Milgram revisited

The New Neo Posted on by

This is fascinating news: the classic “Obedience to Authority” experiments of Stanley Milgram, one of the most famous and influential pieces of research in the annals of psychology, have more or less been duplicated.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Milgram experiments, here’s a summary. The gist of it was Milgram’s shocking (literally) finding that ordinary people in this country could be persuaded to inflict what they thought were painful electric jolts to “subjects” (actually, actors) in what was billed as a learning experiment, if an authoritative “researcher” (also an actor) told them it was okay.

This was true for most subjects even if the “victim” was screaming in pain and complained of a weak heart. It was also true if the “doctor” didn’t have a white coat, and was in a lab in a seedier part of town. No actual shocks were administered, but I recall that, in follow-up interviews, most of the subjects thought the shocks were real.

Milgram varied the details of the experiment over and over (read his book if you have time; it’s a masterpiece of its genre), but the results always pointed to the troubling fact that the majority of people failed to “question authority” (see this, this, this, and this for my four-part series on questioning authority).

I had always thought Milgram’s experiments, which were performed in the 1960s, could not be reproduced today because the ethics of psychology research have changed so much in the interim, partly as a result of the publicity about experiments such as his. The current researchers have gotten around that problem by stopping the experiment at an earlier level of “pain,” when the subjects think they are administering a shock amounting to 150 volts, the level at which the “subject” is “crying out” in pain but has not reached the histrionic levels of the earlier experiments. Even then, fewer people today went as far as 150 volts as compared to the original experiments. But the change, although in a good direction, was not statistically significant.

One difference that might be significant, however, is that the current researchers limited their experiment to people unfamiliar with the earlier one. I have no idea what percentage of the population that represents, but it definitely would be a selected group, which could easily have affected the findings.

Like almost everyone who hears of Milgram’s work, I have always assumed I would be among those people who refused to go on as soon as the “subject” cried out in pain. Since everyone feels that way, however, and we know that most people did not desist from administering the “shocks,” my assumptions about myself are suspect, as well. But I do know from my own life that in other, admittedly less dramatic settings, I have refused many times to go along with instructions or orders that I find ethically questionable. So perhaps I’m correct—after all, somebody’s got to be in that percentage of people who refused, right? Why not me?

Hamas and Israel: same old same old, despite Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

Hamas attacks. Israel has a right to defend itself. Israel will be criticized for doing so. The number of Palestinian casualties is emphasized by the press, and Palesinian reports of how many civilians have been hurt are accepted uncritically.

So, what else is new?

Not much. Oh, there’s the O-factor—that is, how does all of this affect our incoming President? Headlines that read, like this one in the WaPo, “Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza Strip Imperil Obama’s Peace Chances,” show a puzzling and yet persistent belief in the power of a single person to somehow cut through the desire of a terror group such as Hamas to destroy Israel.

I’ve got news for the WaPo, and the analysts quoted at length in the article: the current violence is not an aberration in a situation that would otherwise be amenable to the magic of Obama. And by that statement I am not criticizing Obama; I’m taking issue with those who think any person, or any diplomatic policy of the US, could have the desired effect.

Prior to the 90s and then the post-Camp-David Second Intifada, people could be excused for thinking so. But that avenue has been tried—and tried, and tried—and it does not work. If it did, President Clinton’s efforts would have succeeded. What we have here is a situation that appears to be beyond the reach of diplomacy.

Okay, so who’s Norman Borlaug?

The New Neo Posted on by

In yesterday’s post about the results of the “most admired man and woman” Gallup poll, I was intrigued by the fact that two commenters mentioned Norman Borlaug as their most admired man.

I admit it; I’d never even heard of the guy. So of course I had to look him up, and I must say I’m impressed. If he’s not the most admired man in the world, he most certainly should be a contender—or at the very least a household word.

Borlaug’s relative obscurity is somewhat puzzling. He’s the father of the Green Revolution that has allowed many third-world countries such as India to feed their people far more effectively, and made famine a sometime thing rather than a regular occurrence.

For this he has received countless honors. He’s also been excoriated by the Left, a group you’d think would applaud his work on behalf of the starving people of the Third World. Environmentalists in particular have been up in arms:

Of environmental lobbyists [Borlaug] has stated, “some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They’ve never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.”

Not the least of Borlaug’s achievements is a marriage that lasted sixty-nine years, ended only by the death of his 95-year old wife last year after a fall. Borlaug had married an older woman, by the way; he’s a mere ninety-four.

Africa and change: what hath the missionaries wrought?

The New Neo Posted on by

Matthew Parris is a British atheist, not predisposed to favor or look kindly on the work of Christian missionaries in Africa. And yet he also seems to be a member of that rare group of people who, when observing a situation, cannot deny the evidence of their own eyes and the conclusions of their discerning minds.

Parris has come to the reluctant admission that the work missionaries have done in Africa has been basically helpful to the Africans themselves, and that’s not just in the practical sense of opening schools and hospitals. Parris is saying something far more controversial:

In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding – as you can – the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write…

But this doesn’t fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

Parris goes on to describe the transformation he has observed, the difference between the converted and those still mired in tribal attitudes. He says the former are more open, relaxed, lively, curious, and engaged with the world. Parris rejects the cultural/moral relativism that denies that there is anything inherently better about these sort of attitudes as opposed to the characteristics fostered by traditional tribal beliefs. Instead, he insists on making a distinction, and a judgment:

I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety—fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things—strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won’t take the initiative, won’t take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

As a onetime student of anthropology—it was my minor in college—I have a few things to say about that. I agree with Parris about the bankruptcy of moral relativism (see this for my two-part series on the subject, as well as its relation to anthropology). I have no personal experience of missionaries in Africa, but his observations make a certain amount of sense to me, and he has special credence because he comes to his conclusions from a position of reluctance due to his confirmed atheism.

One of the main things anthropologists study these days is not societies in isolation, preserved as in amber. They study societies in the midst of cultural contact and cultural change of a major sort. African societies originally evolved when the continent had few cultural contacts with the West, but that time is long past. Societal characteristics that may have been functional in a more self-contained environment can become highly dysfunctional during times of what is known as cultural clash.

The clash is not always between non-Western and Western societies, by the way. It can be between two non-Western groups, and it has been occurring since human beings began (note that one of the earliest conflicts may have been between Neanderthals and our ancestors, Cro-Magnons).

In Parris’s essay, he points out that certain pre-existing tribal traditions seem to lead many Africans in directions that favor the “gangster politics” that currently hold sway in far too many nations on that continent. My guess is that these traditions originally worked fairly well at the tribal level, when strong leaders emerged in the small and local group in which everyone knew them, and their power was checked and balanced by the rules of the tribal milieu in which they functioned. But now the desire for a “big man” has become unhinged from those moorings, and has become highly dysfunctional in the new milieu of city and nation.

Another point that occurred to me when reading Parris’s essay is that those Africans drawn to Christianity may have been different from their fellows to begin with. As I’ve noted before, a mind is a difficult thing to change—change is not for everyone. So perhaps these people were more curious, open-minded, and engaged with the world to begin with.

It is curious, however, that Parris does not mention Islam in his essay, since that religion is quite prevalent in Africa as well. He discusses the influence of Christian missionaries in Malawi, for example. But it turns out that Islam is the second largest religion in that country after Christianity, and there are Muslim missionaries there. It would be very interesting to learn whether Parris’ observations about the traits of Christian converts also holds true for converts to Islam.

Most admired: Obama, Clinton, and company

The New Neo Posted on by

I suppose it should come as no great surprise that, according to a recent Gallup poll, Barack Obama is Americans’ most admired living man in the world.

Yep, that’s right—in the world. And Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman. What’s more, she’s “most admired” for the seventh straight year.

These findings may be more a function of the structure of this particular poll than anything else. When asked an open-ended question such as that, people are hard-pressed to think of an answer. They tend to go to someone they kinda like but who also has extreme name recognition, someone whose name comes to mind first.

For example, when I tried to think what my answer would be if Gallup were to ask me (alas; they never call, they never write), no name surfaced immediately. I can think of political people from the past quite readily: Churchill and Lincoln would be the first two. Artists are somehow a bit iffier, their accomplishments less obvious—although hardly less important in the larger scheme of things. I love Robert Frost’s poetry, for example, but the man (at least according to biographies) was, like most human beings, a very mixed bag.

I admire certain friends of mine who’ve accomplished a lot and are trying to do right by those near and dear, as well. But I really couldn’t respond with their names in a Gallup Poll. Artists of all stripes give the same problems I already discussed in the Frost example.

But if forced to choose, I’d say General Petraeus. What’s not to admire? He’s brilliant, composed, articulate, and effective. And this is true in an arena in which many others have tried and failed. He succeeded, and did so while keeping his head when all about him were losing theirs (sometimes literally). And for women, although I’ll no doubt be ridiculed mercilessly for this one, I admire Sarah Palin for her tenacity, courage, and ability to accomplish much in the public sphere while having an admirable personal life as well. And she certainly has the immediate name recognition factor.

Who else did Americans choose for the honors? If you go to the more complete Gallup poll results, you’ll see there’s a tremendous drop-off in percentages after top contenders Obama (32%) and Clinton (20%). 11% of respondents were with me on the Sarah Palin thing, which made her number two for the women. Margaret Thatcher is in there, hanging on by the skin of her teeth (2%; I didn’t think of her because I forgot she was still alive), although besting Ellen De Generes (Ellen De Generes??) by only one percent.

As for the men, Bush scored a surprisingly high 5% (surprising me, that is; he’s way below the usual score for sitting presidents). Also-ran John McCain came in at a paltry 3%. But at least that beats Pope Benedict, 2%, who’s tied with Billy Graham and Bill Clinton in a rather interesting troika. Alas, my man Petraeus is nowhere to be found, although generals are represented in general by Colin Powell (also 2%).

You got any better suggestions?

Post-holiday retail blues

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, Amazon’s happy. It posted its best holiday sales ever. This is no surprise, because the terrible weather that combined with the terrible economy to cause nearly everyone else to have a bad sales season would favor internet shopping such as Amazon’s. Even drastic post-holiday price slashes aren’t having the desired effect, and retailers count on holiday sales for thirty to fifty percent of their year-round business.

As little as I usually buy over the holidays, I bought even less this year. And what I bought was very minimalist (translation: inexpensive). I may not be the typical holiday consumer. But in every store I entered where I engaged the owner or salesperson in conversation—especially a local gift store that seemed particularly empty—the answer to “How’s it going this year?” was invariably “Bad,” or a mere sad shake of the head.

And that ain’t good for any us, because the economy is an interrelated web in which, when an entire segment such as retailers does poorly, we all will feel the pinch down the road. It’s Catch-22: we want to save money. But the less we spend, the more we further depress the entire system.

Personally, though, I happened to receive some exceptionally nice gifts this year. So I guess I’m doing my bit for the economy after all.

Merry Christmas!

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m a little delayed in wishing you a Merry Christmas—and I forgot to post my annual “Twas the Bloggers’ Night Before Christmas” on Christmas Eve—because I’ve been traveling.

Yes, I finally managed to procure a flight yesterday, and arrived at my West Coast destination late last night. I’ve traveled before on Christmas Eve, and I could not help but notice that this year the volume of people was higher by a factor that was geometric rather than arithmetic.

In other words, it was way crowded. And I was sandwiched between crying babies every step of the way. I have a tolerance for the parents of crying babies—I was one myself not too long ago (a parent of crying baby that is, not a crying baby itself) and I know how hard it can be. But still, after the sixth hour or so it can set one’s teeth on edge.

However, I’m happy to have managed to get a flight at all, and most especially happy to have arrived.

And happy to wish you all a most happy holiday[s]—Christmas and Chanuka being celebrated together this year.

Let’s talk Iran out of nuclear weapons…

The New Neo Posted on by

…says Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations. Sure, why not?

Actually, Haass’s article is not really as insane as it may sound. His rather half-hearted and even desperate argument goes something like this: all the alternatives are bad, so let’s give this one a go. Maybe we can sweeten the deal enough to make it worth Iran’s while to abandon its dogged pursuit of nuclear weapons. But perhaps not.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Whether there’s even a chance of such a thing succeeding depends on how rational and well-meaning you think the mullahs of Iran might be. My answer is “not especially.” I believe that at some point the hard choices will need to be made—among those rather poor alternatives Haass outlines in the piece.

But perhaps the most depressing part of the article are the comments. I only read the first few, but they tend towards sympathy for the mullahs, who’ve unfairly been kept out of the nuclear club. Boo hoo.