Conformity In Arthur Miller's Are You Now Or Were You Ever

Morals are what distinguish humans from other animals. People are capable of understanding the complex network of emotions and relationships between each other and making choices that benefit themselves as well as others. However, the greatest phenomenon in human psychology is why people are also capable of doing bad things. We used to believe that some people are inherently bad. However, in recent history, the Zimbardo uncovered that in most cases, evil is "rarely . . . done by ‘bad apples' or rogues" (Aron). Philip Zimbardo's research reveals that good people are capable of doing bad things through conformity, blind obedience, and anonymity; these ideas can be proven by looking back at our history. The social psychologist held a TED talk

Arthur Miller's Are You Now or Were You Ever? compares the effect of the Salem witch hunts that he wrote about in The Crucible to that of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Similar to how everyone in Salem suspected their neighbor to be a witch, everyone was crazy about communists, and since "Paranoia breeds paranoia" (Are You Now?), people mistook the smallest actions for having an affiliation to the Reds. During this time, many of our beloved actors, writers, and stars had their careers tainted by a wild accusation of supporting communism, including Elia Kazan. Critics threatened that "if he refused to name people whom he had known in the party - actors, directors, and writers - he would never be allowed to direct another picture in Hollywood, meaning the end of his career" (Are You Now?). These examples highlight how, as a group, "seemingly ordinary, generally nice people" (Aron) could do

If some sort of authority figure is present, people are way more likely to listen to that voice, even if it leads them towards evil. An example of this concept is Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, where the townspeople of a village stone a person as part of an annual tradition. Even though "the original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago," and "some places have already quit lotteries" (Jackson 4), the village still participates in this dark tradition because their town elder, Old Man Warner, is trying to preserve it, and because of his title, most people in the village listen to him and carry on with the tradition. The townspeople are tricked by these traditions that are "hard to understand or remember" (Wargo), so they blindly follow their town elder, who they view as their beacon of