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Avoiding Crimes of Obedience: A Comparative Study of theAutobiographies of M. K. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin LutherKing, Jr.Davide Morsellia; Stefano Passinib

a Laboratory for Life-Course Studies (Labo PaVie), University of Lausanne, Switzerland b Departmentof Education, University of Bologna, Italy

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To cite this Article Morselli, Davide and Passini, Stefano(2010) 'Avoiding Crimes of Obedience: A Comparative Study ofthe Autobiographies of M. K. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King, Jr.', Peace and Conflict: Journal ofPeace Psychology, 16: 3, 295 — 319To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/10781911003773530URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10781911003773530

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Avoiding Crimes of Obedience:A Comparative Study of the

Autobiographies of M. K. Gandhi,Nelson Mandela, and Martin

Luther King, Jr.

Davide MorselliLaboratory for Life-Course Studies (Labo PaVie)

University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Stefano PassiniDepartment of Education

University of Bologna, Italy

This research aims to contribute to an understanding of how and why certainpeople are able to display prosocial disobedience behaviors, overcome unjustsituations, and withstand persecutions deployed by authority. This articlepresents a hermeneutic content analysis of the autobiographical speechesand texts of Gandhi, M. L. King, and Mandela. The results show that theimportance given to parents’ value orientation, experiences of injustice duringchildhood, and exploration of alternative viewpoints during adolescenceplays a crucial role in structuring prosocial disobedience. The findingsalso show that social responsibility and ingroup communication are importantconditions for facing persecution without forsaking original goals.

Ever since crimes of obedience have become a distressingly recurrentphenomenon in human behavior, they have become a focal topic in anumber of social sciences. More than 40 years have passed since Stanley

Correspondence should be addressed to Davide Morselli, Institute of Social Science,

Batiment Vidy-University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. E-mail: davide.

[email protected]

Peace and Conflict, 16: 295–319, 2010

Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1078-1919 print=1532-7949 online

DOI: 10.1080/10781911003773530

295

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Milgram took the world aback with his famous experiments (Milgram,1974) in which he started to explain some of the psychological processesthat could bring an individual to obey ‘‘harmful’’ demands imposed byauthority. Although the study of obedience has developed through anumber of experimental and theoretical contributions since Milgram’sexperiment (Bauman, 1989; Blass, 2000; Browning, 1992; Kilham & Mann,1974; Mantell, 1971; Passini & Morselli, 2009; Tilker, 1970), the topic is stillfar from having been exhausted.

Most scholars have focused on the analysis of what factors could leadsomeone to commit a crime by complying with autocratic commands(Baumeister & Beck, 1999; Browning, 1992; Miller, 2004; Staub, 2003;Waller, 2002). ‘‘Under orders from an authority, it appears that manynormal people respond with obedience, despite their own scruples anddiscomfort about actions that they and others would usually regard asillegal, immoral, and even unthinkable’’ (Kelman & Hamilton, 1989,p. 23). Hence, attention has largely been addressed to the processes ofdisengagement that people adopt so as not to feel accountable for theiractions when placed within a relationship of authority.

It is worthwhile to distinguish between destructive and constructiveaspects of obedience (Darley, 1995). Blind, destructive obedience is onlyone of the many facets of the relationship subsisting between individualand authority. Obedience is an important aspect of social life and can playa key, constructive role in maintaining social order and stability, eithermaintaining group norms (social control) or changing them (social change).Thus, every type of collective life is based on a more or less institutionalizedsystem of authority.

Some scholars (Darley, 1995; Kelman & Hamilton, 1989; Passini &Morselli, 2009, 2010b) pointed out that most of the empirical contributionson obedience have tended to underestimate the role of disobedience in theauthority relationship. Disobedience is often considered to be a sort of‘‘absence’’ of obedience, and its specificities have often been neglected instudying the relationship between individual and authority.

We believe that obedience and disobedience ought to be inserted within amultidimensional framework that could better explain the complexity of thisphenomenon (Passini & Morselli, 2010a). On a theoretical level, Fromm(1963) applied and developed Piaget’s (1932) definition of heteronomousand autonomous orientations. In Piaget’s theory, moral development canbe described on a continuum from anomy (i.e., non-regulation by others orthe self), to heteronomy (i.e., regulation by others), to autonomy (i.e.,self-regulation). Heteronomous morality is a morality of obedience. In otherwords, the individual does not regulate his or her behavior on the basis of per-sonal convictions. In contrast, the morally autonomous individual follows

296 MORSELLI AND PASSINI


moral rules that are self-constructed, self-regulating principles. Piaget’stheory of moral development has been expanded on by Kohlberg (1969),who reinforced the idea that heteronomy and autonomy exist within a hier-archical system in which heteronomy represents a lower moral developmentlevel than autonomy. Although Kohlberg’s approach became the mainstreamtheory on moral development, in those years, Fromm suggested that heter-onomy and autonomy are not distributed on a hierarchical scale. One personcan contemporaneously obey an external authority in a heteronomous wayand his or her own conscience autonomously. As a matter of fact, thisapproach fits Piaget’s original theory, according to which a person can mani-fest a heteronomous orientation within a hierarchical context and an auton-omous orientation in a situation of peer cooperation (Carpendale, 2000).

Thus, disobedience may be linked to clear-cut moral issues and may betraced back to what Rochat and Modigliani (1995) called the ‘‘ordinaryquality of goodness,’’ in opposition to the ‘‘banality of evil’’ (Arendt,1964). As Rochat and Modigliani put it, ‘‘the chances that evil will be perpe-trated are increased when it is rendered banal, but goodness does not disap-pear in the process of making evil commonplace’’ (p. 198). Besides, their

conception of the ordinariness is not intended to imply that goodness is com-monplace so that it will be readily observable in encounters between authori-ties and subordinates. Rather, it is meant to suggest that goodness . . . can beexpressed in quite ordinary ways that are mere extension of common civilityor basic decency. (Rochat & Modigliani, 1995, p. 206)

In fact, we attempt to demonstrate that as long as human beings can eas-ily obey harmful demands under certain contextual circumstances, they arealso able to disobey if other conditions are present.

The question of what enables people to disobey in a prosocial way has yetto be answered. Some explanations are present in the literature, but mostfocus on individual psychological processes, paying little attention to inter-action with the social context (Modigliani & Rochat, 1995; Tappan, 2000).As an alternative, within a sociological perspective, Keniston (1968)proposed a multidimensional approach to analyze the social framework ofthe young members of the New Left in the anti-Vietnam War summer.Results from his research are still relevant today. They show that individualfactors, such as moral development and attitudes, are closely bound to situa-tional variables like parental behavior and peer relationships. In otherwords, moral reasoning is dependent on the social context. Parental abilityto express moral thinking plays a particularly important role in constructingchildren’s moral judgment and their weltanschauung, although parents’ andchildren’s judgment need not overlap. Later studies by Helwig (1995) and

AVOIDING CRIMES OF OBEDIENCE 297


Neff and Helwig (2002) highlighted the interaction between individualand community levels. Their results show that moral development is basedon the meaning that individuals attach to concepts such as authority, tra-dition, autonomy, rights, and equality. Such meanings are not simply trans-mitted to the individuals, but represent shared features of social life and areco-constructed in the interaction between individual and social contexts.

In this regard, developmental psychologists have studied how somefactors (e.g., socialization) might be responsible for the emergence of stableindividual differences in prosocial behavior (see Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998).For instance, Colby and Damon (1992) pointed out that personal character-istics and critical experiences might predict the performance of extraordi-nary moral actions (Eisenberg & Sadovsky, 2006). According to Piaget(1932), the nature of the relationships that people experience may influencemoral reasoning by either facilitating or inhibiting the process of perspectivetaking. As some scholars (Comunian & Gielen, 2006; Mason & Gibbs, 1993)pointed out, adolescents who reported more general and friendshipperspective-taking experiences were more mature in their moral judgment.Thus, situations or relationships that either constrain or facilitate the abilityto understand the perspectives of others should influence moral reasoning.This is consistent with the studies that analyzed activists in the civil rightsand antiwar movements of the 1950s and 1960s (Duhnam & Bengston,1992) and those who sheltered Holocaust survivors (Oliner & Oliner,1988). Those studies underline the relevance of individual compassion andsocial responsibility as core values, derived at least partly from personalexperience, that have motivated the actions of people enacting disobedience.

In the domain of social influence, Kelman (2006) and Kelman andHamilton (1989) accounted for constructive disobedience behavior as a con-dition of autonomy acquired by the individual and as the consequence ofperceiving alternatives to the dominant social context. When the statusquo is not accepted as the sole interpretation of reality, then authority’s legit-imacy is constantly undermined. This means that, in the case of ‘‘harmful’’demands issued by authority, individuals may recognize their illegitimacyand disobey them. The significance of a pluralistic viewpoint in the develop-ment of autonomous decision making may find confirmation in Marcia’s(1980) theory on the development of individual identity (derived fromErikson, 1968, and recently revised by Meeus, 1996) and in moral identitystudies (Blasi, 1993; Flanagan & Rorty, 1990; Tappan, 2000). Insofaras the individual considers different points of view, he or she stands auton-omously, thereby weakening the influence of authority and consequentlylessening the possibility of committing obedience crimes.

However, solely focusing on authority’s legitimacy and the development ofmoral identity does not adequately explain why some people are not deterred



from disobedient conduct by the prospect of punishment, whereas others are.The cognitive developmental approach sometimes fails to consider the actualrole of the social context in processes of disobedience and resistance. On theother hand, a number of social psychological studies have not paid muchattention to the individual’s moral development, which provides importantinformation in terms of distinguishing prosocial (constructive) disobediencefrom antisocial (destructive) disobedience. For these reasons, we believe thatan autobiographical approach will provide further insight into these issues.True-life stories contain both social and developmental aspects, and can leadto a better understanding of prosocial disobedience.

To use autobiographies to understand social phenomena, we have to shiftour attention from the factual level to the hermeneutic level and focus on theinterpretations that people give to their lives (Ferrarotti, 1995). Autobiogra-phies are interpretative schemes that attribute sense and continuity to lifeevents (Bruner & Weisser, 1991). According to Bruner (1990), narratorsnot only narrate, but also justify themselves. Such justification is performedin relation to the audience. For instance, studies on lesbian and gay‘‘coming-out’’ narratives (Joos & Broad, 2007; Martin, 1993; Plummer,1995) show that people reconstruct and interpret their infancy and theiryouth to provide explanations for their adult identity. Narrators chooseand frame life events as a function of their aims and the specific audiencethey have in mind (Eco, 1979; Schank, 1990). Thus, the study of autobiogra-phies shifts attention from what happened to how it is interpreted.

To study prosocial disobedience through autobiography is to focus on theperception that certain life events are conducive to a critical and alternativeviewpoint and to the enhancement of the ability to withstand the persecu-tions of authority. In this study, we hypothesized that similar interpretationsof life events may be found in the narratives of different people enactingconstructive disobedience. In particular, we expected that such narrativeswould reveal the link between constructive disobedience behavior and theperception of the illegitimacy of authority’s demands. Moreover, if socialand contextual factors are relevant in defining an alternative viewpoint tothe status quo, we expected that, rather than focus on personal characteris-tics, people would highlight the relation among social, contextual factors;individual moral development; disobedient behavior; and the capacity toovercome persecution.

METHOD

This study focused on the autobiographical narratives of Nelson Mandela(1994), Martin Luther King, Jr. (Carson, 1998), and Mohandas K. Gandhi



(1929) as case studies of people who became deeply involved into disobeyingauthority and who faced strong persecution for this disobedience. In fact,in Gandhi, Mandela, and King’s lives, the two dependent variables weobserved were both pervasive and meaningful: (a) prosocial disobedience,which differs from destructive forms of disobedience such as defiance,delinquency, rebellion, and so forth; and includes a variety of different typesof protests, such as civil disobedience and boycotts, which do not harmothers; and (b) resistance to persecution.

A hermeneutic content analysis of the narratives (Holsti, 1969; Kvale,1996; Polkinghorne, 1988; Ricoeur, 1984) was applied to the autobiogra-phies, using the methodology proposed by Keniston (1968) in his researchinto the young New Left members. Keniston collected structured autobio-graphical interviews and arranged them into common topics, identifyingsimilarities and differences in the respondents’ attribution of meaning.The narrative units were analyzed by means of a cross-sectional comparisonbetween respondents, instead of a longitudinal comparison—that is,the narratives were divided into topics instead of considered as a wholeautobiographical corpus. This methodology allowed us to analyze King’snarratives, too, despite the fact they were not written by King himselfas a full autobiography, but were collected postmortem by Carson (1998).1

The analysis proceeded through an iterative procedure carried out by twoindependent coders. A first analysis of the texts was performed using the cate-gories suggested by Keniston (1968; namely, family, mother, father, childhood,and adolescence), as they provided good explanatory power in the study of theNew Left activists. Two more categories were added at the very beginning,being in agreement with the variables to be observed: jail experiences andsignificant interpersonal relationships (i.e., the perception of support fromother persons). In addition to those, an initial analysis revealed that anothergroup of narratives was common to the three autobiographies; this wascategorized as social responsibility, or the perception that other people dependon us (Berkowitz & Daniels, 1964). The books were then wholly reanalyzedto verify whether more narratives could be coded. During a third step, thetwo independent coders compared the coded data and resolved differences.

Narratives were chosen with the help of QSR-N5 software, fromthe whole corpus of the text, and were inserted into categories using twocriteria. Initially, text units were selected on the basis of an explicit referenceby the authors to their importance and meaningfulness. Locutions, such as

1M. L. King’s autobiography is a collection of autobiographical narratives taken from

King’s major books, as well as manuscripts, speeches, letters, and sermons with autobiographi-

cal content. The editing work by Clayborne Carson was hardly intrusive, ‘‘preserving the integ-

rity of King’s statements and writing’’ (Carson, 1998, p. x).



TABLE

1

TextUnitsbyAuthorandCategory

Author

Father

Mother

Childhood

Adolescence

Jailexperiences

Socialresponsibility

Interpersonalrelationships

Overall

Father

17(7.05%)

Mother

28(3.32%)

Childhood

45

19(7.88%)

Adolescence

31

035(14.52%)

Jailexperiences

00

00

62(25.73%)


11

06

12

41(17.01%)


00

00

33

259(24.48%)

Gandhi

Father

4(12.50%)

Mother

01(3.13%)

Childhood

00

3(9.38%)

Adolescence

20

09(28.13%)

Jailexperiences

00

00

1(3.13%)


00

05

010(31.25%)


00

00

00

4(12.50%)

King Father

5(12.20%)

Mother

23(7.32%)

Childhood

43

4(9.76%)

Adolescence

11

03(7.32%)

Jailexperiences

00

00

2(4.88%)


11

01

016(39.02%)


00

00

02

8(19.51%)

Mandela

Father

8(4.76%)

Mother

04(2.38%)

Childhood

02

12(7.14%)

Adolescence

00

023(13.69%)

Jailexperiences

00

00

59(35.12%)


00

00

12

15(8.93%)


00

00

33

047(27.98%)

301


‘‘I will never forget’’ or ‘‘That had a particular effect on my development,’’were used to recognize such key narratives. This criterion was mainlyapplied to autobiographical speeches on developmental issues (namely,childhood, adolescence, and family topics) to sort out the breadth of thecorpus and spot the salience of certain narratives. For the other categories(e.g., jail experiences, significant interpersonal relationships, and socialresponsibility), in addition to the first criterion, we considered the psycho-logical states and interpretations described by the narrative that could fitin these categories.

The categories we used are not to be considered exclusive—except forfather–mother and childhood–adolescence—which means that some text unitscould be coded into more than one category at the same time, and that theremay be intersections between categories.

DATA ANALYSIS

Two hundred forty-one meaningful text units were coded as follows: parents(35 text units), including father (17 text units) and mother (8 text units);childhood (19 text units); adolescence (35 text units); jail experiences (62 textunits); significant interpersonal relationships (59 text units); and socialresponsibility (41 text units). Table 1 shows the distribution of text unitsfor each of the autobiographies.

After the coding procedure, each category was analyzed by comparing itstext units to stress similarities and differences in the interpretation of lifeevents (Kvale, 1996). For reasons of space, in the following paragraphswe report only a few text units as examples for our arguments.

RESULTS

Similarities and Differences in the Life Stories

The three participants lived in different parts of the world within differentcultural frameworks. Gandhi (1869–1948) was born in India. He camefrom the Hindu culture but read law in London and eventually got ajob as a lawyer in South Africa. King (1929–1968) was born in Georgia(in the United States). He came from a deeply religious family and becamea Baptist pastor like his father and his grandfather. Mandela (1918–present) was born in South Africa. He was a member of the Xhosa tribeand grew up following both Xhosa and Christian principles. He, too, readlaw and became a lawyer.



They all came from the middle or upper-middle social class, whichallowed them to complete their higher education. Nevertheless, they allwere members of disadvantaged social groups, discriminated against bythe Western governments of their countries. Although they had highsocial status within their own groups, they had low status in terms ofempowerment and governance. As pointed out by Mandela (1994), ‘‘Nomatter how high a black man advanced, he was still considered inferiorto the lowest white man’’ (p. 30).2

Considerations of the Expected Audience

According to Eco (1979), writers and storytellers always address themselvesto a specific audience they have in mind, which may not overlap with theactual audience but which still influences their words and choice of argu-ments. This is even more salient in autobiographical narratives, which haveto be selected from an enormous number of experiences (Bruner; 1990;Schank, 1990; Smorti, 1994; Trzebinski & Antczak, 2007). Who did Gandhi,Mandela, and King think of while they drafted their autobiographicalspeeches? An important clue is provided by the fact that some parts ofthe three books were written during internment. Gandhi and Mandelastarted to write in jail, and King’s autobiography includes letters andthoughts from jail. This may give some insight regarding why and for whomthey started writing. Indeed, we may suppose that these autobiographicalnarratives were meant to convey their determination to fellow citizens, start-ing with those who were already involved in disobedience campaigns.Hence, the aim of their autobiographies was to transmit an examplerather than an auto-celebration. On this point, Gandhi (1929) wrote:

I am not writing the autobiography to please critics. . . .One of its objects iscertainly to provide some comfort and food for reflection for my coworkers.(p. 148)3

The same concept also appears in the introduction (p. 8) in which Gandhiexpressed hope that some readers could draw inspiration from his experi-ences and follow the same path in pursuit of justice. Although less clear-cutreferences are present in King and Mandela, we may suppose that theirintentions were indeed similar.

2This and all subsequent quotes for Nelson Mandela are from Long Walk to Freedom (1994),

unless otherwise noted.3This and all subsequent quotes for M. K. Gandhi are from An Autobiography. The Story of

My Experiments With Truth (1929), unless otherwise noted.



Categories

Parents. In seeking to interpret the origin of their moral development,Gandhi, Mandela, and King offered detailed information on their relation-ships with their parents. In all the texts, particular emphasis is given to therelationships with their fathers:

He [King’s father] has always been a very strong and self-confident person.I have rarely ever met a person more fearless and courageous than my father,notwithstanding the fact that he feared for me. He never feared the autocraticand brutal person in the white community. (Carson, 1998, pp. 4–5).4

My father was a lover of his clan, truthful, brave and generous, butshort-tempered. . . .But he was incorruptible and had earned a name for strictimpartiality in his family as well as outside. (Gandhi, 1929, p. 15)

My father had a stern manner and did not spare the rod when disciplininghis children. He could be exceedingly stubborn, another trait that may unfor-tunately have been passed down from father to son . . .my father possessed aproud rebelliousness, a stubborn sense of fairness that I recognize in myself.(Mandela, 1994, p. 15)

All three authors stressed the commitment of their fathers to social lifeand to their respective communities. In some respects, they interpreted therelationship with their parents as an important factor in their further moraldevelopment. They stressed, in fact, a sort of heritage coming from theirfamilies. On this topic, King declared:

And I think that my strong determination for justice comes from thevery strong, dynamic personality of my father, and I would hope thatthe gentle aspect comes from a mother who is very gentle and sweet. (p. 3)

With this heritage, it is not surprising that I also learned to abhorsegregation, considering it both rationally inexplicable and morally unjustifi-able. (p. 5)

Whereas the fathers are described as models of moral integrity and deter-mination, mothers are described more as direct teachers of moral principles.For instance, Gandhi (p. 17) expressed his admiration for his mother inmaking vows, and Mandela (p. 21) reported that his mother would tellhim traditional stories and moral tales. That is not surprising since Keniston(1968) also found that the people he interviewed were explicitly grateful totheir mothers for having brought them up with a sense of moral principle.

4This and all subsequent quotes for M. L. King, Jr. are from Carson’s (1998) The Autobi-

ography of Martin Luther King, Jr., unless otherwise noted.



Childhood. The search for sources of moral development is also remark-able in their narratives concerning their childhoods. For example, Mandeladeclared that he learned to handle problematic situations during hischildhood. He argued that there is a link between what he learned as achild and his leadership abilities as an adult:

As a leader, I have always followed the principles I first saw demonstratedby he regent at the Great Palace. I have always endeavored to listen to whateach and every person in a discussion had to say before venturing my ownopinion. Oftentimes, my own opinion will simply represent a consensus ofwhat I heard in the discussion. (p. 18)

King’s narratives were less focused on positive events; they focused moreon early traumatic events related to racist segregation:

The second incident happened when I was about six years of age. . . .Theclimax came when he [King’s friend] told me one day that his father haddemanded that he would play with me no more. I never will forget what a greatshock this was to me. . . .The question arose in my mind: How could I love arace of people who hated me and who had been responsible for breaking meup with one of my best childhood friends? This was a great question in mymind for a number of years. (p. 7)

In other words, King followed the interpretation that from a very earlyage, episodes of victimization trigger a profound indignation toward injus-tice. Moral education, combined with his parents’ example, brought him tomake a stand against injustice in later years.

Gandhi gave less space to the specific events that had occurred duringchildhood. Nevertheless, he noted that evidence of his adult commitmentto fighting for the truth was present during childhood as well:

I do not remember having ever told a lie, during this short period, either to myteachers or to my school-mates. . . .Two other incidents belonging to the sameperiod have always clung to my memory. . . .To follow truth and to go throughall the ordeals Harishchandra went through was the one ideal it inspired in me.(p. 16)

In narratives about their childhoods, as well as in those about theirparents, the authors highlight the importance of their cultural traditions(especially for Mandela and Gandhi) and the importance of learningfrom meaningful adult behavior. They considered childhood as the periodof their lives in which they first established important moral principles.In fact, according to Hoffman (1984), it is especially during childhood



that people develop a sense of responsibility for human needs, built on asense of universal justice. Gandhi, Mandela, and King followed thisinterpretation of childhood and identified in this period the source of theiradult sense of justice.

Adolescence. As we have seen in the last paragraph, Gandhi,Mandela, and King interpreted their observation of parent behavior andchildhood as starting points for achieving an alternative viewpoint to thestatus quo, which allowed them to challenge authority in later years.Adolescence is described through significant relationships and encountersoutside the family, which subsequently helped them to achieve alternativeviewpoints and challenge authority. For all three authors, adolescencerepresented a significant opening toward society. They attached specialemphasis to adolescence in their autobiographical speeches—35 significanttext units were extracted concerning adolescence, almost twice as manyas those on childhood (19 text units). Therefore, it seems that eventsoccurring during adolescence were more meaningful than the ones thatoccurred during childhood. The authors tell us how they entered a newsocial context during adolescence that differed greatly from the oneto which they were accustomed. This is in line with developmentalpsychology theories on adolescence. As some authors have pointed out(see Coleman & Hendry, 1990; Grinder, 1978), individuals are exposedduring adolescence to social interaction situations unlike those experiencedearlier in childhood. The shift from childhood to adolescence is marked bya change in many aspects of social life. In particular, during this period,individuals begin to encounter many new demands and expectations(Damon, 1980) relevant for growing into independent, socially competentindividuals, and may even enlarge and change their worldviews.

Gandhi, Mandela, and King recounted how they started to outlinealternative behavioral styles—especially regarding the relationship withauthority—through encounters with new social contexts, new peoples,and new ideas. For instance, King described how, during his experience atMorehouse College, he learned to cope with racism. According to Carson,King’s experiences at Morehouse College triggered a crisis in the religiousvalues he had learned within the family:

My days in college were very exciting ones. There was a free atmosphere atMorehouse, and it was there I had my first frank discussion on race. . . .Theyencouraged us in a positive quest for a solution to racial ills. I realized thatnobody there was afraid. Important people came in to discuss the race prob-lem rationally with us. . . .As stated above, my college training, especially thefirst two years, brought many doubts into my mind. It was then that theshackles of fundamentalism were removed from my body. More and more I



could see a gap between what I learned in Sunday school and what I waslearning in college. My studies had me skeptical, and I could not see how manyof the facts of science could be squared with religion. (pp. 13–15)

A similar narrative is present in Gandhi’s book. Gandhi reported thatduring adolescence he questioned the traditional values he had learnedwithin the family. The following text unit concerns his decision, taken witha friend, to break the traditional rule of not eating meat. The two boyshad concluded that such a decision would enable Indians to be physicallystronger and could help them to overcome English rule in India:

All this had its due effect on me. I was beaten. It began to grow on me thatmeat-eating was good, that it would make me strong and daring, and that,if the whole country took to meat-eating, the English could be overcome. Aday was thereupon fixed for beginning the experiment. It had to be conductedin secret. . . . I cannot say that I did not know then that I should have to deceitmy parents if I began eating meat. But my mind was bent on the ‘‘reform.’’It was not a question of pleasing the palate. I did not know that it had aparticularly good relish. I wished to be strong and daring and wanted mycountrymen also to be such, so that we might defeat the English and makeIndia free. The word Swaraj I had not yet heard. But I knew what freedommeant. The frenzy of the ‘‘reform’’ blinded me. And having ensured secrecy,I persuaded myself that mere hiding the deed from parents was no departurefrom truth. (p. 12)

Both horizontal social relationships (Berndt, 1992; Selman & Schulz,1990), as seen with Mandela’s friend, Paul, who openly refused to obeyauthority, and vertical relationships (Damon, 1980) with adult figures, areperceived as having a key role in developing a positive idea of disobedience.College experiences are described as being particularly meaningful, especiallyfor Mandela and King. Attending college gave King a new perspectivethrough which he learned to interpret reality. Also, Mandela told us that incollege he had the chance to come across different viewpoints. For instance,the following text is about a speech made by the Xhosa poet, Krune Mqhayi,at Mandela’s College, Healdtown. The poet incited the audience to resistthe power of the Whites and reclaim a specific African culture:

I could hardly believe my ears. His boldness in speaking of such delicate mattersin the presence of Dr. Wellington and other whites seemed utterly astonishingto us. Yet at the same time, it aroused and motivates us, and began to alter myperception of men like Mr. Wellington, whom I had automatically consideredmy benefactor. . . . I was galvanized, but also confused by Mqhayi’s perform-ance. . . . I had many new sometimes conflicting ideas floating in my head. . . . Isaw that African might stand his ground with white man. (pp. 36–37)



Mandela described this event as ‘‘a comet streaking across the night sky’’(p. 35). He stressed the importance of this experience in presenting an alter-native view of the social system: ‘‘I had many new sometimes conflictingideas floating in my head’’ (p. 36).

Roles of Communication and Social Responsibilityin Resisting Persecution

Experiences of prison are a central topic in the lives of King, Gandhi, andMandela. All three were persecuted by authority and were imprisoned ona number of occasions. The example of Nelson Mandela is quite remark-able. Despite spending 27 years behind bars, he finally overcame the powerof authority and defeated the apartheid system. Some common narrativeswere identified on the topic of resisting persecution and detention withoutforsaking original goals and disobedience behaviors.

First, jail experiences are not interpreted as being entirely negative.Gandhi, Mandela, and King were imprisoned because of their struggle forthe people, so they saw their sentences as bearing witness to their dedicationto the cause. In fact, in Gandhi’s and King’s acts of civil disobedience, beingarrested was a structural part of the fight itself. It had the precise aim ofshowing everyone how meaningless the demands and restrictions imposedby the authority were. King stated:

Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind himwould wear a somber face. But I left with a smile. I knew that I was aconvicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime. It was the crime of joiningmy people in a non violent protest against injustice. . . . It was above allthe crime of seeking to convince my people that non-cooperation with evil isjust as much a moral duty as is cooperation with good. (pp. 87–88)

Gandhi used this experience in a positive, proactive way, too. Heconsidered it an opportunity to improve his own self-control. He wrote:

My first experience of jail life was in 1908. I saw that some of the regulationsthat the prisoners had to observe were such as should be voluntarily observedby a brahmachari, that is, one desiring to practice self-restraint. . . . Inhibitionsimposed from without rarely succeed, but when they are self-imposed, theyhave a decidedly salutary effect. (p. 184)

In other words, although imprisonment is obviously a consequenceof disobedience and for having challenged authority, the three authorsdid not report the jail experience as a punishment, nor as an unwantedincident in their life trajectories. They interpreted jail time as an



opportunity to reinforce their activities and their dedication to communitygoals.

Second, ingroup and outgroup communications are described as having arelevant role in the resistance to persecution. Mandela wrote:

We stayed in the Fort for two weeks, and despite the hardships, oursprits remained extremely high. We were permitted newspapers and readgratification of the waves of indignation aroused by our arrests. . . .We readof protests around the world over our incarceration.

Our Communal cell became a kind of convention for far-flung freedomfighters. Many of us had been living under severe restrictions, making itillegal for us to meet and talk. . . .We reveled in the opportunity to exchangeideas and experiences for two weeks while we awaited trial. (p. 178)

Like King, Mandela attached great importance to inmate relationshipsduring imprisonment. None of them felt alone in facing up to persecution.They felt united with the other inmates and were motivated to resist forthe sake of their country.

The narratives show two different kinds of communication that helpedthe authors to overcome detention. It is possible to identify communicationbetween ingroup members that helped to renew and strengthen the idealsat the basis of their disobedience. This communication consisted of verbalor written exchanges between group members; messages concerned thecoordination of activities or general political information. Mandeladescribed this correspondence as his most important task in jail:

Having sympathetic warders facilitated one of our most vital tasks on RobbenIsland: communication. . . .As politicians, we were just as intent on fortifyingour organization in prison as we had been outside. Communication was essen-tial if we were to coordinate our protest and complaints. . . .Communicationsbetween sections was a serious violation of regulations. We found manyeffective ways around the ban. (p. 366)

Ingroup communication, apart from having a strategic and practical role,helped the three writers to maintain a good and active state of mind. Theauthors also described communication between the ingroups and outgroups,which provided positive reinforcement to the persecuted group.

Communication, friendship, and collaborative relationships betweengroup members created a safety net, supporting the individual in facinggreat difficulties (Reicher, Cassidy, Wolpert, Hopkins, & Levine, 2006).Communication provides psychological and emotional support, helpingindividuals to stand up for their beliefs and enhance their commitment.



The narratives show that the influence of the communication is pro-portional to the individual’s awareness of his or her own group’s cohesion.The more the individual perceives him- or herself as being part of agroup with high cohesion, the more communication helps in withstandingthe punishment:

Mashall Square was squalid, dark, and dingy, but we were all together andso impassioned and spirited that I barely noticed my surroundings. Thecamaraderie of our fellow mates made the two days pass very quickly.(Mandela, 1994, p. 115)

Moreover, the support received from outgroup sympathizers is alsovery important and helps to provide scaffolding for the individual facingpersecution:

Many people later commented on how poorly I looked, and not just because ofmy wardrobe. I had been in and out of solitary confinement for months and Ihad lost more than twenty-five pounds. I took pains to smile at the gallerywhen I walked into the courtroom, and seeing our supporters was the bestmedicine I could have had. (Mandela, 1994, p. 307)

One of the most gratifying developments was the unprecedented show ofunity that was displayed by the national Negro community in support toour crusade. (Carson, 1998, p. 217)

Meanwhile a number of people had assembled in front of the jail. Soon thecrowd had become so large that the jailer began to panic. . . .As I walked outand noticed the host of friends and well-wishers, I regained the courage thatI had temporally lost. . . .From that night my commitment to the strugglefor freedom was stronger than even before. (Carson, 1998, pp. 75–76)

In other words, the social context and social relationships are pivotal inenabling a person to face persecution following acts of disobedience. Thereis a continuous exchange between the individual and the social supportgroup. This exchange returns information to the detainees concerning theircompetence and their role.

Social responsibility is positively linked to the perception that otherpeople depend on us. The more we know people depend on what we do,the more our perception of our own social responsibility increases (Berkowitz& Daniels, 1964). When Gandhi, Mandela, and King received support fromothers, either directly or indirectly, they became increasingly aware that awide range of people depended on them. This may have led to further devel-opment of their sense of social responsibility and deepened their commitmentto their roles (e.g., King wrote, ‘‘My commitment to the struggle for freedomwas stronger than ever before’’ [Carson, 1998, p. 76]). The three books are



replete with examples; the social responsibility category is the third majorcategory in terms of the number of overall text units (41 text units) and thefirst in Gandhi’s and King’s books. Here are several examples:

The black plague enhanced my influence with the poor Indians, and increasedmy business and my responsibility. Some of the new contacts with Europeansbecame so close that they added considerably to my moral obligations.(Gandhi, 1929, p. 248)

In a way I had never quite comprehended before, I realized the role I couldplay in court and the possibilities before me as a defendant. I was the symbolof justice in the court of the oppressor, the representative of the great ideals offreedom, fairness, and democracy in a society that dishonored those virtues. Irealized then and there that I could carry on the fight even within the fortressof the enemy. (Mandela, 1994, p. 276)

Positive feedback received from the international community throughawards and prizes, such as the Nobel Prize, also had an effect on theirperception of their responsibility for other people:

The Nobel Peace Prize was a proud honor, but not one with which we began a‘‘season of satisfaction’’ in the civil rights movement. We returned fromOslo . . .with feet even more firmly on the ground, convictions strengthenedand determinations driven by dreams of greater and brighter tomorrow.(Carson, 1998, pp. 260–261)

For Gandhi, King, and Mandela, such awards also increased the breadthof their moral spheres by exponentially reaching more and more peopleand groups. They all started with a feeling of responsibility for their owngroup and, subsequently, felt responsible for other groups in the samesituation, then for the whole nation, creating a universal feeling of socialresponsibility.

In the conclusion to his book, Mandela clearly illustrated this concept:

At first, as a student, I wanted freedom only for myself. . . .Later, as a youngman in Johannesburg, I yearned for the basic and honorable freedoms ofachieving my potential, of earning my keep, of marrying and having afamily—the freedom not to be obstructed in a lawful life.

But then I slowly saw that not only was I not free, but my brothers andsisters were not free. I saw that it was not just freedom that was curtailed,but the freedom of everyone who looked like I did. . . . It was during those longand lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became thehunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knewanything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. Aman who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is



locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. . . .The oppressedand the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity. (pp. 543–544)

In this narrative, Mandela added a precise time sequence to the develop-ment of his own moral sense and social responsibility. Mandela moved froma self-focused responsibility (i.e., his own freedom) to a socially orientedresponsibility (i.e., freedom for all). However, as he stressed elsewherein his autobiography (p. 93), his sense of social responsibility did notappear at any one moment, but became more and more salient as hislife progressed.

DISCUSSION

In this research, we have attempted to provide a contribution toward under-standing how and why certain people can display disobedience behavior,overcoming unjust situations and withstanding persecution deployed byauthorities. Results have shown that while relating their life histories,Nelson Mandela, M. K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. attachedparticular importance to contextual factors in defining an alternative view-point to the status quo, developing their morality, and enhancing theircapacity to withstand persecution.

In this sense, what we have found in adolescence is in line with the ideathat being conscious of the existence of alternatives to the status quo is adevelopment needed to reduce the legitimacy of authority. When peopleaccept the interpretation of reality given by the authority as the soleinterpretation, they tend to comply with the authority unquestioningly(Kelman & Hamilton, 1989). Instead, the existence of different viewpointsand different alternatives could foster debate over the legitimacy ofauthority’s demands and, in some cases, lead to disobedience. From thenarratives we have coded on adolescence, the hypothesis emerges thatalternative viewpoints may be considered to be socially shared and con-structed. The appearance of different viewpoints may lead to a criticalre-evaluation of traditional and family values. It is worth noting that, asGandhi stressed in his texts on adolescence, rule-breaking is interpretedas leading to a greater good, and is value-oriented. For instance, he toldus that he violated rules as he was seeking social change. According toArendt (1972), social deviance differs from (prosocial) disobedience mainlyin terms of the goals that actually lead people to break the rules. In socialdeviance, such goals are restricted to the members of the ingroup (i.e.,people disobey rules for their own specific benefit or the benefit oftheir own group). Social deviance is disengaged from moral reasoning



(Bandura, 1999). Prosocial disobedience, in contrast, only violates suchrules as are deemed to run against the community and community mem-bers’ rights. In this sense, disobedience is based on higher moral reasoningand shared social values. Thus, congruently with Marcia’s (1980) andMeeus’s (1996) developmental theory, the authors stressed the importanceof discovering alternative ways of constructing reality, even throughthe breaking of rules. Gandhi, Mandela, and King remembered their ado-lescence as the time when they discovered different ways of behaving andrelating to authority and started to question the reality that was presentedto them.

In addition, our findings suggest that an awareness of alternatives to thestatus quo may be necessary, but not sufficient. Gandhi, King, and Mandelahighlighted other experiences that they considered particularly relevant inundermining and challenging authority. In particular, communication anda sense of social responsibility appear to have helped them overcome thereactions of authority to disobedience (i.e., detention, punishments, etc.).According to our analysis, disobedience and the ability to withstand itsconsequences are the result of social interactions based on shared meaningsand values, and are developed and enhanced during everyday life. In linewith our hypothesis, the capacity to articulate alternatives to the statusquo, question the authority’s legitimacy, disobey its demands, and with-stand its persecution are not to be considered the personal characteristicsof a few special people, but social constructs and learned behaviors thatcan be socially enhanced.

Intersections in Table 1 show that the social responsibility category inter-sects with other categories in several ways. Five of Gandhi’s narratives onsocial responsibility were also categorized in adolescence, and in King’sautobiography social responsibility is connected to adolescence and to nar-ratives on parents. For Mandela, social responsibility was, instead, linked tojail experiences, underlining the change he underwent during imprisonment,as reported earlier. The authors interpreted their disobedience behaviorand attitudes as the result of an interaction between social factors, suchas child and adolescent experiences (mainly concerning the developmentof morality and the acquisition of alternative viewpoints), interpersonalrelationships, and communication. According to this analysis, resistanceto persecution may be related to the range of the moral sphere and to thesupport received from the surrounding community.

Although the data and analysis we have presented provide some originalinsights, the research does have some limitations. We are aware that the her-meneutic analysis we have presented does not cover all the possible ques-tions on this issue. This mostly depends on the characteristics of theanalysis itself, which always brings up fresh questions and deals with huge



and complex amounts of data. According to Bruner (1990), psychologybased on life stories and narratives needs to apply the interpretative instru-ments used for studying history and culture, without claiming a uniqueinterpretation of the human being. Thus, when interpreting the results, wehave to keep certain observations in mind. First, we analyzed the autobio-graphies of three people with a similar background (i.e., middle–high socialstanding and deprivation of rights connected with xenophobia). We mightfind different results by comparing people who disobey for very differentreasons. Second, our data came exclusively from male participants; hence,it would be appropriate to analyze women’s autobiographies as well. Fur-thermore, performing a control analysis would be tricky, as we did not findautobiographies of people who could be considered a comparison group(e.g., people involved in antisocial disobedience or not involved in dis-obedience, but with the same demographic characteristics as our sample).As a matter of fact, we had analyzed autobiographies of authoritarian per-sons—specifically, the texts of Mussolini (1947) and Hitler (1935). However,we think that, in line with Allport’s (1942) classification of autobiographicalnarrative, they are not fully comparable with the autobiographies we havepresented in this article, as the intents of the two types of text are mis-matched. Gandhi, Mandela, and King’s texts were addressed to their fellowcitizens with the aim of encouraging them, not on the qualities of theauthors but on their reactions to situations and events. The purpose ofMussolini’s and Hitler’s biographies, on the other hand, is mainlyself-celebratory.

Nevertheless, a comparative example may be found in research byTappan (2000), who provided an interesting analysis of the autobiographyof Ingo Hasselbach, founder of the National Alternative Neo-Nazi partyin East Germany in 1991. Tappan’s analysis differs from the one presentedhere, as it is based more on factual events in Hasselbach’s life than on theirpsychological interpretation. However, Tappan showed some aspects ofHasselbach’s life trajectory that allowed him to distance himself from theneo-Nazi movement. In line with our findings, Tappan’s analysis stressedthat the starting point for repudiating the movement he had helped to createwas the assumption of a different viewpoint. In particular, his relationshipwith a person outside the movement led Hasselbach to embrace a differentperspective over time:

All my friends for as long as I could remember had been in the Movement inone way or another. Now, to hear my Kamerads talking in the presence of mynew friend [Bonengel]—as I now thought of him—I actually began to feelashamed. . . . I began to identify more and more with Bonengel and his teamthan with my Kamerads. (p. 90)



This is consistent with our findings. Indeed, Gandhi, Mandela, and Kingstressed the way they progressively arrived at a greater awareness of thealternatives to the status quo and to different and unexplored behavioralstyles. As we have seen, particular emphasis in their autobiographicalspeeches is given to school studies, as well as to interactions with significantadults and peers during adolescence.

Nevertheless, those factors may foster disobedience, but not necessarilyprosocial disobedience. For example, Linden and Klandermans (2007) ana-lyzed some life-history interviews of far right-wing activists. They found thatexperiences in adolescence were important elements in the conversion tonationalism and right-wing ideology. In fact, for some of the interviewees,the right-wing and neo-Nazi ideology represented an alternative to the sta-tus quo in a way similar to the way in which antiracial activism representedan alternative to the mainstream viewpoint for Mandela and King. More-over, not unlike our participants, extreme right-wing activists also stressthe importance of feeling responsible for their own community when dealingwith difficulties stemming from their activism.

What seems to characterize prosocial disobedience—and differentiate itfrom other types of disobedience—is a deep sense of responsibility towardothers, combined with attitudes of moral inclusion. Its counterpart, moralexclusion, views others as lying beyond one’s own ‘‘moral community,’’outside the boundary within which moral values and rules of justice andfairness apply (Staub, 2003). This captures the dynamics underlying destruc-tive conflicts, whereas moral inclusion captures the dynamics of peace-building in its emphasis on equality, justice, and a concern for universalwell-being (Opotow, Gerson, & Woodside, 2005). According to Opotow(1990), moral exclusion is evident in a number of symptoms, including thedisplacement of responsibility. Instead, the analysis of the narrative suggeststhat attitudes of moral inclusion are linked to a personal assumption ofresponsibility. Therefore, all levels of society are included in the processof social change. Moral inclusion and social responsibility contribute tothe distinction between destructive and constructive disobedience. Destruc-tive, antisocial disobedience involves favoring one’s own group by encour-aging policies that preserve social inequality; whereas constructive,prosocial disobedience promotes social change addressed to everyone(Opotow, 2002).

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Davide Morselli (PhD in Social Psychology) has a research position at theLaboratory for Life-Course Studies (Labo PaVie) at the Institute of Social



Science of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He has been conductingresearch on processes of obedience and disobedience with a multi-methodapproach. His research also focuses on the study of social values and socialrepresentations in a cross-cultural perspective and on reactions to humanrights violations in post-conflict societies.

Stefano Passini (PhD in Social Psychology) is Lecturer at the Departmentof Education ‘‘G. M. Bertin’’ of the University of Bologna. His studies arefocused on authoritarian attitudes, social values, social prejudice toward dis-advantaged categories, and the psychosocial processes involved in drugaddiction and gambling among young generations. Together with Morselli,he has studied individual attitudes and behaviors toward different types ofobedience and disobedience.

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