Obedience to Authority and the Art of Torture: A Social Psychological Phenomenon

Abstract

This paper will review published literature on how certain authority figures brainwash, condition, convince, or persuade average, everyday, normal, healthy human beings in the art of torture. The paper will also discuss how great thinkers such as Karl Marx, Talcott Parsons, Max Weber, and Erich Fromm defined the relationship between obedience and authority. Another important topic for review in this investigation is understanding how individuals obey those authorities that assign them the task of torture. The examination will ask the question of whether torturers are sadists who enjoy inflicting pain and suffering on other human beings, or if they are just doing their job. Must one be a monster or tyrannical maniac to perform such abhorrent acts? Not so, according to certain research performed by psychologist Stanley Milgram, who suggested that there were three specific reasons why people obey or disobey authority. In addition, we will briefly examine case studies like the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, and the incident of torture at Abu Ghraib prison during the war in Iraq. There is also evidence that attempts to explain this social psychological phenomenon in research performed by Janice T. Gibson, Ed.D., an educational and developmental psychologist, and Mika Haritos-Fatouros, a clinical psychologist, who examined the use of torture by Greek military police when the country was ruled by a military junta that lasted from 1967 through 1974. The results of their analysis were that there seems to be “a cruel method, in the education of a torturer”. This paper will conduct a literature review of the relationship between torture, obedience, and authority.