Introduction: In "The Nature of the Self", Bruce Hood explores the profound influence of society on human behavior, from the Nazi Revolution to the abuse of prisoners in modern society, and how individuals become consistent with the group in their unconscious manipulation by others. Cases such as the Milgram experiment and the Abu Gleb prison abuse reveal the phenomenon of "banality", in which seemingly ordinary people can commit atrocities under certain circumstances. It also delves into the chameleon effect, explains how people unconsciously imitate the behavior of others, and experimentally confirms how external events affect people's behavior and cognitive level.
Much of the study of obedience appeared shortly after World War II, when the pain of Nazi atrocities had not yet subsided. Ashi, Milgram, and Zimbardo are all American Jews, and they want to know why the Nazi Revolution happened. And in fact, the whole world wants to know the answer to this question. To this day, we still ponder the same question: Why would seemingly ordinary people commit such heinous acts to others?
Perhaps the Milgram experiment was a special product of an era ruled by authoritarianism, and now people in the post-Watergate era are much freer and more wary of the corrosive effects of power. However, as recently as 2007, ABC's TV show ** Time repeated the Milgram experiment. Of the 40 participants, about 2 3 still succumbed to the orders of the white coat-clad examiner and turned the level of the shock to the highest gear. Therefore, if we believe that we can resist the influence of others, we are pure self-deception. In fact,Everyone is at risk of becoming a puppet of torture.
When we hear about the cruel torture of others, we still wonder: why can human beings become so **? A shocking example is the abuse of prisoners in Abu Gleb prison. In 2004, the world's major newspapers rushed to publish a series of prisoner abuses**. In these, naked Iraqi male prisoners are stacked on top of each other to form a human-shaped pyramid. Beside them, the officers laughed and gave thumbs up, struck various poses, and took group photos of these considered trophies. In addition, they inflicted psychological torture on the prisoners: the hooded prisoners were forced to stand on the boxes with their hands outstretched, and if they fell, the jailers inflicted "electric shocks" through fake wires wrapped around their fingers. These** bear a striking resemblance to the situation in the prison experiments in Zimbardo. Other prisoners are forced to wear women's clothing or engage in simulated sexual acts with others. These ** show that the atrocities that were still being committed in Abu Ghraib prison, which Saddam Hussein used to torture his opponents, after the occupation by the coalition forces, are still being carried out as before.
At first, the commander of the US military denounced these scandals as the behavior of the black sheep, claiming that some psychologically abnormal sadists had unfortunately infiltrated the interior of this excellent army. Of particular note, though, is that there is also a female soldier in **. Private Lindy England is smiling in ** and is leading a naked male prisoner with a dog collar. Lindy England grew up mediocre and never behaved out of the ordinary, so she can't be judged a sexual sadist. One of her former instructors even described her as a "** person". Therefore, she may just be an ordinary person who imitates the behavior of others. Her lover Charles Garner is the leader of the prisoner abuse and the photographer, and he may have had a significant impact on her. But in any case, it will be the innocent smiling face of 21-year-old England, not Ghana's, that will forever be associated with these cruelties.
Such ** is perhaps the most disturbing. In the early '60s, when the philosopher Hannah Arendt was commissioned by The New Yorker to report on the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, she wrote that the problem with Eichmann and his party was that they were not born **, but simply "extremely horrible ordinary." The seemingly ordinary people have committed unspeakable atrocities, and her so-called "banal evil" seems to be the evidence that individuals have succumbed to the cruelty of war, and that people are powerless to resist the will of others.
When it comes to group influence in the above study, no one seems to be ignorant of their own behavior. In the real-life case of blind obedience, described by Zimbardo, it is entirely possible that people are also aware of what they are doing. They just don't think they're responsible for those actions. Even in the illusion of the ego, they remain convinced that they can do otherwise if they do not want to, but in reality, they are always more inclined to suspend the execution of their will in order to be consistent with others or to obey authority figures.
It's not nice to realize this, but then people are always able to weigh the best long-term interests as a way to justify their compromises in the long run. This brings us back to our old friend's cognitive dissonance. Sometimes, our actions can also be unconsciously manipulated by those around us. It's all going on in secret, and in the process, we're not even aware that we're being swayed by social influences.
For example, Jaap Dixter Hoys, a psychologist at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, recalled his own experience of going to a football match with several colleagues. On the way to the stadium, the academics, who had initially appeared calm and orderly, were quickly swept into a crowd of hundreds of shouting fans and football hooligans. That's when something unusual happened: one of them saw an empty beer can and kicked it far away on impulse. After reacting, he stood there for a moment, unable to believe what he had just done. He was no longer an individual, he had become the same as the crowd around him. This kindThe phenomenon of changing one's behavior in order to be consistent with others is known as the "chameleon effect."chameleons are named after them because they can change their skin color as the environment changes. This behavior is not deliberate, and our imitation of others is automatic. The objects that can be imitated include almost everything, from simple body postures, expressions and gestures to complex behavior patterns such as speech and emotions.
We are influenced by others without even noticing it. When working towards a goal, the brain's mirror nervous system is activated both by our own activity and by the actions of others who share the same goal. These mirror neurons map the behavior of others directly into our brains in a way that is similar to resonance. It's like if you pluck the G string on one guitar in a guitar shop, and if it's loud enough, the G string of all the other guitars in the store will eventually vibrate in sync.
The same is true for human mirroring behavior. Almost all of us have a repertoire of behaviors that can be activated by the actions of others without us even noticing, without realizing that we are imitating others. This imitation takes place unconsciously and may cause us to engage in behaviors such as stilting our legs, yawning, rubbing our nose, playing with our hair, changing our sitting posture or speaking style. It is an effective mechanism that connects the self to others. Imitation is not completely automated, we only imitate the person we like in order to achieve self-satisfaction: we imitate the behavior of the person we like, and the other person's liking for us will increase accordingly, so we are more likely to imitate us, and finally create an atmosphere of sympathy in this cycle.
Not only do we favor those who imitate our own behavior, but we are more than happy to help them when they need it. We even feel like we're getting better when we're being imitated, and this effect lasts for quite some time. In a related study, participants whose behavior was imitated by others donated twice as much money as those who were not imitated, and the donations were anonymous. Additionally, when restaurant waiters mimic the behavior of customers, they receive more tips than usual.
However, we are not completely puppets at the mercy of others. Even if there is no full awareness of the existence of mimicry, the mirror system that controls social interaction can isolate outsiders by carefully evaluating and screening those who can be imitated. As a result, we are more inclined to imitate those who are in the same social circle as us or who want to befriend, and those who are outside the circle are not among them. In fact, if outsiders imitate us, we will only be more disgusted by them.
Early in development, babies begin to develop affection for those who imitate them. Their imitation of facial expressions can be seen as an early example of mimicry behavior, in which the brain's motor system is automatically activated by the actions of others. This may also explain why the reserves in the behavioral reserve are still very limited at the beginning of a person's life, after all, there are only a handful of behaviors that a newborn can perform on its own. In the first 12 months of life, the opportunities to imitate others gradually increase, and the cunning babies also begin to look for those who imitate themselves. When 5-month-old babies are placed in a walker and can move freely around the ground, they are more willing to approach strangers who imitate their behavior than people who don't respond to them and don't keep their behavior in sync. Sometimes, it's not just the lack of mimicry that makes babies stunted, but also the lack of time and effort. Mothers with postpartum depression usually have two ways of parenting their babies, either overly cold or overly enthusiastic, either of which is detrimental to the child's development. Two-month-old babies are more likely to prefer moderate, mimick-based interactions.
Synchronicity is a major feature of social interaction. Conversations often require participants to take turns, and everyone who has listened to a radio talk show knows that when everyone is talking in unison, no one can hear what the other is saying. Therefore, statements need to be made sequentially. This pattern is already present early in development: when mothers breastfeed their babies, they instinctively know how to synchronize themselves with the rhythm of their baby's movements to match their sucking speed, which is sometimes fast and sometimes slow. The synchronization of action and timing can continue to affect social interactions throughout a person's life. Children must learn how to take turns and control their impulses. People need to learn a variety of daily routines, and these rules highlight the importance of working with others. People who are unable to exercise self-control in the presence of others are described as losing control.
The various institutions that make up society, such as schools, churches, and the military, also need synchronization among members to consolidate internal unity in order to prosper. ** The beauty of dance depends on the synchronization of time. In the modern military, even if soldiers need to master more science and technology, instead of fighting on the battlefield as they did in the past, they still need to learn how to move in unison to create harmony in the ranks. Synchronization is so important that that's why we describe those who can't align with the group as "out of pace" or "left behind".
Organisation can not only be used to control large numbers of individuals, but can actually promote the occurrence of prosocial behavior. In one study, participants were assigned to different groups, led by the main test taker on a walk around the campus, with some groups keeping the same pace and others not. After that, they all participate in a trading game in groups, and the goal of the game is to maximize the total gains of the group. In order to achieve this goal, the members of the group must collectively choose an option that is riskier but has more benefits, while the option with lower risk can only achieve lower returns. If members don't feel the team is cohesive, they tend to choose the safer option. The researchers found that groups that were at the same pace before the game performed better, and even though they didn't know what the purpose of the walk was, there was greater team cohesion among them. Even asked the Americans to sing the national anthem of neighboring Canada, "Oh! Canada, they were also more likely to win in a trading game that tested their level of trust than those who had only heard the song or read the lyrics.
Psychologist John ** from Yale University has experimentally demonstrated that the chameleon effect only needs to be asked to read an article about the characteristics of others. This is the priming effectIt reflects the fact that the brain region that stores specific information can be affected in some way by externally related events. For example, when students were asked to organize a series of sentences containing words related to aging, such as "forgetful," "retired," "wrinkled," "stiff," "traditional," "acerb," "submissive," "conservative," "knit," "dependent," "old," "helpless," "gullible," and so on, they often left the lab walking in a manner much like that of older adults, walking more slowly and falling more easily. However, if they read sentences with impolite connotations, such as "bold", "disturbing", "obstructive", "intrusive", "annoying", "shameless", "impolite", "violating", "disgusting", etc., they were more likely to interrupt the conversation than those who read polite sentences.
Relevant external events can have an effect on people, and sometimes just being exposed to these words can change people's thinking, which in turn can affect behavior in a short period of time. In fact, it is not only the behavior that can be affected, but also the level of knowledge that can be affected by the priming effect, becoming higher or lower. If you take 5 minutes to think about what it takes to be a professor, you'll do better in the next National Guessing Challenge than those who spend that time thinking about how to be a football hooligan. Claude Steele is one of the most prestigious black psychologists in the United States, and his research focuses on the negative effects that stereotypes can have on behavior. In his study, white students were asked to imagine themselves as black after completing a task. When completing this quest a second time, they will be overtly hostile. This suggests that researchers can also initiate negative stereotypes in the same way. For example, simply listing one's race affects one's task performance, and black students who were asked to fill out a race category before an IQ test performed significantly less on the test than in the control group. These priming effects can even be produced through mimicry behavior. For example, there is a racial stereotype in math tests that Asians score higher than whites, and whites score higher than blacks. To determine whether such stereotypes can be activated by imitative behavior, the researchers put Asian, white and black subjects on a math test.
Before the test, each participant was required to sit in the waiting room for a short time, and another student of the same ethnicity was seated in the same room. However, this student is actually a trained examiner who will imitate or imitate the behavior of the subject. When the main test did not imitate the participants, there was no significant difference in the scores of the three groups, indicating that the stereotype was not activated. However, when imitation was present, Asian subjects performed significantly higher than white subjects, while black participants performed the worst. This imitative behaviour effect is also present in the associated gender stereotype, which states that women are less adept at math than men. While it is our goal to perform as well as possible, we are still more or less influenced by stereotypes and those around us who may unconsciously kick them in.