I am here today to comment on several news articles I have read online. In talking with my parents, having just booked holiday flights, I was reminded of something that I initially thought was a joke: The New TSA Security Measures. I have been reading numerous articles about the science, reasoning, backlash, and response to these measures. Regardless of the fact that I am looking forward to my holiday airport experience that much less, I would still like to take the time provide an psychological analytic perspective to all this.
From what I have heard and read, there are already horror stories abound concerning these new machines. I feel the need to clarify some facts about them, however. According to the most recent article I read on NPR*, there are currently 400 of these full-body image scans in use at 70 of the nation's airports. Furthermore, passengers are not required, per se, to go through these. They are instead "randomly" selected to go through the machine. The full-body pat-downs, one step away from a cavity search according to the descriptions, are required only in the cases where a person refuses a scan or something suspicious appears, the latter of which might be an understandable circumstance.
Does anyone else see the faulty logic in the rest of that, though? If I am not required to go through the machine just by going through security and am instead happily "volunteered" for the scan, should I not be able to refuse it in lieu of a magnetic scan? Apparently not. Issues have arisen with this, somewhat understandably, in which individuals have refused both and experienced a less than friendly removal from the airport.**
However, moving on from that, we hear from the head of the TSA that he is doing what he has to do to keep us safe from terrorists.*** Countries where people bomb each other every day are laughing at us. Laughing! This is apparently the only way to invade our privacy just enough to keep us safe. And boy, oh boy, is this an invasion of privacy. I get it! There are bad people out there who want to hurt us all, but there is a point at which ensuring our safety does less to reduce our fear than to increase it. I think we've reached that point. Hell, I'm pretty sure we're far past it.
That said, now for the psychological aspect of this analysis and commentary. For those of you who are familiar with Milgram and Zimbardo, you should already be thinking what I'm thinking. For those who are not, allow me to clarify.
Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments after WWII to figure out juuuust what made the German soldiers do what the German soldiers did. His design essentially fooled a subject by making them think they had just chosen/had just been led/had just been forced to shock another man to death. (Yeah yeah yeah, there were loooots of ethical issues). What he hypothesized is that people wouldn't do it. What he found was that people would. Which brings me to my first point: Though these TSA agents are only doing their job of forcing people to a scan, looking at scanned xrays, or doing one step short of a cavity search, they do not have to do it. Repeat: they are simply following orders. Sheep get nothing accomplished; they just get eaten by the wolf.
Philip Zimbardo conducted the sometimes slightly more well know Stanford Prison Experiments. He took every day people and assigned them to one of two roles: they could either be a prisoner, or a prison guard. I am not familiar with his specific hypothesis, but I know what he found. Just a few days into the experiment, he saw people genuinely assuming the roles that they had been assigned. The prisoners felt frightened and became compliant; the guards became abusive and used brutality. Here again, I see the TSA agents (innocent for now) as being those guards. They have, in their menial, minimum-wage jobs, been given a position of a power. It's powerful because they get to hurt and alienate people. Soon, they're going to begin abusing this power. From what I've heard, they already have (see if you can find the video of the 3 yr old body search - it seems to have been "copyrighted). Meanwhile, we as the prisoners, have no choice but to comply.
I don't care what people think about the scientific status of psychology, the fact remains that the findings of Milgram and Zimbardo are both significant and applicable. These men didn't conduct research just to go, "Golly gee, so that's why 6 million Jews were killed." These men took the time to conduct their studies over and over again with different designs to prove what humans are capable of as a means of preventing us from fulfilling that potential. But yet again, here we are doomed to repeat it. Only this time, the experiment is again real life and there is no safety of a laboratory.
I apologize for the long links; blogspot didn't want to insert my links tonight.
*http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131470688
**http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-15/travel/california.airport.security_1_alternative-screening-tsa-physical-pat-down?_s=PM:TRAVEL
***http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-17/travel/airport.security_1_pat-downs-body-scans-tsa?_s=PM:TRAVEL
For more info on Milgram and Zimbardo, do a search, find their pages, read some articles, search on Wikipedia, or take my word for it. It's fascinating stuff.
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