Testing Gandhi

I suggested in a previous post that when Gandhi preached non-violence, his reasoning may have been that it is impossible for a group to continue oppressing another group when that other group is acting in ways that are universally and clearly seen as admirable. I mentioned this idea to Dr. Ori Friedman, and he suggested testing it in a psychological setting. I don't know how this didn't occur to me.

I don't do social psychology, so I doubt I'll ever get around to testing the idea myself. I do love thinking about experimental design, though, and how an idea like this could be tested. And maybe someone will read this and get inspired to look into this question. So here's how I would try to go about it, without having carefully thought any of this through.

I'd start with the individual level first. The line of studies could look something like this:

First, establish that neutral participants think better of people who are exercising active, courageous non-violence (this can be done by telling participants a story about an imaginary situation, showing them a made-up news clip, etc.)

Next, establish that this effect holds even when participants are initially given negative biasing information towards the non-violent group (ie. the same kind of manipulation studies use to invoke feelings of group prejudice. I know that Andy Baron has done this kind of work with kids).

Finally, the neatest thing to do would be a Stanley Milgram-type experiment, where participants are first made negatively predisposed towards a group, are next told of the group's non-violent resistance, and are then given the chance to cause pain (or so they think) to a member of the group (a real live research assistant). The control condition would be participants hurting a member of a group who they were negatively predisposed towards, but who was not described as a non-violent, Gandhi-esque resistor. Of course, this would never pass any ethics committee these days, but a social psychologist could probably come up with a modification that would be more ethical while still getting at the same thing.

I can see problems with these proposals already. How would one know that the non-violent resistor is really being portrayed admirably, and if they are, that the admiration evoked is due only to the description of them as non-violent and courageous, without using words like courageous, which of course evoke admiration inherently. I think there should be a way to design the study so that this is taken care of, but I couldn't be sure until I tried.

Anyway, I hope that for the psychology-minded reading this, you think the idea is interesting. And for those without a background in psychology, I hope it is both interesting and an reasonably accurate snapshot of how studies go from observations and hypotheses about the world, to ideas about human nature, to studies that can be proposed and begin to develop.