Promoting aggression and violence at Abu Ghraib: The U.S. military's transformation of ordinary people into torturers

Lankford, Adam

doi:10.1016/j.avb.2009.06.007

Cited by 38 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…The official government response to the atrocity was to attribute blame to individual soldiers, directing the focus particularly to the seven publicly implicated soldiers and away from broader systemic factors. In what became known as the 'bad apple' versus 'bad barrel' debate, independent commentators argued instead that the situation itself was to blame for the behaviour of these ordinary individual soldiers (Lankford 2009;Zimbardo 2007). …”

Section: Conflict Zonesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They were advised that different rules applied to Abu Ghraib prisoners, consistent with the brutality towards other prisoners actioned at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan (Human Rights Watch 2005;Lankford 2009). Bystander inaction at Abu Ghraib reinforced these norms, with numerous soldiers reportedly witnessing abuse but taking no action to address or formally report it.…”

Section: Conflict Zonesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Endemic Sexual Violence and Abuse: Contexts and Dispositions

Rayment-McHugh

Smallbone

Tilley

2015

Int J for Crime, Justice & Social Democracy

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Endemic sexual violence and abuse has been observed in a number of specific circumstances, most notably conflict zones, remote and marginalised communities, and religious and state institutions. In this article we examine several documented examples and argue that a similar set of causal processes are at work in all of these otherwise apparently disparate circumstances. Rather than construing the problem as 'organised' sexual abuse, we present the problem in terms of the breakdown (or disorganisation) of usual individual, situational and ecological constraints.

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Section: Conflict Zonesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conflict Zonesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Endemic Sexual Violence and Abuse: Contexts and Dispositions

Rayment-McHugh

Smallbone

Tilley

2015

Int J for Crime, Justice & Social Democracy

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“…Recent social psychology research suggests that participants refuse to obey direct orders (Burger et al, 2011) probably because its use by authority dismantles the group relationship between participants and authority (Reicher & Haslam, 2011). At the same time, analyses of recent crimes of obedience emphasized on the important role of coercive pressure (e.g., Lankford, 2009). We found a higher level of obedience in the ''Compliance with pressure'' condition than in the ''Compliance without pressure,'' which seems to support the view that coercive pressure is a key component of the obedience process.…”

Section: Obedience Ratesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Destructive Obedience Without Pressure

et al. 2015

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Abstract. Studies on obedience to authority highlight the power of the situation by showing how an experimental setting can trap participants and force them to commit acts contrary to their values ( Bocchiaro & Zimbardo, 2010 ). The source of obedience has generally been represented by an institutional scientific authority. In the present experiment, we tested a more widespread form of authority: a managerial authority implemented in the form of an administrative violence paradigm ( Meeus & Raaijmakers, 1986 ). Specifically, we compared two forms of authority: obedience to authority as manipulated by Meeus and Raaijmakers (1986) , where the requests are made in an authoritarian manner, and compliance without pressure, where the participant is told that he is free to do what is requested ( Enzle & Harvey, 1982 ). The results illustrate that a substantial level of obedience can be elicited even in the absence of explicit authoritarian pressure.

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“…Milgram's studies have been used in explanations of abuses and atrocities such as the Holocaust (see Miller, 2004), the My Lai massacre (Milgram, 1974), and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses (Lankford, 2009), as well as in more general explanations of phenomena such as terrorism (Fiske, Harris & Cuddy, 2004), yet it is rare to see them used to draw out lessons concerning how people might resist authority. To take just one example of how such issues may be addressed, in the UK 'obedience' is part of the curriculum for diplomas in 'Public Services (Uniformed)' (Edexcel, 2012).…”

Section: Policy Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discourse, Defiance, and Rationality: “Knowledge Work” in the “Obedience” Experiments

Gibson

2014

Journal of Social Issues

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In this article, I present a secondary qualitative analysis of archived audio data from two conditions (“voice‐feedback” and “women as subjects”) in Milgram's experiments. Using a perspective informed by rhetorical and discursive psychologies, I focus on the rhetorical strategies employed by participants. This highlights the use of strategies based around direct invocations of “knowledge.” Analysis explores the ways in which participants could use such strategies to challenge the experimenter's definition of the situation in their efforts to extricate themselves from the experiment. Findings are discussed in relation to two ongoing debates in the study of Milgram's experiments: First, the importance of attending to defiance and resistance as much as compliance and obedience; second, the questioning of the status of the phenomena captured in Milgram's studies as necessarily being concerned with “(dis)obedience.”

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Promoting aggression and violence at Abu Ghraib: The U.S. military's transformation of ordinary people into torturers

Cited by 38 publications

References 6 publications

Endemic Sexual Violence and Abuse: Contexts and Dispositions

Endemic Sexual Violence and Abuse: Contexts and Dispositions

Destructive Obedience Without Pressure

Discourse, Defiance, and Rationality: “Knowledge Work” in the “Obedience” Experiments

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