| University of Oklahoma HR 5003 Theoretical Foundations |
OU | Department of Human Relations |
|
Blackboard | E-Mail Your Instructor | Help | ||||||
 |
|
|
 |
|||||||||
| Unit Overview | |
|||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||
|
OVERVIEW
Assignment for Module Five is due on March 31. |
|
|||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
By the end of this unit, students should be able to: * Define civil disobedience. When we talk about social change, we're referring to changes on a large scale: changes in communities, states, even nations. Obviously, systems theory is a good model to help us conceptualize large social systems without getting lost in big numbers and details. There are also a couple of other important theories of social change that have had an impact on human relations. Civil disobedience first appeared in an essay of that title by Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau, who was an abolitionist before the Civil War, theorized that there is a natural law higher than the civil law of the land, and that we owe our first allegiance to that higher law. He believed that people rule themselves, rather than being ruled by governments or laws, and that unjust laws should be ignored or violated to bring attention to the injustice. Because it was necessary to bring bad laws to people's attention, he felt that individuals practicing civil disobedience should be prepared to take the consequences, i.e., jail. This might be unpleasant, but would raise awareness. With sufficient public awareness, the citizens would take control and get the laws changed. Thoreau wasn't much of an activist himself; he stuck with theory. But his influence on later activists could hardly be overestimated. Gandhi, for one, took the concept of civil disobedience to the level of an art form, bringing to its knees the great imperial power of his day with nothing but his own charisma, an idea, and the power of "the masses." Martin Luther King, Jr., was influenced both by Thoreau and by Gandhi's earlier example of putting civil disobedience into practice. His strategies and tactics are a wonderful modern example of the theory and how it looks in real life. I want to make an important point about civil disobedience. As a theory, it certainly has face validity. It's hard to argue with our obligation to right a social wrong. But we must remember that anyone can decide that they are answering the call of a "higher law," and it may not fit my definition of a higher law at all. What if the purity of the "white race" represents their higher law? And what if the civil law they plan to break is the law against murder? Although Thoreau believed civil disobedience should be nonviolent (as did Gandhi and King), not all its practitioners feel that way. Do they then have the right to commit murder in defense of their higher law? The concept of civil disobedience is powerful. At its very worst, it could create martyrs to causes most of us would find hateful or at least misguided. At its best, it creates the leverage to change the world. Leon Festinger was a social scientist and researcher who coined the phrase cognitive dissonance as a way to describe what he believed to be a cognitive force that shapes human social behaviors. His theory is based on the observation that most humans strive toward consistency between our core beliefs and our observations of the world around us. When the world refuses to cooperate, and reality conflicts with our beliefs or values, we experience intense discomfort, which he describes as a type of dissonance-that is, we recognize the lack of fit between what we want to believe and what our senses are telling us exists in reality. Causes of dissonance can be new events or information that intrude themselves into our awareness, or the need to form an opinion or make a decision that forces us to admit to the non-fitting information. For example, remember the example in Module One of the German citizens who went to the concentration camps firmly believing that it was some kind of mistake, that good, solid citizens like themselves couldn't possibly be the targets of the Gestapo? These people were experiencing cognitive dissonance so intense they couldn't handle it. One part of their brains held the firm belief that German citizens who didn't break the law were safe. Another part of their brains was forced to observe that they had, indeed, been arrested. There was no way to rationalize both things: Either good citizens were being arrested for no reason, or they, themselves, must be bad citizens, criminals. Total non-fit. And as Frankl observed, some of them never were able to integrate the new reality. Festinger stated that there were ways to eliminate dissonance. First, you could change your behavior. Some concentration camp victims did. To survive, you must stop being indignant and demanding your release. These actions would only get you into trouble, or even irritate a guard into shooting you. Second, you could change the environment-eliminating the uncomfortable new reality or escaping it. This was not much of an option for concentration camp victims, although a small number did attempt escape. Third, you could change your cognition. The camp victims who did survive achieved this, admitting to themselves that, through no fault of their own, they were in a new reality that required drastic changes in how they saw the world. Changing our cognition is not easy for most of us; we would rather stay in denial than admit painful new information. Festinger, who wrote much of his work following World War II, was especially interested in forced compliance. That is, when we feel we have to perform some behavior that violates our values or our beliefs about the world, how do we reduce the resulting dissonance? (He wanted to understand how the German people were induced to accept Nazism.) What he found was fascinating, and may seem counter-intuitive at first, so bear with me. His first observation was that if the punishment is extreme enough, we don't feel much dissonance, even if we're behaving in ways that violate our core ethical principles. For example, if I'm in a situation where I can either salute and shout "Heil Hitler" or be shot on the spot, it's pretty easy to rationalize saluting. After all, it didn't hurt anybody, I knew in my heart that I don't support the Nazis, and I don't want to die today. Any significant cognitive dissonance has been avoided. Festinger noted, however, that the Nazis had a peculiar genius at exploiting these powerful social forces. And they didn't want mere compliance. They wanted to affect people's attitudes, their cognitions. They wanted people to doubt their own values. And to do this, the best tactic is to use just enough force to achieve compliance. Why? Because if I give the Nazi salute just to avoid losing my job it's no longer so easy to rationalize my behavior. It's sort of a "gimme" if they're going to shoot me on the spot. But what kind of wimp gives in just to stay employed? Now I'm experiencing some serious cognitive dissonance, and I don't like it. So how do I get out of this mental and emotional fix? By changing my own opinion, that's how. Okay, maybe the Nazis aren't all that bad. After all, the economy's better than it was a few years ago. And I have a job. Maybe it's a good thing to give the salute. Yeah! That's it! People who don't salute like good citizens are evil! They deserve whatever they get! See how it works? Ironically, punishments that are disproportionately severe actually reduce cognitive dissonance and, thus, lessen the odds that people will change their attitudes. And the Nazis wanted attitude change. They wanted, as much as they could get it, blindly trusting followers. And Leon Festinger suggested a theory to explain how they got them. Brief Paper: Rent or borrow one segment of the Eyes on the Prize videotape series and watch it. In approximately two typewritten pages, answer the following questions: What examples did you see of cognitive dissonance? Of civil disobedience? Did the change agents (or those resisting change) demonstrate their own beliefs about change? If so, what were they? <If you cannot locate a copy of one of these tapes, please e-mail me for an alternative assignment.> If you are interested in more information on a particular topic, here are additional readings and links to Web sites: Bettelheim, B. (1980). Surviving and other essays. New York: Vintage Books. Civil Disobedience, text of the original essay Hoffer, E. (1989). The true believer. New York: Harper and Row Publishers. Rogers, E. (2003). The diffusion of innovation. New York: The Free Press.
|
||||||||||||