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The Unnatural Witness?

The Unnatural Witness?. Jeanette Garwood Leeds Metropolitan University J.Garwood@leedsmet.ac.uk . The Unnatural Witness?. Being an active witness, being willing to tell what you have seen, when you are not a victim, is actually a very strange pro-social action.

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The Unnatural Witness?

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  1. The Unnatural Witness? Jeanette Garwood Leeds Metropolitan University J.Garwood@leedsmet.ac.uk

  2. The Unnatural Witness? • Being an active witness, being willing to tell what you have seen, when you are not a victim, is actually a very strange pro-social action. • The thesis of this presentation is that the forces against being a witness are so strong that willingness to bear witness when one is not a victim is an odd behaviour.

  3. The Unnatural Witness? • What are the forces against bearing witness? • Children are strongly socialised against telling tales • ‘Don’t tell me tales’; ‘Don’t be a tattletale’ • Thus they make good victims - both of other children and of adults

  4. The Unnatural Witness? • Religious Injunction - • Within both Judaism and Christianity make a deal of this (and this occurs twice in the Old Testament) • "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." Exodus 20, verse 16 • Commentators suggest this requirement is beyond perjury.

  5. The Unnatural Witness? • Consider the case of the ‘woman taken in adultery’ from the New Testament - • The punishment should be stoning, but the person without sin is to cast the first stone. • The requirement on the woman, that she be forgiven, and not be stoned to death, is that she stop the behaviour in question - • But she is not to be condemned

  6. The Unnatural Witness? • Firstly, prohibitions are only required when people are likely to do wrong. • The Westminster Larger Catechism (1649) gives an expanded account of the requirements of the Ninth Commandment for followers of Christianity -

  7. The Unnatural Witness? “a charitable esteem of our neighbors; loving, desiring, and rejoicing in their good name; sorrowing for, and covering of their infirmities; freely acknowledging of their gifts and graces, defending their innocency; a ready receiving of a good report, and unwillingness to admit of an evil report, concerning them; discouraging talebearers, flatterers, and slanderers…” (emphasis added)

  8. The Unnatural Witness? • Two issues are important here - the prohibition on perjury • The injunction to avoid focussing on wrong doing • An interesting precursor to operant conditioning, perhaps • Praise the good…

  9. The Unnatural Witness? • And this is before the examination of modern psychology’s findings. • Part of the thesis here, is that there are good evolutionary reasons for being suspicious of those who will report on the behaviours of others. • Harmony in communities is very important.

  10. Socialising ‘morality’? • The crude socialisation of children has been touched upon • Moral development has been subject to much research, and Hans Eysenck’s approach might help, because he placed children in a wider social world, in a way in which stages theories do not.

  11. Socialising ‘morality’? • Eysenck’s model rests upon essentially a socially acceptable behavioural basis, fed by parents (especially mothers), seeking to condition children to the society where they will live as adults, with the stable (non-neurotic) introverted child learning mostly quickly to conform (Eysenck, 1977).

  12. Socialising ‘morality’? • Conforming would generally mean not causing disharmony - being a witness can cause disharmony. • Eysenck’s model would help to account for the non-witness, rather than the witness. • Harris (1995) indicated that by adolescence the value systems being adopted are ‘designed’ for the next generation, and propagated far more by peers than by parents, issues of loyalties may arise.

  13. Thinking about the ethic of care • Gilligan (1982) may give more of a window onto bearing witness - she argued that the ethic of care is paramount. • This would allow the consideration of impact to act as a variable in bearing witness: • Serious offences, such as assault might be reported; • Offences of a less serious kind might be more easily dealt with within a social framework, bearing witness becomes less likely.

  14. Thinking about implicit justice • Robinson & Darley (1995), suggest that implicit justice is an important factor in the likelihood of giving import to offence. • Their findings where that the broadly based participant groups did not always see offences as seriously as the criminal code treated them, and were frequently more lenient than the code would allow. • They comment that it is important to have some public support for the criminal code, otherwise it will not be supported.

  15. Pluralist Intuitionalism • Shwader and Haidt (1993) and Haidt (2001) may offer an even more compelling case for the unnatural witness: • Pluralist Intuitionalism, gives a tripartite account of moral thinking. • Autonomy (law, rights, harm reduction) • Community (collective enterprise; harmony) • Divinity (spiritual nature; sanctity; purity)

  16. Thinking about In Groups and Out Groups • Policing has never been a popular role even before the formal police force became a concept. • Although rich men were expected to help to keep the peace, they rapidly found others, whom they paid, to fulfil the roles of enforcement on their behalf (Rawlings, 2003). • People who talk to police officers can be seen in a negative light…

  17. Thinking about Just Worlds • Blaming the victim is a common outcome when bad events occur – just deserts seems to be part of the implicit justice system of the western human (Lerner 1965; Lerner and Simmons, 1966). • Brens and Wagner (1994) found that Just World beliefs influenced the views of participants in evaluating both the victim’s and the offender’s culpabilities - would you be a witness if you thought the victim deserved their fate?

  18. The Ultimate ‘Unnatural Witness’ – The Whistleblower • There are plenty of cases here to show how, what we might call a Westminster Catechist approach takes over, especially in science: • First the person who has made the accusation is vilified, and then possibly, their case against the organisation or individual is investigated. • Sprague (1993); Bucka and Kleiner (2001); Edwards (2001); Judson, (2004);

  19. Data on attitudes to Bearing Witness • Unobtrusive/non reactive measures • On-line discussion board Netscape Community 2005 • Response to a US High School’s intention to pay students for info about illegal activity in school… • 69 entries in the two days from posting - all North American

  20. Data on attitudes to Bearing Witness • 48 correspondents were responsible for the 67 filed responses. • Some merely commented on whether school kids should be paid for ‘snitching’ • Some went on to discuss the rights and wrongs of bearing witness at all • Some comments were very abusive against those who suggested that people - adults as well as children - should bear witness to criminal wrong doing

  21. Data on attitudes to Bearing Witness • Of those against paying for info on illegal behaviours in schools over 20% raised Nazi practices - • Socialising children to ‘sell their family and friends to the authorities’. • No one mentioned the McCarthy Enquiry, however. • There was also an assumption that reporting on crimes would involve informing on friends rather than on peers (the ideas that all peers in school are friends.

  22. Data on attitudes to Bearing Witness • 34 of the 48 (79%) went on the comment about informing, or bearing witness when cash payment were not offered as an inducement. • The pattern changes dramatically when money is removed, with two thirds saying that there are times when one really should bear witness - but some of these commentators were very threatening to those who did suggest that being a witness was right.

  23. Data on attitudes to Bearing Witness • A theme in both the correspondents who do see being a witness as right, and those who do not, is the question of living in a community, and being accepted by others - • This seems to be referring to Baumeister & Leary (1995) ‘Need to belong’ • Parents seem very sensitive to the fact that their children need to be in a safe environment at school - which requires reporting - but that having a reputation for being a witness can be problematic.

  24. Belongingness • Woven into this concept is the needs to be affiliated to a group, to feel that one belongs to families, as well as to social groups of a wider kind. • So, if ‘telling’ on a group will make you excluded, it is not in your interest to do so (also in evolutionary terms) • There will be times when joining those who offend will be a more effective strategy for keeping the sense of belongingness.

  25. Belongingness • The need to belong may directly violate the idea of autonomy - law, justice and legal harm reduction - • Causing disharmony registers as a more serious offence, than the action which has been witnessed (even if, given out of a context, people would say that the offence is a very serious) • Causing disharmony gets the person responsible for the reporting banished.

  26. Belongingness • This certainly describes the fate of whistleblowers very well. • The next step is to examine the attitude of those who rely on witnesses (the police; CPS, etc.,), to find out whether they too perceive witnesses with the same aura of unnaturalness as is argued here - both via theory, and some empirical results. • All offers of possible populations for research greatly appreciated…

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