Dartblog

A longtime Dartblog reader — a Dartmouth-trained psychiatrist — shares some thoughts on the pressures and obligations of members of large institutions:

Mr. Andrew Lohse ‘12, the author of the column on hazing in the Dartmouth Greek system, says that he has learned that “good people can do awful things to one another - for absolutely no reason.” How true!

There are two classical social psychological studies which bear this out, if it needs bearing out. One was by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale in the early 60’s who conducted an experiment in which “subjects” were told that they had to apply electric shocks to “students” who were trying to learn a task when errors were made, on the argument that the shocks helped the “students” learn. It was all bogus and there were no shocks, but the “subjects” believed that they were administering intense shocks to the “students.” All in the name of “help.”

The second experiment which comes to mind is the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971. Stanford students were assigned to be either “guards” or “prisoners” in a setting in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department. The study went on for several days, during which the “guards” behaved extremely abusively to the “prisoners.” Zimbardo is a brilliant guy.

You can Google these studies to read about them. Needless to say, they were never repeated. The lesson of these experiments (not to mention circumstances which occur in political or military settings) is clear. Institutions have a clear responsibility to protect those for whom they have a significant measure of responsibility from physically or psychologically harmful consequences of sanctioned activities which occur under their purview.

I hate to say this, but, were I Mr. Lohse’s parent, I would be talking to an attorney. That might get the administration’s attention, if more reasoned approaches do not.

Note: My correspondent might also have referred to the Asch conformity experiments (no relation to me) in which subjects in an experiment at Swarthmore were cajoled by peer pressure into conclusions that were patently wrong. Only 24% of subjects refused to ever conform to the obviously incorrect, prevailing opinion; all the other subjects gave into pressure to provide a wrong answer at least once in a series of tests.

Addendum: A Letter to the Editor today in The D opines: “Simply put, if you are sick of swimming in a pool of feces, get up out of the pool and walk away.” The above psychological research shows that in many instances, this action is more easily advocated than done. The world is a great deal more complicated than the author of this letter understands or will admit.