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Just Following Orders: Atrocities and the Brain Science of Obedience
How can obedience and carrying out orders lead to horrific acts such as the Holocaust or the genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia, or Bosnia? For the most part, it is a mystery why obeying instructions from an authority can convince people to kill other human beings, sometimes without hesitation and with incredible cruelty. Combining social and cognitive neuroscience with real-life accounts from genocide perpetrators, this book sheds light on the process through which obedience influences cognition and behavior. Emilie Caspar, a leading expert in the field, translates this neuroscientific approach into a clear, uncomplicated explanation, even for those with no background in psychology or neuroscience. By better understanding humanity's propensity for direct orders to short-circuit our own independent decision-making, we can edge closer to effective prevention processes.
- GenresPsychologyScience
261 pages, Hardcover
Published September 12, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 9, 2025
I recommend books a lot, and I know my friends well enough to know that this is not a starter recommended. But honestly, I wish everyone would read it. Caspar's research is fascinating, and perhaps more importantly, significant. She alternates accounts of her own work - studying the neural patterns of harmful obedience - with broader explanations about the science of obedience and atrocities.
I realised the other day that apparently Stanley Milgram is my "Roman Empire" in that there wouldn't be a lot of days I don't think about him and his experiments (irony here is that I have a degree in the Roman Empire, not in Milgram). Most people are aware of them as illustrating that ordinary people are capable of terrible things, and that is not disputable, but the point of them was to establish under what conditions people are capable of terrible things. Milgram's different variations had very different results, and he tweaked to establish the 'perfect' conditions. There are many problems with Milgram's work, not least that studying how to enable more efficient mass atrocity committing might not actually prove to be riskless research in how it is purposed. But it is absolutely fascinating. Modern ethics and the fame of the originals make it impossible to replicate Milgram's research (even without the whole "writing an atrocity playbook" thing). Instead researchers tend to simulate game shows with risky punishments, or measure willingness to inflict pain. Casper discusses Milgram and his successors at length, and with consideration.
Caspar takes a far more ethical approach to her research - deciding at the outset not to lie to participants, for example. In some ways this is easier, because she is less in what people choose to do, than in what their brain patterns are doing when they do it. The no-lying thing means participants understand that they are not endangering someone's long term health, but also that they do inflict real pain. And she discovers that they do this to a shocking (heh) extent. The overwhelming majority of us simply find it easier to obey an order than not to.
The meat of why comes from Casper's fieldwork in Rwanda and Cambodia. She mentions some grant boards rejected her applications because of feasibility issues and you can see why. Trekking neural imaging equipment into electricity-poor villages, hooking up former perpetrators of violence and asking them about why they did it, all while hoping they don't sweat too much to wreck your readings, is not for the fainthearted or the scrupulous about conditions*. But the results are fascinating. Casper indicates that we can shut down empathy - and that if we are dealing with an "out group" we may not have much empathy to start with - in an environment where we don't feel that we are the agents. This makes it "easier" to obey - cognitively, there is minimal penalty.
There is a lot more here - this is just one insight - and many, many questions (not least that Milgram's subjects felt enormous distress and guilt for their actions, which does seem to challenge some of the empathy-shut-down theory, as she notes).Her growing understanding of the deep differences between what happened in Cambodia and Rwanda is worth the book alone (in some ways, these stories are the same, in others, really not). But it is an attempt to understand.
Everyone wonders if they would be the ones willing to push the kill button in Milgrim and others' experiments. And we think we aren't, including the ones who do. But to me, it has always been the wrong question. The right one is under what conditions could I do so - and how do I, and others, make sure those conditions are not materialised, or that I have a "no switch" if they are. And that is why these books matter - because trusting that we feel like good people and so we will be is not enough.
I realised the other day that apparently Stanley Milgram is my "Roman Empire" in that there wouldn't be a lot of days I don't think about him and his experiments (irony here is that I have a degree in the Roman Empire, not in Milgram). Most people are aware of them as illustrating that ordinary people are capable of terrible things, and that is not disputable, but the point of them was to establish under what conditions people are capable of terrible things. Milgram's different variations had very different results, and he tweaked to establish the 'perfect' conditions. There are many problems with Milgram's work, not least that studying how to enable more efficient mass atrocity committing might not actually prove to be riskless research in how it is purposed. But it is absolutely fascinating. Modern ethics and the fame of the originals make it impossible to replicate Milgram's research (even without the whole "writing an atrocity playbook" thing). Instead researchers tend to simulate game shows with risky punishments, or measure willingness to inflict pain. Casper discusses Milgram and his successors at length, and with consideration.
Caspar takes a far more ethical approach to her research - deciding at the outset not to lie to participants, for example. In some ways this is easier, because she is less in what people choose to do, than in what their brain patterns are doing when they do it. The no-lying thing means participants understand that they are not endangering someone's long term health, but also that they do inflict real pain. And she discovers that they do this to a shocking (heh) extent. The overwhelming majority of us simply find it easier to obey an order than not to.
The meat of why comes from Casper's fieldwork in Rwanda and Cambodia. She mentions some grant boards rejected her applications because of feasibility issues and you can see why. Trekking neural imaging equipment into electricity-poor villages, hooking up former perpetrators of violence and asking them about why they did it, all while hoping they don't sweat too much to wreck your readings, is not for the fainthearted or the scrupulous about conditions*. But the results are fascinating. Casper indicates that we can shut down empathy - and that if we are dealing with an "out group" we may not have much empathy to start with - in an environment where we don't feel that we are the agents. This makes it "easier" to obey - cognitively, there is minimal penalty.
There is a lot more here - this is just one insight - and many, many questions (not least that Milgram's subjects felt enormous distress and guilt for their actions, which does seem to challenge some of the empathy-shut-down theory, as she notes).Her growing understanding of the deep differences between what happened in Cambodia and Rwanda is worth the book alone (in some ways, these stories are the same, in others, really not). But it is an attempt to understand.
Everyone wonders if they would be the ones willing to push the kill button in Milgrim and others' experiments. And we think we aren't, including the ones who do. But to me, it has always been the wrong question. The right one is under what conditions could I do so - and how do I, and others, make sure those conditions are not materialised, or that I have a "no switch" if they are. And that is why these books matter - because trusting that we feel like good people and so we will be is not enough.
September 12, 2024
The experiment requires that you read this review.
Continuing our Decision '24 special coverage, a book about why people go along with acts of genocide, which is far too practical as knowledge for the U.S. in the near future than I would have assumed in the recent past (It was supposed to be space travel. It was supposed to be space travel.).
I am not going to sum up The Milgram Experiment as I assume the readers here will have a grasp of it, even if more through its misrepresentations and misapplications. The author is a neuroscientist working with research into similar questions of the nature of obedience to immoral commands and its refusal, with the added twist of doing field research in places where genocides have taken place, and thus interviewing and studying perpetrators.
The book is not moving towards some grand thesis and unified theory of misery, but the format of each of the individual chapters is well-designed and good at explaining whatever aspect of the question of obedience and its justifications that a particular study considers. It is also excellent in discussing what the limitations or flaws of any particular study are.
Owing to the author's specialty, many of the studies come at the question from the perspective of neuroscience and what is happening in an electrical or biological level in someone's brain. This made me a dubious about the book. Again, I am not going to sum up the Expired Salmon as I assume you know it. But there are a handful of reasons why this sort of research is more interesting in the question of obedience. People lie, to others and themselves, about this. Something could be honesty or a post hoc rationalization, or even nothing at all. Therefore, empirical data showing agentic areas firing or not is useful in context of what is being done or said. The one* that I felt the most interesting was to view obedience as a sort of cognitive bias. Not towards authority itself (although the mere existence of being in a hierarchy reduces a sense of authority, even for the leadership), but as a sort of the ethical equivalent of texting while driving, where it is more the excess of personal relations to track rather than the sublimation that creates the problem.
The compelling part of the text is the quotes from the research subjects. This obviously applies to the case studies portion of talking to the perpetrators about how they explain their own actions. It equally applies (and corrects Milgram) to the subjects of the experimental research. That people play Calvinball to backfill makes sense, but some of the people who do not make chilling statements. And the comedic highlight of the book is the torsions of the scientists to provoke non-compliance, functionally the lesson of the research that started all of this, but that starts to approach sketch comedy in its convolutions and frustrations.
The book has odd structural flings. Tangents seems incorrect as they are not discursive, but vestigial. The stand out example is when the Kitty Genovese story is told. As I started to warm up my letter to the editor about how the conventional wisdom on the story is incorrect, the author then makes the point of noting the incorrectness of said wisdom, and then end there, without further reference.
In some ways, the whole of the part of the study in Cambodia is like this. While looking to use both Rwanda and Cambodia as the places to get real data on humans ethically, the Cambodian genocide is unusual in terms of genocides, up to and including an idiosyncratic way of viewing it as one without perpetrators, only victims. This may be philosophically true; there is a section of the book about how psychically damaging genocidal actions are on the perpetrators, even to the suggestion that this may be one of the inflection points for preventing genocides. But it comprehensively frustrates the author's intended study. I like its inclusion, it is both facilitating and becomes a sort of negative example to the Rwanda story, but like the other inclusions it is a loop-the-loop.
While the academic price point makes this more of a library read, there is plenty of interesting material here about how people enact evil. Read if you are interested in a cornucopia of up to date research on the subject, particularly if you are the kind of reader looking for better questions rather than quickie answers.
* - I worry that I am doing the typical science journalism thing here of overstating a framework as a pithy conclusion, so disclaimer declared.
Continuing our Decision '24 special coverage, a book about why people go along with acts of genocide, which is far too practical as knowledge for the U.S. in the near future than I would have assumed in the recent past (It was supposed to be space travel. It was supposed to be space travel.).
I am not going to sum up The Milgram Experiment as I assume the readers here will have a grasp of it, even if more through its misrepresentations and misapplications. The author is a neuroscientist working with research into similar questions of the nature of obedience to immoral commands and its refusal, with the added twist of doing field research in places where genocides have taken place, and thus interviewing and studying perpetrators.
The book is not moving towards some grand thesis and unified theory of misery, but the format of each of the individual chapters is well-designed and good at explaining whatever aspect of the question of obedience and its justifications that a particular study considers. It is also excellent in discussing what the limitations or flaws of any particular study are.
Owing to the author's specialty, many of the studies come at the question from the perspective of neuroscience and what is happening in an electrical or biological level in someone's brain. This made me a dubious about the book. Again, I am not going to sum up the Expired Salmon as I assume you know it. But there are a handful of reasons why this sort of research is more interesting in the question of obedience. People lie, to others and themselves, about this. Something could be honesty or a post hoc rationalization, or even nothing at all. Therefore, empirical data showing agentic areas firing or not is useful in context of what is being done or said. The one* that I felt the most interesting was to view obedience as a sort of cognitive bias. Not towards authority itself (although the mere existence of being in a hierarchy reduces a sense of authority, even for the leadership), but as a sort of the ethical equivalent of texting while driving, where it is more the excess of personal relations to track rather than the sublimation that creates the problem.
The compelling part of the text is the quotes from the research subjects. This obviously applies to the case studies portion of talking to the perpetrators about how they explain their own actions. It equally applies (and corrects Milgram) to the subjects of the experimental research. That people play Calvinball to backfill makes sense, but some of the people who do not make chilling statements. And the comedic highlight of the book is the torsions of the scientists to provoke non-compliance, functionally the lesson of the research that started all of this, but that starts to approach sketch comedy in its convolutions and frustrations.
The book has odd structural flings. Tangents seems incorrect as they are not discursive, but vestigial. The stand out example is when the Kitty Genovese story is told. As I started to warm up my letter to the editor about how the conventional wisdom on the story is incorrect, the author then makes the point of noting the incorrectness of said wisdom, and then end there, without further reference.
In some ways, the whole of the part of the study in Cambodia is like this. While looking to use both Rwanda and Cambodia as the places to get real data on humans ethically, the Cambodian genocide is unusual in terms of genocides, up to and including an idiosyncratic way of viewing it as one without perpetrators, only victims. This may be philosophically true; there is a section of the book about how psychically damaging genocidal actions are on the perpetrators, even to the suggestion that this may be one of the inflection points for preventing genocides. But it comprehensively frustrates the author's intended study. I like its inclusion, it is both facilitating and becomes a sort of negative example to the Rwanda story, but like the other inclusions it is a loop-the-loop.
While the academic price point makes this more of a library read, there is plenty of interesting material here about how people enact evil. Read if you are interested in a cornucopia of up to date research on the subject, particularly if you are the kind of reader looking for better questions rather than quickie answers.
* - I worry that I am doing the typical science journalism thing here of overstating a framework as a pithy conclusion, so disclaimer declared.
October 5, 2024
Emile Caspar does a masterful job of summarizing the current literature on obedience sparked by Stanley Milgram's work in the 1960s. Modern work has taken this foundation and extended it to include brain MRIs and interviews with perpetrators and survivors of genocides and torture from around the world. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of obedience to authority or justification of one's actions.
Don't fear the neuroscience! Dr. Caspar does an excellent job of breaking it into digestible tidbits. You don't need to know your anterior insula from your prefrontal cerebral cortex to understand the material, or to appreciate how far the science of obedience has come or its implications for humanity.
Don't fear the neuroscience! Dr. Caspar does an excellent job of breaking it into digestible tidbits. You don't need to know your anterior insula from your prefrontal cerebral cortex to understand the material, or to appreciate how far the science of obedience has come or its implications for humanity.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews