The role of the army and CIA agents were to be obedient the orders given to them by their superiors. The three factors routine, cognitive dissonance and argentic shift are evident. The routine is established where the agents and soldiers have to get their orders and instructions from their superiors (Myers & Twenge, 2017). It is possible that the soldiers and agents might ask if they should continue and the answer would be ‘affirmative.’ The soldiers and CIA agents feel they have no choice but to obey their commander’s instructions, especially since the army has a strict ranking category. In most instances, soldiers already place themselves in an agentic shift where they feel they are just a vessel for carrying out orders. Just like the Nazi soldiers, it is common to hear words like "I was just following orders" being used as an explanation to the tortures and killings that happened in the Abu Ghraib prison. This is because soldiers are already trained to obey their …show more content…
The setting of a routine which removed the option of making a choice and the dehumanization of the prisoners by maybe attaching crimes they had committed against humanity. Creation of habit by doing the horrific acts repeatedly creates a routine where the soldiers obey and act out of their technical responsibility. The separation of who morally is supposed to be treated right may have encouraged the soldiers to torture and molest the prisoners. This way the guilt of killing the individual is reduced when the soldiers feel they have no moral responsibility towards them since they are “less than”. At the same time the need to obey the authoritative figure giving out the orders on what should be done to the