Result Of Distortion In Social Cognition - Case Study Example

Introduction Behavior of a human being is not a random phenomenon. Every action that human being takes, even if it seems random or unintended, has a reason behind it. ‘Social cognition’ tries to explain the “cognitive structures and processes that shape our understanding of social situations and that mediate our behavioral reactions to them”(Bodenhousen, Macrae & Hugenberg 2003, p.257). The fundamental assumption of social cognition research is that man’s behavior is shaped by his internal representations of other people and how he perceives the social situations (Bodenhousen, Macrae & Hugenberg 2003, p.257). The aim of social cognition is to study the specific aspects that create the mental structure and the process that leads to actions (Bodenhousen, Macrae & Hugenberg 2003, p.257). Man’s behavior towards other people depends on his internal cognitive structure about other people. Every action, whether it is planned or spontaneous, is driven by the social cognitive structure of mind. Hence, it won’t be wrong to say that the killing of Mr. Charles de Menezes, who was shot dead after being mistaken for a terrorist called Hussain Osman (Swaine 2008), was actually not a case of mistaken identity, but was a result of the distortion in the internal cognitive structure of people who were responsible for the killing. Scenario: Mr. Charles de Menezes was shot seven times in his head by the plain clothes officers, without giving him warning or without making sure that he was the right person (Swaine 2008). The intention of the police operation was to keep a watch of the flats where Osman lived and stop anyone leaving the flats or arrest them quietly for investigation (Bailey 2008). When Mr. Charles de Menezes left the flat, he was folowed by differnt officers to the tube station where he boarded the subway car (Bailey 2008). During this whole process, officers ‘James’, ‘Frank’,‘Ivory’ and ‘Laurence’, who were following Mr. Menezes, were not sure if he was the man they were looking for. In fact ‘Laurence’ told the team that he did not believe the person was identical to the man they were looking for (Bailey 2008). After all these signals from the surveillance officers about Mr. Menezes not being ‘their’ man, Commander Cressida Dick chose to send SO19 (the firearms team) to stop him, instead of sending SO12 (surveillance team) or SO13 (the armed debriefing team), thinking about the risk involved (Bailey 2008). An innocent man, who had no idea what was going on, was killed because of the distorted internal cognitive structure of the officers who were under pressure of threat from terrorists. Why the police operation went wrong on 22nd July 2005 can be explained with the help of some of the Social cognition theories. Why was it that even after being clearly told by the surveillance officers that they did not think Mr. Menezes was the right man, the control room decided to take a drastic step? The answer is in the deeply rooted psychology of mental associations with stereotype, crowd behavior and attitudes. The behavior displayed by the control room was not a random behavior, but was a result of internal cognitive structure. Definition of social cognition: Social cognition believes that the social and nonsocial responses of human being depend on his cognitive processes (Wyer & Srull 1994, p.ix). Society is a complex structure. To make things easy, human being mentally divides people from different social backgrounds in certain groups. This leads to development of prejudice and stereotype. According to cognitive structure, “ stereotypes are belief systems or cognitive structures that can guide information processing, and it examines how those structures arise and how their influence on information processing affects perceptions of and interactions with members of stereotyped groups” (Hamilton & Sherman 1994,p.2). Stereotype theory: Stereotyping a person means thinking about him as a group and not as an individual. The influence of stereotyping is so strong on the mind that people often perceive others as a member of a social group, based on his nationality, race, religion, social status, lifestyle etc. rather than perceiving him as individual (Hamilton & Sherman 1994,p.4). This leads to generalized thinking pattern like ‘people from black ethnic background have violent tendencies’, ‘Asians are job snatchers’ etc. The motivation behind the categorization of people is that it fulfills their desire of being superior to others in the society (Hamilton & Sherman 1994,p.5). By forming groups, people try to achieve two things: 1) simplify the social interactions by seeing a person as a group and not individual and 2) fulfill their desire of superiority by thinking that they belong to a group which is different and superior to other groups in the society (Hamilton & Sherman 1994,p.5). Stereotyping leads to wrong judgments and opinions, which in turn can lead to wrong actions. For example, perceiving every person belonging to Islam religion as terrorist is a result of stereotyping. This makes the life hell of innocent people belonging to Islam religion. But the past conditioning is so strong that people are not able to live without prejudice. It is the cognitive process of categorization and stereotyping which led to killing of Mr. Charles de Menezes. During the conversational interaction between the surveillance officers and control room, the words used to describe his appearance were ‘dark hair, beard / stubble, Mongolian eyes’, and words used to describe his behavior were ‘nervous and twitchy’, ‘look[ed] over his shoulder’ and ‘wary’ (Bailey 2008). People are so used to seeing terrorists with beards and stubbles that they unconsciously associate these physical aspects with terrorists. The social pressure to catch the terrorist before he destroys many lives led the police officers in control room to take wrong decision. However, what was more responsible for the wrong decision was the influence of prejudice and stereotyping. Despite being signaled again and again from the surveillance officers that he was not ‘their’ man, the control room decided to attack Menezes. It purely shows that they were under the influence of ‘racial cognitive processing’ (Reicher 2003, p.186). Social Identity theory: Moreover, the fact that there was no verbal or physical protest by Mr. Charles Menezes towards the officers who were taking shots at him (Bailey 2008), shows that he was not at all confident about his social and human rights. The witness to the killing said that “Mr de Menezes looked as if he was - I hesitate to say confused, confused isn't really the right adjective. ….He looked as if he was expecting somebody to say something but he didn't look frightened. He looked as if he was waiting for somebody to tell him what was going on" (Bailey 2008). The social identity theory can explain why Menezes was not confident with is social identity. According to the theory, people try to develop their self-esteem by becoming a member of a group that they think is superior (Hamilton & Sherman 1994,p.6). However, the evaluations of these social groups are psychological and not based on reality or facts (Hamilton & Sherman 1994,p.6). People try to evaluate their own group positively and reinforces their superiority by psychological reasons (Hamilton & Sherman 1994,p.6). Mr.Menezes was a Brazilian and not British. His not being from Britain worked as a weakness for him and hence, he was not able to gather enough courage to protest against the officers. This was a result of discrimination that the people belonging to other nationality have to face when they live in foreign countries. The crowd theory: When a person is involved in crowd, his own psychological perception is influenced by the primal nature and he loses social boundaries of behavior (Reicher 2003. p.182). This leads him to become violent and hateful and can lead to explosion of anger and frustration suppressed from a long time. The crowd theory is proposed by Gustav Le Bon. The interesting thing that crowd theory states is that the person, when he becomes a part of a crowd to carry out some act, the number of the people involved in crowd makes him feel powerful and strong (Reicher 2003, p.186). This strength makes him lose his sense of social identity, humanness, self and responsibility (Reicher 2003, p.186). He becomes aggressive and violent and his judgment is blurred. The influence of the crowd is so strong that the participant loses control over his behavior and becomes receptive to any idea or emotion that sweeps through the crowd (Reicher 2003, p.186). However, the interesting thing is that the emotions and the ideas that sweeps through crowd and work as contagion are in fact nothing but the reflection of the suppressed hatred that people carry in their unconscious mind which he called ‘racial unconscious’ (Reicher 2003, p.186). Hence, it is the fear and the hatred for people belonging to different race or different social group that makes them a target of the rage (Reicher 2003, p.186). Moreover, the emotional influence makes a person lose his rationality and he forgets about the law and order of the society and becomes careless. This makes him barbarous and merciless in his acts (Reicher 2003, p.186). The killing of Mr.Menezes was a result of ‘crowd’ influence. The officers involved in the operation functioned as a crowd. They were hesitant about Mr. Menezes’s identity. No surveillance officer had given a strong go ahead on Mr.Menezes’s identity. In fact, the officer who crossed him said that “he did not believe that the person was identical” to the man they were looking for (Bailey 2008). But still, the people in the control room acted as if the ‘racial unconscious’ had overtaken them and took the decision to take a drastic step. The officers were under the influence of the authorities heading the operation and were not able to oppose the action even when they knew that it was wrong. Also, the officers who shot Menezes were so much under the influence of the desire to catch the terrorist and prejudiced thinking that they killed Menezes even without warning him or at least once making sure that he was the right person. As the crowd theory describes, they lost their sense of responsibility and maturity and became merciless killers of an innocent man. Firing seven shots where only one shot was enough, shows that the officers were unleashing their suppressed anger and hatred for terrorist and their frustration for not being able to catch the terrorist. Emergent norm theory: The Mendez killing scenario can be explained with the theory of emergent norm theory. According to Turner and Killian (1987), the challenges faced by people in unusual situations such that “redefining the situation, making sense of confusion” , lead to collective behavior (Reicher 2003, p.192). Turner and Killian say that not everyone involved in the crowd act (Reicher 2003, p.192). Before the action is taken, lot of thinking is done, opinions are shared and people offer their accounts of reality and listen to what others have to say (Reicher 2003, p.192). However, there are some people, who are not patient enough to wait for a right decision. These people, called ‘keynoters’, decide an action plan and forces the action plan aggressively and authoritatively on those who are not yet sure if the action needs to be taken or not (Reicher 2003, p.193). The plan is thrust upon the hesitant people of group and as they go on becoming submissive to the plan, the opinions of others in group are rejected by the ‘keynoters’ and the decisions taken by them are labeled as group decision (Reicher 2003, p.193). This process gives an illusion that the decision was unanimous (Reicher 2003, p.193). This explains how Mendez was killed. During the operation, Commander Cressida Dick acted as a ‘keynoter’ and took the decision to send the most lethal team on the operation, the SO19 (the firearms team) to stop Mr.Menezes. The action plan was Commander Dick’s. The signals from the officers were ignored taking in account the risk that was involved. During the operation, the officers were asked to rate their confidence on the identity of the man on a scale of ‘1 to 10’ (Bailey 2008). This shows that the officers were not ready to take the responsibility for the action. However, as it happens in a crowd psychology, they were forced to give their opinion by making them to give their decision. The officers thought it was impossible to do that and was ridiculous (Bailey 2008). By pressurizing the officers to rate the scale, the control room was trying to make them a part of the decision and was sending out a message that even the officers had given their consent for the action and hence, will be held responsible for the action that was taken. In this way, the decision to kill Mr. Charles de Menezes was portrayed as a group decision when in fact, it was not a group decision. The officers had clearly stated that they were not positive about Mr.Menezes’s identity as a terrorist. The killing of Mr. Charles de Menezes is an example of how the prejudice and perceived threat from people of other group can lead to a grave mistake. It not only shows the presence of racism and prejudice in the society but also display the failure of human being to live with humanness. Reference Bailey. G., 2008. The killing of Jean Charles de Menezes: risk, the ‘innocent’, and looking guilty. In-Spire: Journal of Law, Politics and Societies, [online]. 3(1) 22-31. Available at: http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm?harvard_id=34#34 [Accessed 06 December 2009]. Bodenhousen, G.V., Macrae, C.N. & Hugenberg, K. 2003. Social Cognition. In I.B.Weiner, T.Millon, & M.J.Lerner, Eds. Handbook of Psychology: Personality and Social Psychology. New Jersey: John Wiley & sons. Ch.11 Swaine, J., 2008. Police shot Jean Charles de Menezes dead ‘without giving any warning’. Telegraph.co.uk., [internet] 30 October. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/3285079/Police-shot-Jean-Charles-de-Menezes-dead-without-giving-any-warning.html [Accessed 06 December 2009]. Hamilton, D.L. & Sherman, J.W. 1994. Stereotypes. In R.S.Wyer & T.K. Srull, Eds. Handbook of Social Cognition: Applications. New Jersey: Laurence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Reicher, S., 2003. The Psychology of Crowd Dynamics. In M.Hogg & S. Tindale, Eds. Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology : Group Processes. Oxford : Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Read More