> I was watching the news and it made me think of the social psychology
> of a protest, so I thought I would flood ya.
>
> http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/02/kent.state.ap/index.htmlhttp://news.google.com/news...
>
> The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson - 8th Edition 1999http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/
>
> ...Following the tragedy at Kent State University, in which four
> students were shot and killed by Ohio National Guardsmen while
> demonstrating against the war in Southeast Asia, a high-school teacher
> from Kent, Ohio, asserted that the slain students deserved to die. She
> made this statement even though she was well aware of the fact that at
> least two of the victims were not participating in the demonstration
> but were peacefully walking across campus at the time of the shooting.
> Indeed, she went on to say, "Anyone who appears on the streets of a
> city like Kent with long hair, dirty clothes, or barefooted deserves
> to be shot."...
>
> ...Exactly how the high-school teacher in Kent, Ohio, came to believe
> that innocent people deserved to die is a fascinating and frightening
> question; for now, let us simply say that this belief was probably
> influenced by her own indirect complicity in the tragic events on
> campus....
>
> ...People Who Do Crazy Things Are Not Necessarily Crazy
>
> The social psychologist studies social situations that affect people's
> behavior. Occasionally, these natural situations become focused into
> pressures so great that they cause people to behave in ways easily
> classifiable as abnormal. When I say people, I mean very large numbers
> of people. To my mind, it does not increase our understanding of human
> behavior to classify these people as psychotic. It is much more useful
> to try to understand the nature of the situation and the processes
> that were operating to produce the behavior. This leads us to
> Aronson's first law: People who do crazy things are not necessarily
> crazy.
>
> Let us take, as an illustration, the Ohio schoolteacher who asserted
> that the four Kent State students deserved to die. I don't think she
> was alone in this belief-and although all the people who hold this
> belief may be psychotic, I seriously doubt it, and I doubt that so
> classifying them does much to enhance our understanding of the
> phenomenon. Similarly, in the aftermath of the Kent State slayings,
> the rumor spread that the slain girls were pregnant anyway-so that it
> was a blessing they died-and that all four of the students were filthy
> and so covered with lice that the mortuary attendants became nauseated
> while examining the bodies. These rumors, of course, were totally
> false. But, according to James Michener,5 they spread like wildfire.
> Were all the people who believed and spread these rumors insane? Later
> in this book, we will examine the processes that produce this kind of
> behavior, to which most of us are susceptible, under the right
> sociopsycho-logical conditions...
>
> ...Let's look at something supposedly objective-like the news. Are the
> newscasters trying to sell us anything? Probably not. But those who
> produce television news can exert a powerful influence on our opinions
> simply by determining which events are given exposure and how much
> exposure they are given. For example, near the end of his presidency,
> George Bush sent U.S. troops into Somalia because thousands of people
> were suffering the ravages of famine while bands of armed thugs were
> roaming the streets and countryside, effectively preventing the
> distribution of food to the starving masses. In the summer of 1993,
> President Bill Clinton raised the ante by sending in additional armed
> personnel, including a division of crack troops to try to disarm the
> militiamen. Several astute political analysts, including the
> redoubtable Cokie Roberts, while not questioning the humanitarian
> motives of our presidents, wondered why aid was going to Somalia and
> not several other places, like Sudan, where similar tragedies were
> occurring. Ms. Roberts's conclusion: Many powerful pictures of
> starving Soma-lians (but not of starving Sudanese) were being aired on
> American television, leading to massive public support for such a
> military intervention.
>
> Let us take one additional graphic example. Several years ago, a
> motorist named Rodney King was stopped for reckless driving. In the
> course of the arrest, he was savagely beaten by officers of the Los
> Angeles police department. By a fluke of luck, a resident of the
> neighborhood recorded the event on videotape; during the next several
> weeks, the tape was shown over and over again on TV screens across the
> nation. Subsequently, in the spring of 1992, when a jury found the
> police officers innocent of any wrongdoing, the inner city of Los
> Angeles erupted in the worst riot in American history. By the time
> peace was restored, 44 people had been killed, some 2,000 were
> seriously injured, and entire city blocks in South-Central Los Angeles
> were in flames-resulting in over a billion dollars in property damage.
> Needless to say, there were many causes of the riot. But certainly one
> of the triggers was the fact that people had seen that beating many
> times and were therefore in a position to be outraged by the verdict.
>
> Given the power of TV newscasts, it is reasonable to ask what factors
> determine which news items are selected for television newscasts. The
> answer is not a simple one, but one major factor is the entertainment
> value of the news items. Indeed, it has been said by no less an expert
> than the former director of the British Broadcasting Corporation that
> television news is a form of entertainment. Recent studies suggest
> that when those in charge of news programming decide which news events
> to cover and which fraction of the miles of daily videotape to present
> to the public, they make their decisions, at least in part, on the
> basis of the entertainment value of their material. Film footage of a
> flooded metropolis has much more entertainment value than footage of a
> dam built to prevent such flooding: It is simply not very exciting to
> see a dam holding back a flood. And yet, the dam may be more important
> news. Just as action events such as football games are more
> entertaining on television than quiet events such as chess matches, it
> is more likely that riots, bombings, earthquakes, massacres, and other
> violent acts will get more air time than stories about people helping
> each other or working to prevent violence. Thus, news telecasts tend
> to focus on the violent behavior of individuals-terrorists,
> protesters, strikers, or police-because action makes for more exciting
> viewing than does a portrayal of people behaving in a peaceful,
> orderly manner. Such coverage does not present a balanced picture of
> what is happening in the nation, not because the people who run the
> news media are evil and trying to manipulate us but simply because
> they are trying to entertain us. And, in trying to entertain us, they
> may unwittingly influence us to believe that people behave far more
> violently now than ever before. This may cause us to be unhappy and
> even depressed about the temper of the times or the state of the
> nation. Ultimately, it may affect our vote, our desire to visit major
> urban centers, our attitudes about other nations, and so on. As we
> shall see, it may actually cause people to behave violently.
>
> Such biased coverage was dramatically illustrated by the manner in
> which the media handled the nonriot that occurred in Austin, Texas,
> while I was living there several years ago. The background of the
> story was a familiar one on college campuses during the war in
> Southeast Asia. Tensions were running high between University of Texas
> students and local police following a confrontation at an impromptu
> student demonstration against the invasion of Cambodia by U.S. troops.
> During the demonstration, some 6,000 students marched on the state
> capitol, broke a few windows, and skirmished with police; the police
> used tear gas on the students, and several police officers and
> students were injured in the melee. But this was a mere preface-a
> minor event compared to what seemed to be coming. A few days later,
> students at the University of Texas were outraged at the wanton
> slaying of four students at Kent State University by members of the
> Ohio National Guard. To protest this event, the Texas students planned
> a gigantic march into downtown Austin-20,000 students were expected to
> turn out.
>
> The Austin City Council, fearing trouble, refused to issue a parade
> permit. In frustration and anger, the students decided to march
> anyway; their leaders opted to confine the march to the sidewalks,
> where, technically, it would not be illegal. Rumors spread that
> hundreds of armed hooligans were descending on Austin from all over
> the state with the intention of assaulting the students. Other rumors
> abounded to the effect that state troopers and Texas Rangers (not
> known for their friendliness to students) had been called in and were
> determined to take strong and violent action against anyone disobeying
> the law by straying or falling off the sidewalk. In retrospect, it
> appears that these rumors were almost certainly untrue, but the
> important point is that they were widely believed. Because the
> probability of keeping a crowd of 20,000 people from pushing itself
> off the sidewalk was remote, the situation seemed certain to be a
> prelude to extreme violence. Sniffing an exciting story, news teams
> affiliated with the major television networks were alerted. As it
> turned out, however, the explosive situation was defused at the llth
> hour: A team of university psychologists, law professors, and law
> students succeeded, at the last moment, in convincing a federal judge
> to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the city from
> enforcing the antiparade ordinance. Moreover, it quickly became known
> that the testimony of several members of the police force, in favor of
> allowing the students to march, was instrumental in the judge's
> decision. This event-especially because of the positive role played by
> the police-resulted not only in the total absence of violence but also
> in a genuine explosion of goodwill and solidarity among various
> diverse elements of the community. Twenty thousand students did march
> that day, but they marched in a spirit of harmony. Some of them
> offered cold drinks to the police officers who were diverting traffic
> away from the parade route; students and police exchanged friendly
> greetings and shook hands warmly. Interestingly enough, the national
> television networks completely ignored this encouraging turn of
> events. Because most of us were aware that teams of nationally
> prominent reporters from a variety of news media had descended on the
> city during the week, the lack of coverage seemed puzzling indeed. An
> unsettling explanation was provided by Philip Mann and Ira Iscoe, who
> stated: "Since there was no violence, news media teams left town and
> there was no national publicity, a commentary whose implications are
> by now sadly self-evident."...
>
> --------------------------------
>
> The Justification of Cruelty
>
> I have repeatedly made the point that we need to convince ourselves
> that we are decent, reasonable people. We have seen how this can cause
> us to change our attitudes on issues important to us. We have seen,
> for example, that if a person makes a counterattitudinal speech
> favoring the use and legalization of marijuana for little external
> justification, and learns that the videotape of the speech will be
> shown to a group of persuadable youngsters, the individual tends to
> convince him or herself that marijuana isn't so bad-as a means of
> feeling less like an evil person. In this section, I will discuss a
> variation of this theme: Suppose you performed an action that caused a
> great deal of harm to an innocent young man. Further, suppose that the
> harm was real and unambiguous. Your cognition "I am a decent, fair,
> and reasonable person" would be dissonant with your cognition "I have
> hurt another person." If the harm is clear, then you cannot reduce the
> dissonance by changing your opinion on the issue, thus convincing
> yourself that you've done no harm, as the people in the marijuana
> experiment did. In this situation, the most effective way to reduce
> dissonance would be to maximize the culpability of the victim of your
> action-to convince yourself that the victim deserved what he got,
> either because he did something to bring it on himself or because he
> was a bad, evil, dirty, reprehensible person.
>
> This mechanism might operate even if you did not directly cause the
> harm that befell the victim, but if you only disliked him (prior to
> his victimization) and were hoping that harm would befall him. For
> example, after four students at Kent State University were shot and
> killed by members of the Ohio National Guard, several rumors quickly
> spread: (1) both of the women who were slain were pregnant (and
> therefore, by implication, were oversexed and wanton); (2) the bodies
> of all four students were crawling with lice; and (3) the victims were
> so ridden with syphilis that they would have been dead in 2 weeks
> anyway. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, these rumors were totally untrue.
> The slain students were all clean, decent, bright people. Indeed, two
> of them were not even involved in the demonstrations that resulted in
> the tragedy but were peacefully walking across campus when they were
> gunned down. Why were the townspeople so eager to believe and spread
> these rumors? It is impossible to know for sure, but my guess is that
> it was for reasons similar to the reasons rumors were spread among the
> people in India studied by Prasad and Sinha (see pp. 181-182)-that is,
> because the rumors were comforting. Picture the situation: Kent is a
> conservative small town in Ohio. Many of the townspeople were
> infuriated at the radical behavior of some of the students. Some were
> probably hoping the students would get their comeuppance, but death
> was more than they deserved. In such circumstances, any information
> putting the victims in a bad light helped to reduce dissonance by
> implying that it was, in fact, a good thing that they died. In
> addition, this eagerness to believe that the victims were sinful and
> deserved their fate was expressed in ways that were more direct:
> Several members of the Ohio National Guard stoutly maintained that the
> victims deserved to die, and a Kent high-school teacher, whom James
> Michener interviewed, even went so far as to state that "anyone who
> appears on the streets of a city like Kent with long hair, dirty
> clothes or barefooted deserves to be shot." She went on to say that
> this dictum applied even to her own children.
>
> It is tempting simply to write such people off as crazy-but we should
> not make such judgments lightly. Although it's certainly true that few
> people are as extreme as the high-school teacher, it is also true that
> just about everyone can be influenced in this direction.
>
> -----------------------
>
> ...whatever the students at Kent State University might have been
> doing to the members of the Ohio National Guard (shouting obscenities,
> teasing, taunting), it hardly merited being shot and killed. Moreover,
> most victims of massive aggression are totally innocent. In all these
> situations, the opposite of catharsis takes place. Thus, once I have
> shot dissenting students at Kent State, I will convince myself they
> really deserved it, and I will hate dissenting students even more than
> I did before I shot them; once I have slaughtered women and children
> at My Lai, I will be even more convinced that Asians aren't really
> human than I was before I slaughtered them; once I have denied black
> people a decent education, I will become even more convinced that they
> are stupid and couldn't have profited from a good education to begin
> with. In most situations, committing violence does not reduce the
> tendency toward violence: Violence breeds more violence...
>
> ...Empathy is an important phenomenon. Seymour Feshbach notes that
> most people find it difficult to inflict pain purposely on another
> human being unless they can find some way of dehumanizing their
> victim. Thus, when our nation was fighting wars against Asians
> (Japanese in the 1940s, Koreans in the 1950s, Vietnamese in the
> 1960s), our military personnel frequently referred to them as "gooks."
> We see this as a dehumanizing rationalization for acts of cruelty. It
> is easier to commit violent acts against a "gook" than it is to commit
> violent acts against a fellow human being. As I have noted time and
> again in this book, the rationalization Feshbach points out not only
> makes it possible for us to aggress against another person, but it
> also guarantees that we will continue to aggress against that person.
> Recall the example of the schoolteacher living in Kent, Ohio, who,
> after the killing of four Kent State students by Ohio National
> Guardsmen, told author James Michener that anyone who walks on the
> street barefoot deserves to die. This kind of statement is bizarre on
> the face of it; we begin to understand it only when we realize that it
> was made by someone who had already succeeded in dehumanizing the
> victims of this tragedy.
>
> We can deplore the process of dehumanization, but at the same time, an
> understanding of the process can help us to reverse it. Specifically,
> if it is true that most individuals must dehumanize their victims in
> order to commit an extreme act of aggression, then, by building
> empathy among people, aggressive acts will become more difficult to
> commit. Indeed, Norma and Seymour Feshbach have demonstrated a
> negative correlation between empathy and aggression in children: The
> more empathy a person has, the less he or she resorts to aggressive
> actions. Subsequently, Norma Feshbach developed a method of teaching
> empathy and successfully tested its effects on aggression. Briefly,
> she taught primary-school children how to take the perspective of
> another. The children were trained to identify different emotions in
> people, they played the role of other people in various emotionally
> laden situations, and they explored (in a group) their own feelings.
> These "empathy training activities" led to significant decreases in
> aggressive behavior. Similarly, in a more recent experiment, Georgina
> Hammock and Deborah Richardson demonstrated that empathy is an
> important buffer against committing acts of extreme aggression. When
> they placed college students in a situation where they were instructed
> to deliver electric shocks to a fellow student, those who had learned
> to experience empathic concern for the feelings of others delivered
> less severe shocks than those who were less empathic. Ken-ichi Obuchi
> and his colleagues, working with Japanese students, found similar
> results. Obuchi instructed students to deliver electric shocks to
> another student as part of a learning experiment. In one condition,
> prior to receiving the shocks, the victims first disclosed something
> personal about themselves-thus opening the door to the formation of
> empathy; in the control condition, the victims were not afforded an
> opportunity for self-disclosure. Subjects in the disclosure condition
> administered much milder shocks than subjects in the nondisclosure
> condition.
>
> The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson - 8th Edition 1999http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/
>
> http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0fc_1178047414