Just Following Orders: Atrocities and the Brain Science of Obedience

Caspar, a professor of neuroscience at Ghent University in Belgium, debuts with a rigorous study of the “process through which obedience influences cognition and behavior.” Drawing on robust research—including interviews with perpetrators of genocide in Rwanda and Cambodia—she unravels how “obeying orders impacts our ability to empathize with others” by inhibiting the parts of the brain that process guilt and mirror others’ pain. That phenomenon becomes especially deadly in hierarchical environments, like the military, where an implicitly rule-based ethos reduces one’s sense of agency. Despite the grim implications for the makings of genocides and other war crimes, some studies suggest that higher-level military personnel exhibited greater degrees of agency when receiving orders, indicating that it might be possible to instill “a greater responsibility over one’s own actions” via training. Caspar takes a scrupulous, if occasionally bleak, look at the nexus between agency, morality, and authority, and provides some hope that it’s possible “to help people resist blind obedience.” This is an eye-opener. (Sept.)