Key Issue: Social

For this section you need to be able to:

Describe one key issue of relevance to today’s society and apply concepts, theories and/or research (as appropriate) drawn from the Social Approach to explain the issue.

Suitable examples:

blind obedience to authority in a prison setting (for example the Abu Ghraib situation)

obedience during conflict resulting in harm to others (for example My Lai Massacre, Vietnam 1968)

football violence

race riots (for example St Paul’s, Bristol 1980)

cult behaviour.

Note: in examination, students may be given stimulus material from a key issue to explain using concepts, theories and/or research (as appropriate) from the Social Approach.

Abu Ghraib

One issue that can be explained by the Social Approach is blind obedience to authority in a prison setting (for example the Abu Ghraib situation).

For example, during the summer of 2004 photographs of torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners held by the US military at Abu Ghraib prison were leaked to the press.  Following the outcry the soldiers involved were court-martialled and 11 were found guilty of abuse.  They always claimed that they were simply doing as they were told (to soften the prisoners up for interrogation) and that they were no more than pawns of authority.  The prosecution argued that these were corrupt cops who took pleasure in tormenting the prisoners in their care.

Milgram may have provided evidence for the defence because his research suggested that ordinary people will do bad things when put into a social situation that requires it.  The soldiers were acting as agents for higher authority just as the teacher in his study obeyed the orders to harm someone else, so too did the soldiers in this case.  You could argue that as this was their job then they are even more likely to act as agents and obey and this view would be supported by the way the nurses showed higher levels of obedience in Hofling’s hospital study.

Using social identity theory to explain this conduct also works because the soldiers would be part of an in group with the prisoners as an out group.  They are at war and this would increase the desire to appear superior and boost their social identity leading to the kind of humiliation they caused the Iraqi prisoners to suffer.

On the other hand, this behaviour, though widespread was not universal, not all the guards engaged in it, one (Joe Darby) was responsible for leaking the photos and stopping the abuse suggesting that there was still room for autonomous action, even in this setting.