Abstract
Using the Immersive Video Milgram Obedience Experiment (IVMOE; Dambrun & Vatiné, 2010), we studied victims’ dehumanization and its underlying processes. Under the supervision of the national service of security, participants were ordered to psychologically weaken a person suspected of preparing an attack. We manipulated the ethnicity of the victim and his terrorist membership. The doubly stigmatized victim (i.e. a North African victim member of al Qaeda) was tortured more severely than the other victims. We found some evidence that this effect was mediated by a decrease in term of other-oriented empathy, but not by personal distress. These results suggest that an empathy alteration process underlies dehumanization in crimes of obedience perpetrated against members of extreme out-groups.
Highlights
Crimes of obedience are a central phenomenon in social sciences (Kelman & Hamilton, 1989)
Because the experimental approach of destructive obedience involves considerable ethical challenges and starting with the idea that Immersive Virtual Environment Technology (IVET; see Blascovich et al, 2002) is a useful tool to study social behavior, we investigated the role of these variables using our Immersive Video Milgram Obedience Experiment (IVMOE; Dambrun & Vatiné, 2010)
Because we were interested in the underlying processes of dehumanization, we investigated the respective role of personal distress and other-oriented empathy
Summary
Crimes of obedience are a central phenomenon in social sciences (Kelman & Hamilton, 1989). The first decade of the 21st century witnessed an increase of interest for the issue of torture. This renewed attention could be attributed, to some extent, to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib in the spring of 2004. How to cite this paper: Dambrun, M., Lepage, J., & Fayolle, S. Victims’ Dehumanization and the Alteration of OtherOriented Empathy within the Immersive Video Milgram Obedience Experiment.
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