Pressure to Go Along With Abuse Is Strong, but Some Soldiers Find Strength to Refuse


The images of prisoner abuse still trickling out of Iraq show a side of human behavior that psychologists have sought to understand for decades. But the murky reports of a handful of soldiers who refused to take part bring to light a behavior psychologists find even more puzzling: disobedience.


Buried in his report earlier this year on Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba praised the actions of three men who tried to stop the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees. They are nowhere to be seen in the portraits of brutality that have touched off outrage around the world.

Although details of their actions are sketchy, it is known that one soldier, Lt. David O. Sutton, put an end to one incident and alerted his commanders. William J. Kimbro, a Navy dog handler, "refused to participate in improper interrogations despite significant pressure" from military intelligence, according to the report. And Specialist Joseph M. Darby gave military police the evidence that sounded the alarm.

In numerous studies over the past few decades, psychologists have found that a certain percentage of people simply refuse to give in to pressure — by authorities or by peers — if they feel certain actions are wrong.

The soldiers have been reluctant to elaborate on what they saw and why they came forward. In an interview with The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., Lieutenant Sutton, a Newport News police sergeant, said, "I don't want to judge, but yes, I witnessed something inappropriate and I reported it."

The public will assume that there was widespread corruption, he told another local paper, "when in reality, it's just one bad apple."

In the noted experiment 40 years ago when Dr. Stanley Milgram showed that most people will deliver a lethal dose of electricity to another subject if instructed to do so by a scientist in a white lab coat, a minority still said no.

"These people are rare," said Dr. Elliot Aronson, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who studies social influence. "It's really hard for us to predict in advance who is going to resist by looking at things like demographic data or religious background."

The men singled out by General Taguba dissented despite the threat of being ridiculed or even court-martialed for not following orders. Psychologists believe they may have been guided by a strong moral compass and past experiences with conformity.

"It is sometimes the case that they themselves have been scapegoated or turned on by the crowd,"said Dr. John Darley, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton. "If you go back into the lives of these people you can often find some incident that has made very vivid to them the pressures of conformity working on the others in the group."

People who break from the crowd to blow the whistle, history shows, are often the most psychologically distanced from the situation. In 1968, Hugh Thompson, a helicopter pilot, was flying over Vietnam as G.I.'s were killing civilians. The soldiers on the ground had been told that the vilage, My Lai, was a Vietcong stronghold. But from above Mr. Thompson could see there was no enemy fire. He landed his helicopter, rescued some villagers, and told his commanders about the massacre.

What happened there, and what ocurred at Abu Ghraib, Dr. Darley said, was a slow escalation.

Referring to reports that the guards were told to "soften up" the prisoners for interrogation, he said that it apparently "drifted more and more toward humiliation."

"Perhaps they thought they were doing the right thing, he said. "But someone who didn't get caught up at the start, someone who walks in and hasn't been involved in the escalation, like the pilot Thompson, can see the process for what it really is."

Mr. Thompson was supported by his gunner, Larry Colburn, who helped him round up civilians and radioed for help.

It is not clear when the three men cited in General Taguba's report tried to interfere with the interrogations or whether they had contact with one another. But a transcript of a court-martial hearing on May 1 suggests that additional officers who knew one another also tried to pass reports of the scandal up the chain of command.

Dr. Solomon E. Asch showed in experiments on compliance half a century ago that people are more likely to break from a group if they have an ally. Subjects in his experiment were asked to look at different lines on a card and judge their lengths. Each subject was unknowingly placed in a group of "confederates" who deliberately chose a line that was obviously wrong. About a third of the time, the subjects would give in and go along with the majority.



But if one confederate broke from the group and gave another answer, even a wrong answer, the subjects were more likely to give the response they knew was correct.

"The more you feel support for your dissent, the more likely you are to do it," said Dr. Danny Axsom, an associate professor of psychology at Virginia Tech.

A lack of supervision, which General Taguba pointed out in his report, and confusion over the chain of command, Dr. Axsom said, may have also emboldened the three soldiers.

"There was less perceived legitimacy," he said. "If it's clear who the authority is, then you're more likely to obey. If it's not, then the legitimacy of the whole undertaking is undermined."

The power to resist coercion reflects what psychologists call internal locus of control, or the ability to determine one's own destiny. People at the other end of the scale, with external locus of control, are more heavily influenced by authority figures. They prefer to put their fate in the hands of others.

"If they fail a test, it's the teacher's fault; if they do poorly at a job, it's the boss's fault," said Dr. Thomas Ollendick, a professor of psychology at Virginia Tech. "They put the blame for everything outside of themselves. They are high in conformity because they believe someone else in charge."

The average person, research shows, falls somewhere in the middle of the scale. People who voluntarily enlist in the military, knowing they will take orders, Dr. Ollendick suggested, may be more likely to conform. "These are people who are being told what to do," he said. "The ones who are conforming from the outset feel they can't change the system they're in. Those who blow the whistle can go above the situation and survive. They can basically endure whatever negative consequences might come from their actions."

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