The rebel in all of us + The Psychology of Revolution

Student protests, rioting, Twitter revolutions. . . Rebellion is alive and kicking. But why do only some of us choose to take a stand?

If you were ordered to give someone a fatal electric shock, statistically you’d probably do it. If you find that hard to believe, you haven't heard oflast year’s French TV game show called 'Le Jeu de la mort', or the Game of Death. Encouraged by a glamorous hostess and a lively audience who ‘oohed’ and clapped on cue, the show’s participants pulled levers to shock a man hooked up to electrodes in a futuristic capsule while he screamed for mercy. Astonishingly, 80 per cent ofthe contestants continued to electrocute the man to his apparent death. The contestants were later to discover that the man was an actor and that the shocks and his eventual 'death’ were faked. But they weren’t to know this as they pulled the levers.
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site
The French experiment was a 21st-century makeover of social psychologist Stanley Milgram’s infamous studies that began in 1961 at Yale University in the US. Here participants were instructed by a scientist to shock ‘learners’ with Increasing voltage if they gave incorrect answers to memory questions. Sixty three per cent of participants administered what they thought was the maximum 450v shock, just because they were told to by someone in a white coat. Today, Milgram’s experiments are still used as the textbook example of how we unquestioningly obey authority, even if it involves going against our own sense of what’s right or wrong.
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site
But some of Mi1gram’s volunteers refused to do as told, as did participants in the French game show. They rebelled against the pressure put on them. “People often want to tell these stories about blind conformity and our natural instinct to follow orders," says Alex Haslam, Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology at the University of Exeter. “But ifyou look closely at the studies that supposedly provide evidence of that, you also see evidence of the opposing process."

Mutinous minds

So why do some of us choose to rebel? It's a question we haven't had many answers to. Milgram‘s experiments are a classic example of how researchers have concentrated their attention on those who con form — in a documentary about his studies, Milgram even chose not to include footage of anyone rebelling. Those who said no were confined to the cutting-room floor. But new research is putting rebels firmly into the spotlight.

There's never been a better time to look at the issue of rebellion. From student protests over tuition fees in the UK to riots in Bangkok and lran’s ‘Twitter revolution‘ during the disputed election in 2009, the spirit of mutiny is very much alive.

One thing’s become clear: there’s certainly not a single gene for rebellion. That said, some variants ofone gene. 5-HTT. are thought to influence impulsiveness, which could have a bearing on whether you take action if you disagree with the status quo. lt's hardly surprising that there's not a rebel gene as most of our actions are the result of several elements of our personality. As well as being impulsive,  psychologists would say that rebellious people tend to be extroverted and less empathetic than others. So multiple genes will play a part. And to fog the issue further, our personalities aren't simply the result of something from within. They’re also heavily influenced by our upbringing. And when it comes to rebelliousness, nurture is clearly a factor. For instance, younger siblings are much more likely to turn convention on its head in an attempt to win parental attention from their older brothers and sisters

But Alex Haslam says that just focusing on personality alone is far too simple. “As well as personality. there's also the situationalist perspective that some contexts will make anyone rebel. Most psychologists would argue that it's a product of the two: the interaction between an individual and the situation."
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site

Citizen to anarchist

Haslam and his colleague Steve Reicher, a professor of psychology at the University of St Andrews, have recently set about re-analysing data from classic studies like that of Milgram. as well as an investigation they themselves carried out in 2001 with the BBC, known as the Prison Study. Haslam and Reicher set up a prison simulation and assigned 15 participants to be either prisoners or guards. At the beginning of the experiment the prisoners were told that some of them would be selected. based on trustworthiness and initiative, to be promoted to guard status. For the first few clays. tests showed that the prisoners were unhappy with their inferior conditions but content to work towards making the prison system run smoothly. But on day three. the prisoners were told they could no longer be promoted. Almost immediately, their behaviour altered; inmates in one cell moved from discussing how to behave well to plotting to kidnap one of the guards. They realised the only way to improve their position was to rebel and change the system, which they soon overthrew.
What had happened?
in one psychometric test on the volunteers, llaslam and Reicher saw a huge drop in ‘citizenship‘ among the prisoners - a measure of willingness to do whatever it took to make the system run smoothly. Citizenship had been measured as constant. but fell from 5.2 to 3.9 out of seven between days two and five when the promotion option was removed.

“It shows that there are conditions under which people can move from being model citizens to potential rebels," says Haslam. “lt was the structural change that brought it about. lfyou tell people that they can't progress within a given system, then they are much more likely to collectively challenge that system." The BBC Prison Study suggests that even when we are unhappy with a situation. it‘s only when the hope ofprogressing in a social system is removed that we are likely to break the current rules and set up our own.
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site

Mutinous connections

Another test showed that the prisoners increasingly saw themselves as a separate group opposed to the guards. The measure of ‘social identification’ — the extent to which they identified with other prisoners - soared from an average of 0.5 out of seven on the first two days to 2.1 after the promotion option was withdrawn. Identifying with each other gave them the confidence and support to challenge the guards, as they shifted to an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality. “When we did the BBC study." says Haslam. “it really demonstrated that the big thing everybody had missed was resistance. That motivated us to go back to Milgram and say ‘Look, the resistance is just as real here as the confo rmity’."

Some data from Milgram‘s experiments was never released and won’t be until at least 2038 because of the test’s sensitive nature. But Haslam and Reicher say that recent evidence suggests that when the experimenter phrased the instructions as an order, saying ‘you must continue’ rather than ‘please continue’, every participant rebelled to an extent. So again, circumstance played a big part. Psychologists note that individual rebellious acts like spraying graffiti or writing an angry letter to a newspaper are also acts ofcommunication — speaking out in the hope to reach that group of people in the wider world who will agree with you. Connecting with each other through social networks and blogs has been a key part of many rebellions making the news recently — lran even shut down internet access in the country for 45 minutes to prevent action against the 2009 elections.
“With a more complex society connected by the internet, people seek out the groups they want to belong to." says psychology professor Iolanda Ietten at The University of Queensland. “There may then be greater opportunity to express individuality because of the opportunities to communicate that have expanded over the last decade." We’re iust a click away from nearly a third of the world’s population who have online access. So as the means to connect with like-minded individuals grows, it seems that the rebel inside all of us is more likely to emerge.
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site