We Are All Hooligans and Anarchists

So . . . I know I'm a little late to the Vancouver-riot party (or pile-on?), but I thought I'd weigh in on what happened, who was blamed, and how the media and politicians got it wrong.  There has been lots of digital ink spilled about the causes of the riots and who to blame, but in my usual way, I'll choose the unpopular target: us.

We seem to have this natural belief system in which there are good people and bad people.  Each of us believes, generally speaking, that we are good people; after all, if we believed that we were bad, we would change either ourselves or our morals to alter that designation.  These are what you would call dispositional traits.  We (and you, and they) are who we are, and that does not change.  Because we view things through the relatively narrow lens of our own experiences, it is easy to fall into the trap that we remain constant while the situations around us change.

But you know what?  Dispositional traits don't dominate.  We are not always the same person, all the time.  We tend not to notice this, because our brains are very good at rationalizing actions and using moral relativism, which allows us to apply different ethics or codes in different circumstances, all while maintaining a consistent self-image. 

So what really matters are situational states.  We behave in response to our situations and environments.  The most striking example of this that I can think of is Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, which was conducted 40 years ago.  In this classic study (which would never, ever be approved by any ethics board today), Zimbardo randomly assigned study participants to be either inmates or guards in a makeshift prison.  Over the course of the study, which only lasted five days, the two groups immersed themselves in their roles to the point of fights, power trips, degredation of the inmates, depression, and extreme emnity (the study was intended to last a full week, but it was cut short due to the unexpected severity of the results).   The guards treated the inmates very badly and gloried in their power, and the inmates began by rebelling and then became more docile, depressed, and withdrawn.  Remember that the two groups were randomly assigned; it's not as though Zimbardo picked reserved inmates and bullying guards intentionally.

I thought about this when I read about the riots in Vancouver last week.  Mayor Gregor Robertson was quick to blame hooligans and anarchists for using the opportunity of a game seven in the NHL finals to behave badly.  This is typical dispositional thinking; bad people did something bad.  Since then, it has come out that many of the rioters were young people from solid, if not privileged, backgrounds.  One that has has caught some media attention is a 17-year-old honour student who was set to receive a full university scholarship for water polo.  He has since been kicked off the team, and may lose his scholarship.  Hooligan?  Anarchist?  Or just a kid executing bad judgement in a particular situation?

I'm not saying that situational behaviour is an excuse for breaking laws or causing harm.  People have to stand by their actions. I also agree that even in a situation like the one in Vancouver last week, people still have the choice to behave nicely or not.  I just want to get past the notion that bad things are only perpetrated by bad people, whether that is a riot or a financial meltdown. 

And if you really want to think of yourself as a good person, do good things whenever you can.  And don't riot after hockey games.