John Morrow responds to me:
I'm not sure what accidents, disasters, or research
you have in mind but from what I've seen and read,
most people don't act to save themselves, even when
they only have to worry about themselves.
The main one I'm thinking of was an article in Scientific American ten
or twenty years ago. I don't remember everything it covered, but I do
remember that it specifically addressed automobile accidents, and
whether the driver maneuvered to save himself or family member
passengers. A substantial ****tion - I think the majority - of people
said they would try to save family members first, but in actual
accidents, nearly all put themselves first.
Many people who do awful things while following
orders don't try to defend them and feel ashamed
of them, once they look at them outside of that
approving structure.
I agree that situations with people under orders are very different
from people acting independently, and different from the ones I've
been discussing. That said, I think the interesting parts of the
prisoners and guards experiment were the parts that went well beyond
orders.
While I think there may be a learned element to
it, I also believe that there is an innate element
to it, which is why Chimpanzees react to various
unfair trading scenarios, for example, exactly the
way human beings do.
I certainly agree there are innate elements to behavior, but as in
this case, they nearly always act to the benefit of the individual -
in this case, to prevent that individual's being cheated, not to
prevent the stranger's being cheated. I don't think that kind of self
interest is what morality or ethics are about.
I would like to know how you define "learned"
behavior. For example, do you think it's like
learning about American History or learning to
walk?
For morality, something in between; basically, something that happens
only with others around who already know about the behavior. I'd say
it probably happens at about the same stage as learning to read does
for most modern Americans. For ethics, closer to learning about
American History, if at all.
And there is a countering emotional reaction
to understand and forgive the wrong when there
is a close personal attachment to the people
involved ... What you are doing
here is focusing on the negative emotion that
promotes potentially violent behavior but I
think you are ignoring the postive emotions
that check violent behavior.
I agree there are positive emotional reactions to people one feels
closely attached to. I don't count that as 'conscience' or 'morality'
because I think that those concepts imply behavior that applies to
strangers as well as loved ones.
As I said before, the innate emotions work well when we live in the 20
person hunter gatherer groups we evolved for. When we live in
societies of 200 million, we have to learn new behavior patters that
will serve us for that different situation.
Warren J. Dew
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