After the
US and Iraq forces took over the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, American soldiers
were set to run the prison. The soldiers abused prisoners, both sexually and
mentally. They made inmates do painful postures, they performed religious
humiliation and prolonged sleep deprivation. These techniques were used to
soften up valuable inmates for interrogation.
The
question is, why did the soldiers do this, seemingly normal people abused and harassed
other human beings, why? It is believed that the reason might be because of
what is known as conformity. Conformity can be explained as “the act of
matching attitudes, beliefs and behaviors to group norms”. But what is of more relevance
is the Deviations of Conformity. It can be divided into Informational
influence, normative influence and Referent Informational influence.
Informational influence is when we modify our
attitudes to fit others that we think or believe have information we are
lacking, believing they are correct. In the Abu Ghraib prison, soldiers might
have conformed after one of the soldiers decided to do something, and the
others believed that this one soldier had information they were lacking.
Normative
influence is when we have the urge to be liked, and we alter our behavior to
what they expect, even though it might not be right. In the Abu Ghraib prison,
the fact that they were soldiers can have affected them by being biased towards
what soldiers should be. Rough, tough and violent, so to make others like them
and not be an outsider they conformed to be what was thought the other soldiers
expected them to be
Referent informational
influence is that we conform in response to our group, as we have a sense of
belongingness to maintain our desired social identities. In the Abu Ghraib
prison the soldiers wanted to stay together as a group, so they didn’t protest
on the torture of inmates as that might make them an outsider that is not part
of the “in-group”, even though what they did was wrong and unethical they still
conformed and stayed in the “in-group”.
Even though
the actions of the soldiers can be explained as conformity, it didn’t give them
right or make it ok to abuse the inmates in Abu Ghraib prison.
