Social Networking and Abu Ghraib?

You might not think that the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and social networking have much in common. But I would strongly disagree. We humans are a social species and we automatically and instinctively cluster into groups. The groups we form have characteristics and abilities beyond the capability of individual members. Sometimes, this synergy, and the motives behind them, is used for good, sometimes they are used for bad.

In social conformity experiments, Solomon Asch demonstrated that the majority of seemingly "normal" people, when given a multiple choice question involving which of three lines was the same length as a given line, would answer incorrectly, if given the information that 80% of the group had answered incorrectly. This is despite the fact that they knew the right answer and suppressed it in order to remain a part of the "group".

Stanley Milgram, who was the first to coin the term, "six degrees of separation", took Asch’s studies a bit further and examined them in the light of obedience to authority. Milgram wanted to see if obedience to authority had a similar impact in the decision process as social acceptance. You can read about Milgram’s experiments in his book, Obedience to Authority.

Milgram's experiments demonstrated that 65% of seemingly "normal" people would comply with instructions from a person in a white lab coat and a clipboard, and subject another person to pain, in the form of near-lethal electric shock, in order to comply with authority. All of the participants were actors, and the subjects were informed of that later.

Social groups of as few as two or three, especially those with an authority component, are very effective and powerful, for good or evil. There are examples all around us, from the prison MPs at Abu Ghraib, the sniper duo in metro Washington, DC, the individual groups of 9/11 hijackers, Saddam and his sons, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, and terrorist suicide bombers in Israel and Iraq, who act as part of an extremist conformity group, not as individuals.

Each individual is responsible for actions he or she takes, even as part of a group or as one under authority. Each of us must have the courage to stand up for what’s right and what’s wrong. We must resist group conformity pressure or pressure from authority. Ultimately, how we choose determines our stature and effectiveness as an individual and as a leader.

Jesus said in Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” Maybe he was telling us to make sure that we hang out in the right groups under the right authority.