labor organizations. Before 1935 U.S. labor unions received little protection from the law. Employers used many tactics to prevent employees from joining unions and to disrupt union activities in the workplace. The passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act (29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq.), marked the beginning of affirmative federal government support of unionization and collective bargaining. The NLRA prohibits employers from taking certain actions against their employees and the unions that represent them. A prohibited action is called an unfair labor practice.

Management Unfair Labor Practices

Section 7116(a) of the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (see Title 5 of the US Code) provides that it is an unfair labor practice for management to:

1. interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise by the employee of any right under this chapter;
2. encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization by discrimination in connection with hiring, tenure, promotion, or other conditions of employment;
3. sponsor, control or otherwise assist any labor organization, other than to furnish, upon request, customary, and routine services and facilities if the services and facilities are also furnished on an impartial basis to other labor organizations having equivalent status;
4. discipline or otherwise discriminate against an employee because the employee has filed a grievance, complaint, affidavit, or petition or has given any information or testimony under this chapter;
5. refuse to consult or negotiate in good faith with a labor organization as required by this chapter;
6. fail or refuse to cooperate in impasse procedures and impasse decisions as required by this chapter;
7. enforce any rule or regulation (other than a rule or regulation addressing prohibited personnel practices) which is in conflict with any applicable collective bargaining agreement if the agreement was in effect before the date the rule or regulations was prescribed; or
8. otherwise fail or refuse to comply with any provision of this chapter.

Unfair labor practices under these sections can be caused by numerous activities on the part of management. While not all inclusive, some examples associated with each of the sections include:

1. The charge of interfering with an employee’s rights under the Statute is a derivative violation — if an individual violates any section of the Statute, they also violate this one. Examples of this type of violation would be disciplining an employee for filing a ULP or lowering someone’s performance appraisal because they filed a grievance.

2. Encouraging or discouraging union membership is demonstrated when managers fail to promote, higher, train, etc., because of the employee’s union activites. This section is violated not only when management takes some action against an employee for union activities, but also when management only threatens to take some action which ultimately has a chilling effect on the employee’s right to join and assist the labor organization.

3. We don’t see a lot of sponsoring and controlling of a union by management. This usually arises during an election campaign between two unions. One union might claim that management was doing special favors for the opposing union and, thus, sponsoring that union.

4. This is pretty straight forward; supervisors can’t take any action against an employee for filing or participating in a ULP procedure. That is, don’t give an employee a worse assignment or a lower performance rating because he or she testified in a ULP hearing.

5. Refusing to bargain in good faith is the most common ULP. This section includes such actions as management unilaterally making a change in the employees’ conditions of employment without affording the union an opportunity to bargain. This charge also addresses management’s failure to engage in mid-term bargain, failing to furnish information to the union that they are entitled to, and bypassing the union by dealing directly with the employees regarding their conditions of employment.

6. Failing to cooperate in impasse proceedings is another straight forward section. If, during negotiations, the parties reach impasse (that is, they are unable to reach agreement through negotiations), either party can request the services of the Federal Service Impasses Panel. The Federal Service Impasses Panel is an outside agency responsible for resolving impasse in the Federal government. Once timely invoked, management must participate in its proceedings and implement its decision. Failure to do so is a ULP.

7. This section, enforcing a rule issued after the agreement goes into affect, provides that if an agency or government-wide rule or regulation is issued after the effective date of the parties’ collective bargaining agreement and the two conflict, absent some specific contract language, the contract supersedes the new regulation and must be followed. Of course, once the contract comes up for renewal, it must be brought into conformance with the current regulations.

8. The last section is a catch-all section. If management violates any provision of the Statute not mentioned above, it shall be a ULP. Some examples would be failing to honor employees’ automatic dues withholding requests, failing to invite the union to a formal discussion, etc.

http://cpol.army.mil/library/permiss/4151.html

Union Unfair Labor Practices

Section 7116(b) of the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (the Statute) defines those actions which, if taken by the union, would result in a ULP. Many of these are identical to the sections which define management ULP’s. The Statute provides that it is an unfair labor practice for the union to:

1. interfere with, restrain, or coerce any employee in the exercise by the employee of any right under this chapter; — this is the same as management’s charge. Neither management nor the union can interfere with employees’ rights under the Statute.
2. cause or attempt to cause an agency to discriminate against any employee in the exercise by the employee of any right under this chapter; you won’t see this too frequently. — Here, the union would request that management take some action against an employee because he or she took some action under the Statute.
3. coerce, discipline, fine, or attempt to coerce a member of the labor organization as punishment, reprisal, or for the purpose of hindering or impeding the member’s work performance or productivity as an employee or the discharge of the members duties as an employee; — pretty straight forward but, again, not something seen very frequently
4. discriminate against an employee with regard to the terms of conditions of membership in the labor organization on the basis of race, color, creed, national origin, sex, age, preferential or non preferential civil service status, political affiliation, marital status, or handicapping condition;– this is an internal union charge where someone was denied union membership because of non-merit reasons
5. refuse to consult or negotiate in good faith with a labor organization as required by this chapter;– this is the same charge as in the management ULP section; the union must bargain in good faith
6. fail or refuse to cooperate in impasse procedures and impasse decisions as required by this chapter;– again, this is the same requirement as in management’s ULP section
7. to call, or participate in, a strike, work stoppage, or slowdown, or picketing of an agency in a labor-management dispute if such picketing interferes with an agency’s operations, or– now this one’s a little more interesting.
8. Unions cannot participate in, nor call for, a strike. In fact, once notified of the possibility of a strike, work stoppage or slowdown, the union must take positive steps to avoid any such activity by bargaining unit members. On the other hand, the union and employees can engage in informational picketing so long as it does not interfere with the agency’s operations. Employees cannot engage in informational picketing while on duty time. They can do so while at lunch, on leave or before or after work.
9. otherwise fail or refuse to comply with any provision of this chapter.– the same general catch-all as in management’s ULP section.

http://cpol.army.mil/library/permiss/4151.html

Mind control is the successful control of the thoughts and actions of another without his or her consent. Generally, the term implies that the victim has given up some basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes, and has been made to accept contrasting ideas. ‘Brainwashing’ is often used loosely to refer to being persuaded by propaganda.

Conceptions & misconceptions of mind control

There are many misconceptions about mind control. Some people consider mind control to include the efforts of parents to raise their children according to social, cultural, moral and personal standards. Some think it is mind control to use behavior modification techniques to change one’s own behavior, whether by self-discipline and autosuggestion or through workshops and clinics. Others think that advertising and sexual seduction are examples of mind control. Still others consider it mind control to give debilitating drugs to a woman in order to take advantage of her while she is drugged. Some consider it mind control when the military or prison officers use techniques that belittle or dehumanize recruits or inmates in their attempt to break down individuals and make them more compliant. Some might consider it mind control for coaches or drill instructors to threaten, belittle, physically punish, or physically fatigue by excessive physical exercises their subjects in the effort to break down their egos and build team spirit or group identification.

Some of the tactics of some recruiters for religious, spiritual, or New Age human potential groups are called mind control tactics. Many believe that a terrorist kidnap victim who converts to or becomes sympathetic to her kidnapper’s ideology is a victim of mind control (the so-called Stockholm syndrome). Similarly, a woman who stays with an abusive man is often seen as a victim of mind control. Many consider subliminal messaging in Muzak, in advertising, or on self-help tapes to be a form of mind control. Many also believe that it is mind control to use laser weapons, isotropic radiators, infrasound, non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse generators, or high-power microwave emitters to confuse or debilitate people. Many consider the “brainwashing” tactics (torture, sensory deprivation, etc.) of the Chinese during the Korean War and the alleged creation of zombies in Voodoo as attempts at mind control.

Finally, no one would doubt that it would be a clear case of mind control to be able to hypnotize or electronically program a person so that he or she would carry out your commands without being aware that you are controlling his or her behavior.

Clarification of the term

A term with such slack in its denotation is nearly useless. In narrowing down the denotation the first thing to do is eliminate as examples of mind control those activities where a person freely chooses to engage in the behavior. Controlling one’s thoughts and actions, whether by self-discipline or with the help of others, is an interesting and important topic, but it is not the same as brainwashing or programming people without their consent.

Using fear or force to manipulate or coerce people into doing what you want them to do should not be considered to be mind control. Inquisitions do not succeed in capturing the minds of their victims. As soon as the threat of punishment is lifted, the extorted beliefs vanish. You do not control the mind of someone who will escape from you the moment you turn your back.

To render a woman helpless by drugs so you can rape her is not mind control. Using a frequency generator to give people headaches or to disorient them is not the same as controlling them. You do not have control over a person’s thoughts or actions just because you can do what you want to them or render them incapable of doing as they will. An essential component of mind control is that it involves controlling another person, not just putting them out of control or doing things to them over which they have no control.

Fiction and mind-control

Some of the more popular misconceptions of mind control originated in fiction, such as “The Manchurian Candidate.” In that film, an assassin is programmed so that he will respond to a post-hypnotic trigger, commit a murder, and not remember it later. Other books and films portray hypnosis as a powerful tool, allowing the hypnotist to have his sexual way with a beautiful woman or to program her to become a robotic courier, assassin, etc. One such book even claims to be “based on a true story”: The Control of Candy Jones (Playboy Press, 1976) by Donald Bain. To be able to use hypnosis in this powerful way is little more than wishful thinking.

Other fictional fantasies have been created that show drugs or electronic devices, including brain implants, being used to control the behavior of people. It has, of course, been established that brain damage, hypnosis, drugs or electric stimulation to the brain or neural network can have a causal effect on thought, bodily movement, and behavior. However, the state of human knowledge on the effects of chemical or electrical stimulation to the brain is so impoverished that it would be impossible using today’s knowledge and technology to do anything approaching the kind of mind control accomplished in fantasy. We can do things that are predictable, such as cause loss of a specific memory or arousal of a specific desire, but we cannot do this in a way which is non-intrusive or which would have the significance of being able to control a large array of thoughts, movements, or actions. It is certainly conceivable that some day we may be able to build a device which, if implanted in the brain, would allow us to control thoughts and actions by controlling specific chemical or electrical stimuli. Such a device does not now exist nor could it exist given today’s state of knowledge in the neurosciences. (However, two Emory University neuroscientists, Dr. Roy Bakay and Dr. Philip Kennedy, have developed an electronic brain implant that can be activated by thoughts and in turn can move a computer cursor.)*

The government and mind-control

There also seems to be a growing belief that the U.S. government, through its military branches or agencies such as the CIA, is using a number of horrible devices aimed at disrupting the brain. Laser weapons, isotropic radiators, infrasound, non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse generators, and high-power microwave emitters have been mentioned. It is known that government agencies have experimented on humans in mind control studies with and without the knowledge of their subjects (Scheflin 1978). The claims of those who believe they have been unwilling victims of “mind control” experiments should not be dismissed as impossible or even as improbable. Given past practice and the amoral nature of our military and intelligence agencies, such experiments are not implausible. However, these experimental weapons, which are aimed at disrupting brain processes, should not be considered mind control weapons. To confuse, disorient or otherwise debilitate a person through chemicals or electronically is not to control that person. To make a person lose control of himself is not the same as gaining control over him. It is a near certainty that our government is not capable of controlling anyone’s mind, though it is clear that many people in many governments lust after such power.

In any case, some of the claims made by those who believe they are being controlled by these electronic weapons do not seem plausible. For example, the belief that radio waves or microwaves can be used to cause a person to hear voices transmitted to him seems unlikely. We know that radio waves and waves of all kinds of frequencies are constantly going through our bodies. The reason we have to turn on the radio or TV to hear the sounds or see the pictures being transmitted through the air is that those devices have receivers which “translate” the waves into forms we can hear and see. What we know about hearing and vision makes it very unlikely that simply sending a signal to the brain that can be “translated” into sounds or pictures would cause a person to hear or see anything. Someday it may be possible to stimulate electronically or chemically a specific network of neurons to cause specific sounds or sights of the experimenter’s choosing to emerge in a person’s consciousness. But this is not possible today. Even if it were possible, it would not necessarily follow that a person would obey a command to assassinate the president just because he heard a voice telling him to do so. Hearing voices is one thing. Feeling compelled to obey them is quite another. Not everyone has the faith of Abraham.

There seem to be a number of parallels between those who think they have been abducted by aliens and those who believe their minds are being controlled by CIA implants. So far, however, the “mind-controlled group” has not been able to find their John Mack, the Harvard psychiatrist who claims that the best explanation for alien abduction claims is that they are based on alien abduction experiences, not fantasies or delusions. A common complaint from the mind-controlled is that they can’t get therapists to take them seriously. That is, they say they can only find therapists who want to treat them for their delusions, not help them prove they’re being controlled by their government. Thus, it is not likely that the “mind-controlled CIA zombies” will be accused of having delusions planted in them by therapists, as alien abductees have, since they claim they cannot get therapists to take their delusions seriously. In fact, many of them are convinced that their treatment as deluded persons is part of a conspiracy to cover up the mind control experiments done on them. Some even believe that False Memory Syndrome is part of the conspiracy. They claim that the idea of false memories is a plot to keep people from taking seriously the claims of those who are now remembering that they were victims of mind control experiments at some time in the past. It is hard to believe that they cannot find a wide array of incompetent New Age therapists willing to take their claims seriously, if not willing to claim they have been victims of such experiments themselves.

Subliminal advertising and mind-control

On a lighter note, one of the lesser myths about mind control is the notion that subliminal messages are effective controllers of behavior. Despite widespread belief in the power of subliminal advertising and messaging, the evidence of its significant effectiveness is based on anecdotes and unscientific studies by interested parties. You will search in vain for the scientific studies that demonstrate that playing inaudible messages such as “do not steal” or “put that back” in Muzak significantly reduces employee or customer theft, or that subliminal messages increase sales of snacks at movie theaters.

Disruption and harassment are not mind control

The above considerations should make it clear that what many people consider mind control would best be described by some other term, such as behavior modification, thought disruption, brain disabling, behavior manipulation, mind-coercion or electronic harassment. People are not now being turned into robots by hypnosis or brain implants. Furthermore, it should be obvious that given the state of knowledge in the neurosciences, the techniques for effective mind control are likely to be crude and their mechanisms imperfectly understood.

Thus, if we restrict the term ‘mind control’ to those cases where a person successfully controls another person’s thoughts or actions without their consent, our initial list of examples of what people consider to be mind control will be pared down to just five items: the tactics of religious, spiritual, and other New Age recruiters; the tactics of husbands who control their wives; the Stockholm syndrome; the so-called brainwashing tactics of the Chinese inquisitors of American prisoners during the Korean War; and the alleged creation of zombies in Voodoo. The last, however, can be dismissed as based either on fraud or on the use of drugs to render people helpless.

A person who is terrorized by his or her spouse or lover is not a victim of mind control, but of fear and violence. Still, there seem to be many cases where a battered person genuinely loves her or his mate and genuinely believes the batterer reciprocates that love. The victim stays, beating after beating, not because the victim fears what the abuser will do if he or she leaves, but because the victim really doesn’t want to leave. Perhaps. But perhaps the victim doesn’t leave because she or he is completely dependent on the lover/batterer. The abused doesn’t stay just because she or he has nowhere to go. The abused needs the abuser and stays because the abused is completely dependent on the abuser. If a man can reduce a woman to a state of total dependency, he can control her. But is it true to say that he has controlled her mind? To what extent, if any, can a batterer take away the free will of his victim? He can reduce her choices so that staying with him is the only option she knows. What is the likelihood of this happening? It seems more likely that she will reduce her own choices by rationalizing his behavior and convincing herself that things will get better or that they really aren’t that bad. If a man is not using brute force or the fear of violence to keep a woman around, then if she stays, it may be because of choices she has made in the past. Each time she was abused, she chose to stay. He may have used sweet and seductive talk to persuade her not to leave, but at some time in the relationship she was free to reject him. Otherwise, the relationship is based on fear and violence and mind control does not enter the picture. A woman who appears to be under the spell of a batterer is not a victim of mind control. She is a victim of her own bad choices. This is not to say that we should not sympathize with her plight or extend aid to her should she ask. She is where she is through bad luck and a series of bad choices, not because of mind control, assuming, of course, that the woman is not mentally ill. In that case, it is nature, not her man, that has reduced her capacity for free choice. The abuser takes advantage of the situation, but he does not create it.

Recruiters, kidnappings and inquisitions

That leaves recruiters for spiritual, religious, or personal growth groups; kidnappers; and inquisitors. First, the tactics of the recruiters differ substantially from those of kidnappers or inquisitors. Recruiters generally do not kidnap or capture their recruits, and they are not known to use torture as a typical conversion method. This raises the question of whether their victims are controlled without their consent. Some recruits are not truly victims of mind control and are willing members of their communities. Similarly, many recruits into mainstream religions should not be considered victims of mind control. To change a person’s basic personality and character, to get them to behave in contradictory ways to lifelong patterns of behavior, to get them to alter their basic beliefs and values, would not necessarily count as mind control. It depends on how actively a person participates in their own transformation. You and I might think that a person is out of his mind for joining Scientology, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Jim Roberts’ The Brethren, but their “crazy beliefs and behaviors” are no wilder than the ones that millions of mainstream religious believers have chosen to accept and engage in.

Some recruits into non-mainstream religions seem to be brainwashed and controlled to the point that they will do great evil to themselves or others at the behest of their leader, including murder and suicide. Some of these recruits are in a state of extreme vulnerability when they are recruited and their recruiter takes advantage of that vulnerability. Such recruits may be confused or rootless due to ordinary transition difficulties (such as new college students), difficult life circumstances (such as failing in college or at a new job), or even tragic personal events (such as death of close friends or loved ones) or world events (such as war or terrorism). Some may be mentally ill or emotionally disturbed, greatly depressed, traumatized by self-abuse with drugs or abuse at the hands of others, etc. But it would not be to the advantage of the cult to actively recruit the emotionally disturbed. As one cult recruiter told me

Cults have complicated ideologies and practices that mentally or emotionally upset people have difficulty grasping. These structures are what allow the cult to control the person. Cults do not want people who are difficult to control.

Thus, while some recruits might be very vulnerable to those who would like to control their thoughts and actions, recruiters look for people they can make vulnerable. The recruiter quoted above also said

Cults seek out strong, intelligent, idealistic people. They also seek out the rich, no matter what their mental status is.

The goal is make the recruits vulnerable, to get them to give up whatever control over their thoughts and actions they might have. The goal is to make the cult members feel like passengers on a rudderless ship on a stormy sea. The recruiter or cult leader has a rudder and only he can guide the ship to safety.

The techniques available to manipulate the vulnerable are legion. One technique is to give them the love they feel they do not get elsewhere. Convince them that through you and your community they can find what they’re looking for, even if they haven’t got a clue that they’re looking for anything. Convince them that they need faith in you and that you have faith in them. Convince them that their friends and family outside the group are hindrances to their salvation. Isolate them. Only you can give them what they need. You love them. You alone love them. You would die for them. So why wouldn’t they die for you? But, love alone can only get you so far in winning them over. Fear is a great motivator. Fear that if they leave they’ll be destroyed. Fear that if they don’t cooperate they’ll be condemned. Fear that they can’t make it in this miserable world alone. The manipulator must make the recruit paranoid.

Love and fear may not be enough, however; so guilt must be used, too. Fill them with so much guilt that they will want to police their own thoughts. Remind them that they are nothing alone, but with you and God (or some Power or Technique) they are Everything. Fill them with contempt for themselves, so that they will want to be egoless, selfless, One with You and Yours. You not only strip them of any sense of self, you convince them that the ideal is be without a self. Keep up the pressure. Be relentless. Humiliate them from time to time. Soon they will consider it their duty to humiliate themselves. Control what they read, hear, see. Repeat the messages for eyes and ears. Gradually get them to make commitments, small ones at first, then work your way up until you own their property, their bodies, their souls. And don’t forget to give them drugs, starve them, or have them meditate or dance or chant for hours at a time until they think they’ve had some sort of mystical experience. Make them think, “It was you, Lord, who made me feel so good.” They won’t want to give it up. They have never felt so good. Though they look as if they are in Hell to those of us on the outside, from the inside it looks like Heaven.

What religion doesn’t use guilt and fear to get people to police their own thoughts? Even some therapists use similar methods to control their patients. They prey on the vulnerable. They demand total loyalty and trust as a price for hope and healing. They often isolate their prey from loved ones and friends. They try to own and control their clients. The methods of recruiters are not much different. Are the recruits, the converts to the faith, and the patients willing victims? How would we tell the difference between a willing victim and an unwilling victim? If we cannot do that, then we can’t distinguish any true cases of mind control.

Recruiters and other manipulators are not using mind control unless they are depriving their victims of their free will. A person can be said to be deprived of his free will by another only if that other has introduced a causal agent which is irresistible. How could we ever demonstrate that a person’s behavior is the result of irresistible commands given by a religious, spiritual, or personal growth leader? It is not enough to say that irrational behavior proves a person’s free will has been taken from them. It may be irrational to give away all one’s property, or to devote all one’s time and powers to satisfying the desires of one’s divine leader, or to commit suicide or plant poison bombs in subways because ordered to do so, but how can we justify claiming such irrational acts are the acts of mindless robots? For all we know, the most bizarre, inhumane, and irrational acts done by the recruits are done freely, knowingly and joyfully. Perhaps they are done by brain damaged or insane people. In either case, such people would not be victims of mind control.

That leaves for consideration the acts of kidnappers and inquisitors: the acts of systematic isolation, control of sensory input, and torture. Do these methods allow us to wipe the cortical slate clean and write our own messages to it? That is, can we delete the old and implant new patterns of thought and behavior in our victims? First, it should be noted that not everybody who has been kidnapped comes to feel love or affection for their kidnappers. It may be that some kidnapped or captured people are reduced to a state of total dependency by their tormentors. They are put in a position similar to that of infancy and begin to bond with their tormentors much as an infant does with the one who feeds and comforts it. There is also the strange fascination most of us have with bullies. We fear them, even hate them, but often want to join their gang and be protected by them. It does not seem likely that people who fall in love with their kidnappers, or who turn against their country under torture, are victims of mind control. There is certainly some explanation why some people act as Patricia Hearst did and why others under similar circumstances would not have become “Tanya”. It is doubtful that mind control should play much of a role in the explanation. Some women are attracted to gangsters but have few opportunities to interact with them. We do not need to revert to mind control to explain why Hearst became intimate with one of her terrorist captors. She may have thought she had to in order to survive. She may have been genuinely attracted to him. Who knows? Mind control is a better defense than “changed my mind about a life of crime” when facing bank robbery and murder charges.

Finally, it is widely believed that the Chinese were successful in brainwashing American prisoners of war during the Korean War. The evidence that their tactics of torture, isolation, sensory deprivation, etc., were successfully used to control the minds of their captives is non-existent. Very few (22 of 4,500 or 0.5%) of those captured by the Chinese went over to the other side (Sutherland 1979, 114). The myth of success by the Chinese is primarily due to the work of Edward Hunter, whose Brainwashing in Red China: the Calculated Destruction of Men’s Minds (New York: Vanguard Press, 1951) is still referred to by those who see mind control tactics as a major menace today. The CIA provided most of Hunter’s fodder in their effort to inspire hatred of the North Koreans and communism, to explain why some American soldiers didn’t hate the enemy, and “to aggrandize their own role by arguing that they themselves must investigate brainwashing techniques in order to keep up with the enemy” (Sutherland 1979, 114).

It seems then, that if we define mind control as the successful control of the thoughts and actions of another without his or her consent, mind control exists only in fantasy. Unfortunately, that does not mean that it will always be thus.

http://skepdic.com/mindcont.html

Interest-Based Problem Solving is an issue-resolution process that addresses individual and group differences in a problem-solving environment. Participants work together to solve a problem through the sharing of information.

Consensus Decision-Making:

Everyone discusses the issues so that the group benefits from the knowledge and experience of all its members. Everyone in the group is heard.There is open discussion and sharing of information. Every member of the group can live with and support the decision, even though it may not be their first choice. The consensus can be tested.

Model Behaviors:

1. Don’t agree too quickly.
2. Share information and ideas.
3. Listen to others.
4. Be open to the ideas of others.
5. Offer alternatives.
6. Don’t trade or bargain.
7. Don’t vote.
8. Treat differences as strengths.
9. Create a solution that everyone actively supports.

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Has everyone been heard?
2. Can everyone live with the decision?
3. Will everyone actively support the decision? (Can you identify behaviors that support the decision?)

http://www.lmpartnership.org/skills