See No Evil -- A political psychologist explains the roles denial, emotion and childhood punishment play in politics
Terri
became known, not everyone was shocked. A caller on Rush Limbaugh's
show likened the torture of prisoners to "a college fraternity
prank." The host picked up on the cue and started riffing. "Exactly
my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones
initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're
going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really
hammer them because they had a good time."
During the Senate investigation into the abuse, Sen. James Inhofe of
Oklahoma opined that "I'm probably not the only one up at this table
that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment."
Meanwhile every day at least a handful of NEWSWEEK readers write in to
say that they are tired of images of the abuse or to say that they
don't want to see photographs of coffins bearing the remains of U.S.
soldiers.
What's going on here? Is it unpatriotic to question the behavior of
American soldiers, to publish photos of their caskets? Or is there a
sort of willful denial at play here? Michael Milburn believes the
latter is the case. Milburn, a psychologist at the University of
Massachusetts and coauthor of "The Politics of Denial" (MIT Press),
has extensively explored what determines political attitudes, the role
of emotion in public opinion and the effects of the mass media on
political attitudes and social behavior. He recently spoke with
NEWSWEEK's Brian Braiker about political denial-what it is, what
causes it and when, if ever, it can be a positive thing. Excerpts:
Political Pyschologist
Michael Milburn
NEWSWEEK: What are the politics of denial?
Michael Milburn: We found that, particularly for males who had never
had any psychotherapy, when they reported a high level of childhood
punishment, they were significantly more likely to endorse a range of
punitive public policies like support for the death penalty, opposition
to abortion, support for the use of military force. We used a notion of
therapy as a general indicator of denial or lack of denial. Well, the
extent to which emotion connected to childhood punishment was driving
their political attitudes, when they had an opportunity to sort of
reflect on that and [have a] short-term catharsis experience, that sort
of energy disappears.
So are you saying that [Secretary of Defense] Donald Rumsfeld could use
a little therapy?
[Laughs] Well, bottom line, yes. What we have found, really broadly, is
the higher level of punitiveness among political conservatives is
really strongly associated with experiences, generally, of harsh
punishment from childhood. It's not just going to be that they were
spanked; there's a whole family climate, and punishment is just going
to be one of those indicators of that. We have a whole chapter on the
religious right. In our research we also found that when we gave people
the statement "the amount of physical and sexual abuse in this
country is greatly exaggerated by the mass media," conservatives were
significantly more likely to agree with that.
That echoes the Inhofe comment that he was more "outraged by the
outrage." I think it has a lot of direct relevance for seeing
what's going on in the reaction to these Iraqi prison [photos]. You
know, Rush Limbaugh calling it a fraternity prank. You have Trent Lott
yesterday [saying] that these are all exaggerated.
Is that a form of denial, though, or is that spin and interpretation?
Oh, absolutely. There's outright denial, but it's more subtle form
is just minimization. There is a difficulty sometimes in being able to
separate with public figures how much is actual denial in terms of
their own belief and how much of it is political motivation in terms of
spinning it and trying to alter people's perceptions. I can't say
anything definitively that Rumsfeld is in denial or these guys are all
in denial. We get a lot of reader mail telling us to stop showing
photos of the prison abuses and that they don't want to see pictures
of coffins coming home. Is that another form of denial on the part of
the public?
I would think absolutely. It's important to note that there is a
positive dimension to denial. Denial is a defense mechanism that
typically develops in childhood as a method of survival, of denying
powerful, unpleasant emotions. The problem is a lot of people learn
this as a way of dealing with life. The coffins and the pictures of
abuse are sickening, disgusting, so there are some real powerful
emotions there that people want to avoid. But I think also there's an
issue of loss going on. There's a really powerful political myth
about the United States; we're the land of the free, the home of the
brave. We go out with honor to bring freedom to Iraq, and so on. These
kinds of photographs really threaten the validity of that myth.
That's a real loss.
Whether or not that myth is true or whether Abu Ghraib is an anomaly,
people never like having their assumptions challenged.
Absolutely. I think there's a lot of [people saying] "If I don't
see it, it doesn't exist." You saw that with Gen. [Richard] Myers,
head of the Joint Chiefs, he got this report in January, and he never
read it. Rumsfeld had the report, and he didn't read it. It's like,
psychologically, "If I don't read it, maybe it will go away." The
parallels to the [Roman] Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal are [right
there]. Again, it's protecting the institution, throwing up a few
underlings but protecting the chain of command, which is obviously what
the Catholic church did, big time.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am guessing you lean politically
a little more to the left?
Yeah, I'd probably have to say that. I have voted for Republicans,
however.
Just not Republicans you felt were in denial?
[Laughs] Well, not always. Politics is always a matter of choice.
What about the Democrats, though, they lean more toward the social
welfare side of things, bigger government, with a few notable
exceptions.
Well, you have to be careful about that too because the biggest
spenders in the last 20 years have been Reagan, Bush I and Bush II,
compared to Bill Clinton. But it's a matter of priorities. Is it
going to be education and health care or is it going to be tax cuts for
the rich and the military?
What do those two sets of priorities say about their political
psychologies?
[Psychologist] Sylvan Tompkins speculated that when people move into
adulthood, they are attracted to political ideologies whose emotional
basis is consistent with the emotional script that they grew up with.
That's a really general process, and you can see that in terms of the
religions that people are attracted to as well as the political
ideology-you know in Christianity, people will find in the Bible
teachings that resonate with their particular emotional experience. Is
it hellfire and damnation or is it the uplifting qualities that Jesus
talked about? The attitudes that we found associated with these
childhood punishment experiences were attitudes with a large symbolic
component of power and toughness and retribution. You see that in
Inhofe, who's talking about "Hey, these guys are guys with blood on
their hands; they're not in there for traffic violations"-of
course disregarding the Red Cross report that 70 to 90 percent of the
people were picked up by mistake.
What does Bush's upbringing and conservativism tell you about the way
he sees the world? Bush is really fascinating. There was a televised
interview with Barbara Bush during the [2000] campaign. She was talking
about her son and relating this one incident where he had come home
drunk and his father was walking out to talk to him. W was saying,
"OK Dad, right now, let's do it." Clearly there's a tremendous
amount of anger there. Not that this explains everything that's going
on, but it's clearly, to me, a factor in his
I'm-gonna-get-the-guy-who-threatened-my-dad-but-I'm-also-going-to-show-my-dad-that-
I-can-do-stuff-that-he-couldn't-do [attitude]. How do you explain the
behavior and the psychology of the soldiers who committed the Abu
Ghraib abuses? They almost seem to be enjoying themselves.
It's the process of what's called "moral exclusion." This is a
process that happens in wartime a lot where you dehumanize your enemy.
Phillip Zimbardo ran the Stanford prison study back in 1971 where he
set up a simulation of a prison in the basement of the Stanford
psychology building. He randomly recruited 18 people-nine guards and
nine prisoners-and randomly assigned them to be either guards or
prisoners. He was going to run his experiment for two weeks. He had to
abandon it after six days. The guys who were guards ended up really
sadistically humiliating and abusing the prisoners, locking them in a
closet for hours and hours in solitary confinement, having them clean
toilets with their bare hands. The prisoners became demoralized and
went along with this. It became an actual prison. The guards were
having the prisoners simulate sodomy with each other.
Can you relate that to Abu Ghraib?
The role of a prison guard really dehumanizes the people who occupy it
and comes with it the ultimate aphrodisiac of power. There's no
coincidence that a lot of the abuse becomes sexualized. There has
always been a fusion of sexuality and power-it's a way of getting
off; it's a high to exercise that power.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.