【「空気を読め」という圧力の恐ろしさ】
The Power of the Situation
Evil results from social forces. Situations can induce ordinary people to capitulate cruelty..…the most terrible evil evolves from a sequence of small evils. German civil servants surprised Nazi leaders with their willingness to handle the paperwork of the Holocaust. They were not killing Jews, of course; they were merely pushing paper. When fragmented, evil becomes easier (208).
【訳】悪は社会的な力によって生まれる。場の空気に呑まれて平凡な人びとが残酷になる・・実に酷い凶悪行為も小さな悪行の積み重ねからなる。ホロコーストを遂行するための事務手続きを自ら進んで行なったドイツ人公務員らの積極性はナチス党の高官たちを驚かせた。もちろん彼らはユダヤ人を殺していたのではなく、事務処理を進めていただけである。悪行も分業すればやりやすくなるのだ。
During the early 1970s, Greece’s military junta used this “blame-the-victim” process to train torturers. There, as in the earlier training of SS officers in Nazi Germany, the military selected candidates based on their respect for and submission to authority. But such tendencies alone do not make torturer. Thus, they would first assign the trainee to guard prisoners, then to participate in arrest squads, then to hit prisoners, then to observe torture, and only then to participate it. Step by step, an obedient but otherwise decent person evolved into an agent of cruelty. Compliance bred acceptance.
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The Power of the Situation
Evil results from social forces. Situations can induce ordinary people to capitulate cruelty..…the most terrible evil evolves from a sequence of small evils. German civil servants surprised Nazi leaders with their willingness to handle the paperwork of the Holocaust. They were not killing Jews, of course; they were merely pushing paper. When fragmented, evil becomes easier (208).
【訳】悪は社会的な力によって生まれる。場の空気に呑まれて平凡な人びとが残酷になる・・実に酷い凶悪行為も小さな悪行の積み重ねからなる。ホロコーストを遂行するための事務手続きを自ら進んで行なったドイツ人公務員らの積極性はナチス党の高官たちを驚かせた。もちろん彼らはユダヤ人を殺していたのではなく、事務処理を進めていただけである。悪行も分業すればやりやすくなるのだ。
【アイヒマン実験】Milgram’s Obedience Experiment
Closeness and Legitimacy of Authority
The reported 70 fast-food restaurant managers in 30 states..between 1995 and 2006, complied with orders from a self-described authority, usually posing as a police officer. The supposed officer described a generic employee or customer. Once the manger had identified someone fitting the description, the authoritative-sounding caller gave an order to stripsearch the person to see if he or she had stolen property. One male Taco Bell manager in Arizona pulled aside a 17-year-old female customer who fit the description and, with the caller giving orders, carried out a search that included body cavities. After forcing a 19-year-old female employee to strip against her will, a South Dacota restaurant manager explained explained that “ I never wanted to do it….I was just doing what he told me to do.”(204)
(Milgram) examined the conditions that breed obedience. When he varied the social conditions, compliance ranged from 0 to 93 percent fully obedient. Four factors that determined obedience were the victim’s emotional distance, the authority’s closeness and legitimacy, whether or not the authority was part of a respected institution, and the liberating effects of a disobedient fellow participant (201).
Closeness and Legitimacy of Authority
【大意】犯罪捜査当局を自称するものが（その多くは警察官のフリをし）、ファーストフード店のマネージャーに、一般店員や客のなかに「こういう特徴のあるものがいないか」と問い合わせ、訊かれたマネージャーが該当する店員や客に思い当たると、さらにその問い合わせの特徴に該当する者が店のものを盗んでいないか服を脱がせて調べるように電話で指示するという事件が全米３０州の約７０店舗で起こった。アリゾナ州のとあるタコベル店舗のマネージャーは、特徴がマッチする１７歳の女性客を店の奥へ連れ込み、本人の意思に反して裸にし、電話での指示を受けながら、肛門まで開いて調べる検査を行なった。
In another incident, a McDonald’s manager received a call from an Officer Scott” who described an employee he said was suspected of purse stealing….over her 3 ½ hours of humiliating detention, the requests became progressively more bizarre, including sexual contact with a male. The traumatized teen sued McDonald’s (204).
【大意】あるマクドナルド店舗のマネージャーは、スコットという名の警官を名乗る者から電話を受け、財布を泥棒した疑いがあると言う店員の特徴を告げられた。そのマネージャーは特徴が該当する１８歳の女性を事務所へ連れ込み、電話の指示で三時間半に及ぶ屈辱的な取調べを行なったあげく、電話の声の要求はどんどん異様なものへとエスカレートし、男性の恥部へ性的行為を行なわせるにまで及んだ。トラウマとなったこの女の子はマクドナルドを訴え６百１０万ドルの賠償を得た。
Reference:
マクドナルド少女強制ストリップ事件 実録映像（米 ABC放送）
Opie & Anthony - Louise Ogborn McDonalds Security Tape
Behavior and Attitudes 【行動と心的態度】
Recall step-by-step entrapment of the foot-in-the door phenomenon as we compare this hypothetical experiment to what Milgram’s participants experienced…By the time they delivered 330 volts, the participants had complied 22 times and redused some of their dissonance…Ditto the fast food restaurant managers in the strip research scam, after they complied with initially reasonable-seeming orders from a supposed authority…External behavior and internal disposition can feed each other, sometimes in an escalating spiral. Thus, reported Milgram:
Many subjects harshly devaluate the victim as a consequence of acting against him. Such comments as, “He was so stupid and stubborn he deserved to get shocked,” were common. Once having acted against the victim, these subjects found it necessary to view him as an unworthy individual, whose punishment was made inevitable by his own deficiencies of intellect and character.
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Displacement:（「八つ当たり」の用語定義）
The redirection of aggression to a target other than the source of the frustration. Generally, the new target is a safer or more socially acceptable target.
(p.360)
【欲求不満から起こる攻撃心】
Aggression as a Response To Frustration
Displacement occurs in an old anecdote about a man who, humiliated by his boss, betrates his wife, who yells at their son, who kicks the dog, which bites the mail carrier (who goes home and betrates his wife…). When a person is harboring anger from a prior provocation, even a trivial offense—one that would normally produce no response—may elicit an explosive overreaction (as you may realize if you have ever yelled at your roommate after losing money in a malfunctioning vending machine) (360).【スケープゴート理論】
Frustration and Aggression: The Scapegoat Theory
Targets for displaced aggression vary. Following their defeat in World War I…many Germans saw Jews as villains. Long before Hitler came to power, one German leader explained: “The Jew is just convenient…If there were no Jews, the anti-Semites would have to invent them.” In earlier centries people vented their fear and hostility on witches, whom they sometimes burned or drowned in public. In our time, it was those Americans who felt more anger than fear after the 9/11 attack who expressed greater intolerance toward immigrants and Middle Easterners. Passions provoke prejudice (325).
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【扇動された恐怖心の利用】
The Effect of Arousing Fear
Vivid propaganda often exploits fears. When feeling frightened or threatened, people tend to become more responsive to a controversial, charismatic leader. The Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer aroused fear with hundreds of unsubstantiated anecdotes about Jews who were said to have ground rats to make hash, seduced non-Jewish women, and cheated families out of their savings. Streicher’s appeals, like most Nazi propaganda, were emotional, not logical. The appeals also gave clear, specific instructions on how to combat “the danger”: They listed Jewish businesses so readers would avoid them, encouraged readers to submit for publication the names of Germans who patronized Jewish shops and professionals, and directed readers to compile lists of Jews in their area (242).
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Social Dilemma: Tragedy of Commons
The “commons” is any shared resource, including air, water, energy sources, and food supplies. The tragedy occurs when individuals consume more than their share, with the cost of their doing so dispersed among all, causing the ultimate collapse – the tragedy – of the commons(487).
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【非道な行為も繰り返すほど抵抗なくなる】
Evil and Moral Acts
A trifling evil act can whittle down one’s moral sensitivity, making it easier to perform a worse act…it is not as difficult to find a person who has never succumed to a given temptation as to find a person who has succumed only once. After telling a “white lie” and thinking, “Well, that wasn’t so bad,” the person may go on to tell a bigger lie.
Another way in which evil acts influence attitudes is the paradoxical fact that we tend not only to hurt those we dislike but also to dislike those we hurt. Several studies found that harming an innocent victim – by uttering hurtful comments or delivering electric shocks – typically leads aggressions to disparage their victims, thus helping justify their cruel behavior. This is especially so when we are coaxed into it, not coerced.
The phenomenon appears in war time. Prisoner-of-war camp guards would sometimes display good manners to captives in their first days on the jobs, but not for long. Soldiers ordered to kill may initially react with revulsion to the point of sickness over their act. But not for long. Often they will denigrate their enemies with dehumanizing nicknames.
Attitudes also follow behavior in peacetime. A group that holds another in slavery will likely come to perceive the slaves as having traits that justify their oppression. Prison staff who participate in excecutions experience “moral disengegement” by coming to believe (more strongly than do other prison staff) that their victims deserve their fate. Actions and attitudes feed one another, sometimes to the point of moral numbness. The more one harms another and adjusts one’s attitudes, the easier harm-doing becomes. Conscience is corroded (136-7).
Myers, David G. Social Psychology. 10th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.
