Part 5 - Why do Humans do Bad Things?

(Part 5 of the University of Hertfordshire Tech Ethics Course. << Part 4 | Part 6 >>)

People do bad things because they’re evil. If you’re a good person, you’ll never do anything wrong.

Hurray!! You can stop reading here.

Hang on a Minute!

Unfortunately, as we discussed in the last article, humans don’t appear to work like that. The study of social psychology suggests our behaviour is highly influenced by our environment. Your individual (usually good) nature is less critical than you might hope.

Most of us want to be ethical. This post is about what psychology tells us stands in our way, and what we can do about that. 

I’m a technologist not a psychologist, so these are mostly the judgments and investigations of my colleague and co-author, the registered psychologist Andrea Dobson. Many thanks Andrea!

Obedience

“More hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than in the name of rebellion.” - C.P. Snow

After the second world war, psychologists started looking at why seemingly-normal people could do very bad things. The trigger was the Nuremberg trials. The world was stunned as, over and over, individuals justified mass murder on the grounds that “Befehl ist Befehl” - an order is an order.

In 1963, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram decided to investigate further. He wanted to know how powerful the desire to be obedient was and how far it could change people’s behaviour. He devised a set of infamous electric shock experiments and what he found was extraordinarily disturbing. 65% of ordinary Americans would electrocute a stranger, provided the order came from an authority figure.

Some of the studies that followed have reported obedience rates of over 80% (from Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, and Holland). It is now well accepted that obedience is a powerful driver in human behaviour.

Is that all? Do we merely follow orders or is there anything else as powerful that affects us?

Conformity

Would you contradict your colleagues? I’d like to think I would, but the evidence suggests I’m kidding myself. Most of us go along with the group consensus, whatever it might be. In fact, psychology tells me I’m more likely to deny the facts than risk being the odd one out.

In the 1950’s, Polish psychologist Solomon Asch ran a series of experiments to investigate how much an individual’s judgments were affected by those of the folk around them. He discovered most of us (nearly 75% in his tests) conform: we will lie or deceive ourselves, at least some of the time, to publicly fit in with an overwhelming majority.

We’re Doomed!

Does this mean we’re the slaves of our environment? Fortunately not. Or not completely.

• 35% of Milgram’s experimental subjects disobeyed orders and wouldn’t “electrocute” their victim, even under extreme social pressure. 
• 95% of Asch’s subjects went against the group at least once, even if they mostly complied. Rebellion was more common if they had an ally or if voting was secret. 

Obedience and Conformity are not insurmountable, they are merely a strong influence that we should be aware of.

Riven with Guilt?

Experiments suggest most of us want to be good but we will often act badly if either those around us are, or we’re told to.

Does that mean we all live in a constant state of guilt and remorse? The answer is kind-of. We’re very good at ignoring our own guilt, or at least rationalising it away, using a process called Moral Disengagement.

Moral Disengagement is the process of convincing ourselves normal ethical standards don’t apply to us in the situation we’re in. We thus avoid the “self-sanction” that would normally stop us doing something wrong.

According to Albert Bandura of Stanford University: “Moral disengagement functions [..] through moral justification, euphemistic labelling, advantageous comparison, displacing or diffusing responsibility, disregarding or misrepresenting injurious consequences, and dehumanising the victim.”

A common way to diffuse moral responsibility, for example, is through group decision-making:

“People act more cruelly under group responsibility than when they hold themselves personally accountable for their actions” - Bandura

Again, it is something we need to be aware of. Moral disengagement doesn’t work in every case but it does appear to work. Remember that any action you take is an action you are personally ethically and legally responsible for, no matter what moral disengagement may tell you.

Unethical Amnesia

If you can’t quite explain away what you did, psychology suggests you have another option: forget all about it.

Psychologists Francesca Gino and Maryam Kouchaki from Northwestern and Harvard Universities conducted a series of experiments on whether people remembered themselves doing good things better than they recalled doing bad ones. Their studies of over 2100 participants demonstrated people recall times they acted ethically, like playing a game fairly, more clearly than times they cheated. Again, this is something to watch out for - we appear to be hardwired to believe we are better behaved than we are. When we behave less well we literally forget it.

We Seem to be Good at Doing Bad Things. How do we Fix That? 

If we want everyone to act more ethically, there are several approaches we could take.

Top-down change of behavior throughout an entire organisation. 

The trouble is, top down change is hard. Even if the CEO really means it, folk probably won’t believe it - at least not for a long time. Top down changes can take years to permeate, and any authority-based approach can also lead to moral disengagement, which is risky in an ethically unclear situation (“The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority” - Stanley Milgram).

Bottom up, individual-driven change. 

Bottom-up change could be quicker - people have a strong desire to see themselves as the goodies and will generally act well if left alone. However, people’s desire to do good is easily derailed by Obedience, Conformity and Moral Disengagement. As Bandura puts it: “Given the many psychological devices for disengaging moral control, societies cannot rely entirely on individuals”.

So what could we do?

Some researchers have suggested bad behaviour in companies often comes from bad incentives. For example:

• Too many business transformation programs can warp a company’s own ethical climate by pushing too much change from the top, too quickly and too frequently. People who are rushed or flustered are more likely to become morally disengaged and act unethically.
• Incentives and pressure to inflate achievement of targets can also cause issues. People do what they are rewarded to do, and most are rewarded for hitting KPIs, not following their principles. Again, this leads to moral disengagement.

The best way to combat disengagement is with engagement. So consider:

• What are people paid and promoted for? Does it incentivise dodgy behaviour?
• Are people punished for speaking up and questioning a decision or the accepted way of doing things?
• Do people feel like they work for an amoral company? If they do, they’ll behave that way too.
• Do leaders acknowledge dilemmas or sweep them under the carpet? Are problems discussed openly and frankly? Are diverse or conflicting views heard? 

Speak up!

“In a true learning organisation, employees are able to speak up, express concern and make mistakes without fearing negative consequences like punishment or ridicule.” - Andrea Dobson

Psychological Safety is a management concept that has become popular in the past few years. The idea is to create a team culture that promotes learning by making any question safe to ask, from “I don’t understand, how does that work?” to “isn’t that going to get someone killed?”

It’s a way of working that makes asking difficult, potentially ethical, questions part of your job (obedient) and expected (compliant) and has been suggested as a bulwark against moral disengagement. It is therefore one possible way to promote a more ethical work environment.

“Life in society requires consensus as an indispensable condition. But consensus, to be productive, requires that each individual contribute independently out of his experience and insight.” - Solomon Asch

Psychological safety is just one aspect of a learning organisation and tools are now around to help companies implement it (which, according to Google’s Aristotle project, has productivity advantages beyond just ethics).

The previous posts in this series talked about why you should act ethically in order to do your job professionally and legally. In this post, we discussed the psychological reasons why you, or your colleagues, might not do so even if you want to. The processes and behavioural norms around us can drive us via obedience, conformity, and moral disengagement. In the next post, we will look at some specific sectors of the industry and examine their ethical pros and cons.

(Part 5 of the University of Hertfordshire Tech Ethics Course. << Part 4 | Part 6 >>)

Authors 

Andrea Dobson-Kock is a Registered Psychologist (HPCP) and a Cognitive Behavioural therapist. As a practicing psychologist, Dobson-Kock specialised in depression and anxiety disorders, complex grief and worked for over a decade in mental health.

Anne Currie is an engineer of 25 years, a speaker, writer and science fiction author. She also teaches Tech Ethics at the University of Hertfordshire.

References

S.E. Asch (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, Vol 70(9),, 1-70.
T.C. McLaverty (2016). The influence of culture on senior leaders as they seek to resolve ethical dilemmas at work
Klass, E. T. (1978). Psychological effects of immoral actions: The experimental evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 85(4), 756
Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
M. Kouchaki & F. Gino (2016). Memories of unethical actions become obfuscated over time. PNAS May 31, 2016. 113 (22) 6166-6171
Hofmann W., Wisneski DC., Brandt, M.J. and Skitka, L.J. (2014). Morality in everyday life. Science 345(6202):1340–1343.
Goodwin, G.P., Piazza, J., Rozin, P. (2014). Moral character predominates in person perception and evaluation. J Pers Soc Psychol 106(1):148–168.
Festinger & Carlsmith (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 203 – 210
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371-378    .
W. Weiten (2010). Psychology: themes and variations

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