Would You Stand up to an Oppressive Regime or Would You Conform? Here’s the Science
We
all like to think of ourselves as heroes. But according to science, the
vast majority of people aren’t prepared to rebel against totalitarian
rulers.
The Conversation | Nick Chater
Photo from Jasper Savage / Hulu / Channel 4.
Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale,
described the horror of the authoritarian regime of Gilead. In this
theocracy, self-preservation was the best people could hope for, being
powerless to kick against the system. But her sequel, The Testaments, raises the possibility that individuals, with suitable luck, bravery and cleverness, can fight back.
But can they? There are countless examples of past and present
monstrous regimes in the real world. And they all raise the question of
why people didn’t just rise up against their rulers. Some of us are
quick to judge those who conform to such regimes as evil psychopaths –
or at least morally inferior to ourselves.
But what are the chances that you would be a heroic rebel in
such a scenario, refusing to be complicit in maintaining or even
enforcing the system?
To answer this question, let’s start by considering a now classic analysis by American organisational theorist James March and Norwegian political scientist Johan Olsen from 2004.
They argued that human behaviour is governed by two
complementary, and very different, “logics”. According to the logic of
consequence, we choose our actions like a good economist: weighing up
the costs and benefits of the alternative options in the light of our
personal objectives. This is basically how we get what we want.
But there is also a second logic, the logic of appropriateness.
According to this, outcomes, good or bad, are often of secondary
importance – we often choose what to do by asking “What is a person like
me supposed to do in a situation like this”?
The idea is backed up by psychological research. Human social interactions depend on our tendency to conform
to unwritten rules of appropriate behaviour. Most of us are truthful,
polite, don’t cheat when playing board games and follow etiquette. We
are happy to let judges or football referees enforce rules. A recent study showed we even conform to arbitrary norms.
The logic of appropriateness is self-enforcing – we disapprove
of, ostracise or report people who lie or cheat. Research has shown that
even in anonymous, experimental “games”, people will pay a monetary
cost to punish other people for being uncooperative.
Psychopaths? Photo from the German Federal Archive (Deutsches Bundesarchiv).
The logic of appropriateness is therefore crucial to
understanding how we can organise ourselves into teams, companies and
entire nations. We need shared systems of rules to cooperate – it is
easy to see how evolution may have shaped this.
The psychological foundations for this start early. Children as young as three will protest
if arbitrary “rules” of a game are violated. And we all know how
punishing it can be to “stick out” in a playground by violating norms of
dress, accent or behaviour.
Authoritarian Regimes
Both logics are required to create and maintain an authoritarian
regime. To ensure that we make the “right” personal choices, an
oppressive state’s main tools are carrots and sticks – rewarding
conformity and punishing even a hint of rebellion.
But personal gain (or survival) alone provides a fragile
foundation for an oppressive state. It is easy to see how the logic of
appropriateness fits in here, turning from being a force for cooperation
to a mechanism for enforcing an oppressive status quo. This logic asks
that we follow the “rules” and make sure others do too – often without
needing to ask why the rules are the way they are.
Regimes therefore supplement rewards and punishments with
self-policed norms, rules and conventions. A “good” party comrade or a
member of a religious cult or terrorist group will learn that they are
supposed to obey orders, root out opposition and not question authority –
and enforce these norms on their fellows.
The authoritarian state is therefore concerned above all with
preserving ideology – defining the “right” way to think and behave – so
that we can unquestioningly conform to it.
This can certainly help explain the horrors of Nazi Germany –
showing it’s not primarily a matter of individual evil. As the
philosopher Hannah Arendt famously argued,
the atrocities of the Holocaust were made possible by normal people,
manipulated into conforming to a horribly abnormal set of behavioural
norms.
Would You Rebel?
So how would you or I fare in Gilead? We can be fairly confident
that most of us would conform (with more or less discomfort), finding
it difficult to shake the feeling that the way things are done is the
right and appropriate way.
Just think of the fervour with which people can enforce
standards of dress, prohibitions on profane language or dietary norms –
however arbitrary these may appear. Indeed, we may feel “morally bound”
to protect the party, nation or religion, whatever its character.
A small number of us, however, would rebel – but not primarily, I
suspect, based on differences in individual moral character. Rebels,
too, need to harness the logic of appropriateness – they need to find
different norms and ideals, shared with fellow members of the
resistance, or inspired by history or literature. Breaking out of one
set of norms requires that we have an available alternative.
People giving a Nazi
salute, with an unidentified person (possibly August Landmesser or
Gustav Wegert) refusing to do so. Photo from wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
That said, some people may have more naturally non-conformist
personalities than others, at least in periods of their lives. Whether
such rebels are successful in breaking out, however, may partly depend
on how convincingly they can justify to themselves, and defend to
others, that we don’t want to conform.
If so, we would expect a tendency to adopt non-standard norms to
be linked to verbal ability and perhaps general intelligence in
individuals who actually rebel, which there’s some evidence to support.
How we react to unfairness may also affect our propensity to
rebel. One study found that people who are risk averse and easily trust
others are less likely to react strongly to unfairness. While not proven in the study, it may make such individuals more likely to conform.
Another factor is social circumstances. The upper and middle classes in Germany during the 1920s-1940s were almost twice as likely
to join the Nazi party than those with lower social status. So it may
be that those who have the most to lose and/or are keen to climb the
social ladder are particularly likely to conform. And, of course, if
other members of your social circle are conforming, you may think it’s
the “appropriate” thing to do.
Few will fight Gilead after carefully weighing up the
consequences – after all, the most likely outcome is failure and
obliteration. What drives forward fights against an oppressive society
is a rival vision – a vision of equality, liberty and justice, and a
sense that these should be defended, whatever the consequences.
Nick Chater is Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Warwick’s Warwick Business School.
