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In the Execution Chamber, The Moral Compass Wavers |
By
BENEDICT CAREY (NYT) 2129 words
Published:
February 7, 2006
Burl
Cain is a religious man who believes it is only for God to say when a person's
number is up. But in his job as warden and chief executioner at the Louisiana
State Penitentiary in Angola, Mr. Cain is the one who gives the order to start
a lethal injection, and he has held condemned inmates' hands as they died.
He
does it, he said in an interview, because capital punishment ''is the law of
the land.''
''It's
something we do whether we're for it or against it, and we try to make the
process as humane as possible,'' he said, referring to himself and others on
the execution team.
But
he concedes, ''The issue is coping, how we cope with it.''
Common
wisdom holds that people have a set standard of morality that never wavers. Yet
studies of people who do unpalatable things, whether by choice, or for reasons
of duty or economic necessity, find that people's moral codes are more flexible
than generally understood. To buffer themselves from their own consciences,
people often adjust their moral judgments in a process some psychologists call
moral disengagement, or moral distancing.
In
recent years, researchers have determined the psychological techniques most
often used to disengage, and for the first time they have tested them in people
working in perhaps the most morally challenging job short of soldiering,
staffing a prison execution team.
The
results of this and other studies suggest that a person's moral judgment can
shift quickly, in anticipation of an unpalatable act, or slowly and
unconsciously.
Moral
disengagement ''is where all the action is,'' said Albert Bandura, a professor
of psychology at Stanford and an expert on the psychology of moral behavior.
''It's in our ability to selectively engage and disengage our moral standards,
and it helps explain how people can be barbarically cruel in one moment and
compassionate the next.''
The
crude codes of behavior that evolved to hold early human societies together --
taboos against killing, against stealing -- would have been psychologically
suffocating if people did not have some way to let themselves off the hook in
extreme situations, some experts argue. Survival sometimes required brutal
acts; human sacrifice was commonplace, as were executions.
The
innate human ability to disconnect morally has made it hard for researchers to
find an association between people's stated convictions and their behavior:
preachers can commit sexual crimes; prostitutes may live otherwise exemplary
lives; well-trained soldiers can commit atrocities.
Investigators
can identify the precise kinds of thoughts that allow people to do things that
defy their personal codes of ethics.
Now,
psychologists at Stanford have shown that prison staff members who work on
execution teams exhibit high levels of moral disengagement -- and the closer
they are to the killing, the higher their level of disengagement goes. The
trailblazing research grew out of a high school project.
In
the late 1990's, Michael Osofsky, then a teenage student in New Orleans, began
interviewing prison guards at the penitentiary in nearby Angola. His father, a
psychiatrist who consulted with the prison, collaborated, as did the warden,
Mr. Cain.
By
the time Mr. Osofsky graduated from Stanford in 2003, he had conducted in-depth
interviews with 246 prison workers from penitentiaries, including Angola, in
three states. They included guards who administer the lethal shots, counselors
who provide support during the execution, members of the strap-down team, and
guards not involved in executions. The people on the execution teams ''come
together, do the execution, then go back to their regular jobs'' in the prison,
Mr. Osofsky, now on a fellowship in Asia, said in a telephone interview. ''They
never really talked about this part of their job, even with their families;
even with each other.''
Working
with Mr. Cain, Dr. Bandura and Philip Zimbardo, another Stanford psychologist,
Mr. Osofsky administered a moral disengagement scale to the execution team
members and the guards not on the execution team.
This
questionnaire asked workers to rate how much they approved or disapproved of 19
statements, including: ''The Bible teaches that murders must be avenged: life
for a life, eye for an eye''; ''Nowadays the death penalty is done in ways that
minimize the suffering''; and ''Because of the nature of their crimes,
murderers have lost the right to live.''
In
an analysis of the answers published late last year in the journal Law and
Human Behavior, the psychologists reported that members of the execution team
were far more likely than guards not on the team to agree that the inmates had
lost important human qualities; to cite the danger that ''they can escape and
kill again;'' and to consider the cost to society of caring for violent
criminals.
The
team members were also more likely than other guards to favor religious support
for the sentence: an eye for an eye.
''You
have to sanctify lethal means: this is the most powerful technique'' of
disengagement from a shared human moral code, said Dr. Bandura, who has expressed
serious moral reservations about capital punishment. ''If you can't convince
people of the sanctity of the greater cause, they are not going to carry the
job out as effectively.''
Execution
teams are organized so as to divide the grisly tasks, enhancing what
researchers call a diffusion of responsibility. A medical technician provides
the lethal drugs; a team of guards straps the inmate down, with each guard
securing only one part of the body; another guard administers the drugs. ''No
one person can say he is entirely responsible for the death,'' Mr. Osofsky
said.
Firing
squads draw on this same idea. Everyone in the squad fires but no one can be
sure whose shot was deadly.
The
level of disengagement, as measured by the scale, was about as high in prison
workers who participated in one execution as in those who had been party to
more than 15, the study found. This suggests that, while the job may get easier
over time, ''moral disengagement is an enabler, rather than merely the result
of performing repeated executions,'' the authors conclude.
The
pattern was strikingly different in members of the execution support staff,
particularly the counselors working with the families of inmates and victims.
These
staff members were highly morally engaged when they first joined the execution
staff, deeply sympathetic to everyone involved, including the condemned. ''I'm
in a helping profession, but there isn't a damn thing I can do for these
guys,'' one of them said to Mr. Osofsky. ''I hate it, but I do it. I am required
to do it.''
That
ambivalence seemed to affect the counselors' moral judgment over time, the
study found. After they had been involved in 10 executions, the counselors'
scores on the disengagement scale almost matched the executioners'.
The
finding stands as a caution to the millions of people who work in the service
of organizations whose motives they mistrust, psychologists say: shifts in
moral judgment are often unconscious, and can poison the best instincts and
intentions.
''This
really gets at the idea of people working in corporate structures that are
involved in selling, say, weapons or tobacco, and saying, 'Well, I just keep
the books,' '' when they disapprove of the business, said Susan Ravenscroft, a
professor of accounting at Iowa State University in Ames who has studied
business ethics.
Moral
distancing can also be seen in the language of war, politics and corporate
scandal. Pilots euphemistically ''service a target'' rather than bomb it;
enemies are dehumanized as ''gooks,'' ''hajis'' or infidels. Politicians and
chief executives facing indictments deflect questions about ethical lapses by
acknowledging that ''mistakes were made,'' or that they were ''out of the
loop.''
These
remarks reflect internal methods of self-protection, as well as public
evasions, research suggests.
Yet
it is in the mundane corner-cutting of everyday life that moral disengagement
may be most common and insidious, and least conscious.
In
a 2004 study, professors at Iowa State University and the University of
Arkansas tested the moral judgment of 47 college students who had cheated on a
take-home exam, a complex accounting problem.
Many
of the students found a solution to the problem online -- posted by another
professor who was unaware it was part of an exam -- and reproduced the solution
as their own, though it used techniques they had not yet learned. Others had
clearly collaborated, which their professor had explicitly forbidden. Another
17 students had not cheated, as far as their teacher could determine.
The
professor threw out the test scores and got permission from the students to ask
about their behavior. The cheaters' scores on a standard test of moral judgment
did not correlate at all with their level of plagiarism or collaboration. On
the contrary, it was the most dishonest male students who scored highest on the
morals test.
''Clearly,
this is not what you want to find in a test of moral judgment,'' said Dr.
Ravenscroft, a co-author of the study, with Charles Shrader of Iowa State and
Tim West of the University of Arkansas.
Only
by conducting in-depth interviews with students about their behavior did the
researchers begin to see clear, familiar patterns. One was displacing the
blame: ''I think it's hard for people not to look at the answer manual if it's
available,'' said one student. ''Maybe you should have taken the problem off so
people wouldn't be tempted.''
Another
was justifying the behavior by comparison: ''I really don't consider working
with another person that unethical,'' one student commented. ''Taking and
copying answers from the key was highly unethical.'' Many students
''rationalized cheating behavior as a necessary defense to the cheating of
others,'' the researchers concluded in their analysis, to appear this year in
the Business and Professional Ethics Journal. ''Yet in an extreme example of
moral exclusion, none of the students discussed this impact on others.''
Recognizing
these kinds of selfish evasions in oneself is hardly proof of moral collapse,
psychologists say. Rather, they say, moral disengagement is evidence that a
sound moral sensibility is trying to assert itself, warning against a situation
it finds suspect. As a rule people don't like to cheat or lie, studies find,
and they are extremely reluctant to inflict pain on others, no matter the
circumstances.
And
moral engagement is dynamic. Once people stop doing what is consciously or
unconsciously upsetting them, the research suggests, they engage their
conscience more fully.
That
is, if they have the luxury to walk away.
''I
remember the one execution I attended, there was this strange heaviness in the
air all day,'' Mr. Osofsky said. ''These guards you knew were somber and
detached, keeping to themselves. This wasn't something they gloried in or
looked forward to at all. They didn't really seem like themselves.''
Photo:
DIFFUSION OF DUTIES -- Participants in executions, like ones carried out by
lethal injection in San Quentin, traditionally divide the responsibilities
among workers so that no one person is entirely responsible for the death.
(Photo by Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images)(pg. F6)
Drawing
(Drawing by Jen Renninger)(pg. F6)
Chart: '''Everyone Was Doing
It'''
Dr. Albert Bandura of Stanford University has studied the
psychology of moral reasoning for decades. He has identified eight mechanisms
that people use to rationalize immoral behavior.
Moral
justification
Soldiers learn to see killing in the context of a larger
good; terrorists may say they are punishing ''nonbelievers.''
Euphemistic labeling
''Collateral damage''; ''clean,
surgical strikes''; and having someone ''taken care of'' are all familiar
examples.
Advantageous
comparison
Comparing an enemy to Hitler to justify an attack; or
excusing a reckless act by comparing it to worse transgression by a rival or predecessor.
Displacement
of responsibility
Shifting the blame to a boss, a leader or another
authority figure; ''I was just carrying out orders.''
Diffusion
of responsibility
Sharing the responsibility for a transgression with
others who took part, or who played indirect roles: ''Everyone was doing it.''
Disregard
or distortion of consequences
Refusal to acknowledge the reality of the
damage caused; rationalizing that ''it wasn't all that bad.''
Dehumanization
Assailing others as degenerates, devils, savages or infidels. Some
torturers refer to their victims as ''worms.''
Blaming
the victim
The people being cheated or attacked are ''asking for it.''
(pg. F6)