Reference no: EM133146268
Watch the following Video re: Conformity Bias
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9McrEaovuM
1. Loyalty is generally considered a good quality. When a group to which you owe loyalty seems to be making a decision that seems unethical to you, how should you go about trying to balance your loyalty to the group against your own ethical integrity? Have you had an experience like that? If so, how did you resolve it? If you have not had such an experience, explain how you would resolve the experience if you had to do so.
2. In the Harry Potter books, Albus Dumbledore told Harry: "It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends." Do you have advice for people regarding how they can muster such bravery?
3. How can an organization that wants its employees to make decisions in accordance with their own moral compass, rather than simply conforming to the group, encourage them to do so?
Watch the Video re: Obedience to Authority
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk4uqMj1nBk&t=13s
Answer the following Questions:
4. Can you think of a situation where you deferred to authority and later regretted it?
5. Does Bud Krogh's explanation for how he went off the ethical rails sound plausible to you?
6. How can people guard against suspending their own ethical judgment in order to unduly defer to authority?
Case Study
German Police Battalion
During the Holocaust, more than a third of Nazi Germany's Jewish victims never boarded deportation trains and did not die in gas chambers. Jewish men, women, and children were murdered near their homes in surrounding fields and forests by German police forces and their local helpers. Historians estimate that these so-called mobile killing units shot almost 2 million people during World War II. After the war, when some of the shooters and their commanders were put on trial, they claimed that they had to follow orders. Decades later, however, historians studying the interrogation files of one of these police battalions made a startling discovery. Not only did many ordinary Germans participate in the mass murder of Jews, they did so voluntarily.
In his book on one group of reserve policemen from the German city Hamburg, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, historian Christopher Browning shows that while the men were expected to follow orders when it came to killing civilians, they could have refused to do so. In July 1942, before their induction into the mass shooting of civilians in the small Polish town of Józefów, their commander gave battalion members a choice. If any of the men were "not up to the task," they would be assigned to do "other duties," such as guarding or transportation. When given the opportunity to opt out, only a very small number of men did. Even though this option remained in the months that followed, the majority of reserve policemen chose to kill-to do the "dirty work" even if just for a short time before being relieved of duty-rather than separate themselves from their unit by refusing to murder civilians.
Most of these ordinary, middle-aged German men became willing, although not enthusiastic, killers. A small minority consistently excused themselves from the task at hand. Those that killed, Browning argues, did so because of "the pressure for conformity-the basic identification of men in uniform with their comrades and the strong urge not to separate themselves from the group by stepping out... [The] act of stepping out...meant leaving one's comrades and admitting that one was 'too weak' or 'cowardly'."
From: Ethics Unwrapped - McCombs School of Business - The University of Texas at Austin
Questions
7. Why do you think ordinary men would become willing killers? What were the roles of conformity bias and obedience to authority in the situations described above? Explain.
8. Can you think of examples in other parts of the world or historical periods in which conformity bias and/or obedience to authority may have played a similar role in causing harm on a wide scale? Explain.
9. This case study illustrates an extreme example of the negative effects of conformity bias and obedience to authority. On a more routine basis in your own life, in what situations do you think you might encounter conformity bias? In what situations might you encounter a tendency towards obedience to authority? Explain. Do you think our tendency to conform or obey authority could ever produce positive effects? Why or why not?