Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

millennial hope S 165
Conformity to group pressures in combination with uncritical
acceptance of authority can be a particularly powerful determinant
of behavior, causing people to do heinous things to each
other. In a well-known study, psychologist Stanley Milgram put
subjects in situations where actors posing as experts asked them to
deliver progressively higher electrical shocks to supposed victims
(1969). Under the authority of fake scientists, most agreed to do
so despite the screams and simulated suffering of the actors posing
as victims. In real life there is lots of evidence that ordinary people
under duress can behave similarly. But sometimes they don’t.
Elite decision making has its own pathologies. In his study
of the Cuban missile crisis, Janis (1972) showed how the centripetal
pressures of “groupthink” can deform decision making
by narrowing perspectives and limiting the permissible evidence
and imagination. In the Bay of Pigs case, for example, President
Kennedy did not question the assumptions made by the CIA
and the previous administration, and the result was a disaster. In
the Cuban missile crisis, however, the president and his advisors
questioned and fi nally dismissed advice from the military and the
hawks in favor of a less provocative and more satisfactory approach.
The pressures toward groupthink work in every kind of organization
as part of an internal culture with particular assumptions
and decision-making processes. General Motors’ decision to make
the Hummer (while Toyota developed the Prius) perhaps refl ects
similar dynamics in which obvious questions were not asked and
better information was ignored.
It is well documented that pressures such as resource scarcity,
drought, extreme heat, and crowding increase social tensions,
leading to violence and genocide against minorities. In hard times,
authoritarianism fl ourishes as people prefer order over civility and
civil liberties. Building on the earlier work of Theodore Adorno
(Adorno et al., 1950), Robert Altemeyer has extended our understanding
of the authoritarian personality. It is highly submissive to
established authority, inclined to associate only with like-minded