A STUDY OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY CONCEPTS

IN ANIMAL FARM

Date of Submission:
June 25, 2007

By:

_________________________
Harsh Menon

Submitted to
Dr. Diana Anz-Meador
Department of Humanities and Communication
College of Arts and Sciences
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of
Social Psychology
PSY350
Summer A 2007

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Prescott, Arizona
 George Orwell wrote his book Animal Farm based on Soviet totalitarianism,

specifically on the events that occurred during the regime of Joseph Stalin. However, the

book is ripe with examples of social psychology at work starting from the first chapter of

the book. Old Major, a boar that had won a prize and had been living on the farm for a

while, called a meeting of all animals to communicate to them a dream that he had. Old

Major thus appeared as a boar that gained power based on age, reference power (power as

a role model) as well as expertise. The extent of his power was captured by the sentence

that Old Major “was so highly regarded on the farm that everyone was quite ready to lose

an hour’s sleep in order to hear what he had to say” (Orwell, 1996, p.3).

Old Major then began to rally all the animals against man. He lamented on the

torturous conditions under which they had to work and used a central or systematic

approach (one that is based on the quality of argument) (Gilovich, Keltner & Nisbett,

2006) to convince the others that man is evil and is the real enemy that the animals have.

He thus began to discriminate against all men, but his arguments were based on an

economic perspective and thus related to realistic group conflict theory. Realistic group

conflict theory states that group conflict, prejudice and discrimination are likely to arise

over competition between groups for limited desired resources (Gilovich, Keltner &

Nisbett, 2006). In this specific case, the resources were the milk and eggs produced by

the animals, but appropriated by the humans. In order to enhance his arguments and

persuade the audience, Old Major individuated certain animals like Clover and Boxer

and reminded them of their inevitable death at the hands of their master despite all the

work they had accomplished. Individuation is defined as the process of emphasizing

individual identity by focusing attention on the self, which will generally lead the person

to act carefully and deliberately and in accordance with his or her sense of propriety and

values (Gilovich, Keltner & Nisbett, 2006). Old Major then used superordinate goals to

convince the group to rebel against their master. Superordinate goals are goals that

transcend the interests of individual groups, and that can be achieved more readily by two

or more groups working together (Gilovich, Keltner & Nisbett, 2006). Old Major

specifically asked all animals to treat each other as brothers and equals and to rise against

their owner, Mr. Jones, to obtain the superordinate goal of freedom. Since all the animals

felt the same way, the group meeting resulted in a risky shift with the opinions of the

group being stronger than those of the individuals. Risky shift is defined as the tendency

for groups to make riskier decisions than individuals (Gilovich, Keltner & Nisbett, 2006).

Soon after, Old Major died. But his dream of freedom became a reality. The

animals revolted and to their surprise, they managed to drive the humans out of the farm

and take control. Among the animals, a hierarchy had come to form whereby the smartest

species, the pigs, were tasked with teaching and organizing. As the smartest species, they

took over as leaders of the farm (which they renamed to Animal Farm) and began to

establish laws and rules to live by. Among the pigs there seemed to exist a power struggle

between two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, who were considered equals. The pigs had

two faithful disciples, horses Clover and Boxer, who had “great difficulty in thinking

anything out for themselves” and hence accepted everything that the pigs said. The horses

then communicated the teachings of the pigs to the other animals. The two horses acted

as mind guards, not allowing the other animals to think beyond what was told to them.
Thus, in such a situation with greatly uneven power between the different animals, things

were bound to go wrong. Social psychology predicts that power tends to enhance a

person’s inclinations, good or bad (Gilovich, Keltner & Nisbett, 2006). Thus, after taking

over the farm, the pigs began to abuse their power, revealing the fact that their intentions

were not good from the very beginning. This became evident as the pigs began stealing

the milk from the farm for themselves.

Upon discovery of where the milk had been going, the pigs approached the other

animals and justified the use of milk for their food reasserting that they were the leaders

and that the farm would fall back into the hands of the humans without the leadership.

The pigs thus began to embrace the principle of social dominance orientation, which is

the desire to see one’s group dominate other groups (Gilovich, Keltner & Nisbett, 2006).

The pigs did so by ensuring that all the other animals did all the hard manual labor, while

they enjoyed the fruits of the labor. The pigs took credit for all the work and thus began

basking in reflected glory, whereby they took pride (as well as credit) for the produce of

the farm. Basking in reflected glory is defined as the phenomenon by which individuals

take pride in the accomplishments of others with whom they are associated in some way

(Gilovich, Keltner & Nisbett, 2006).

The humans eventually staged a counterattack to retake the farm. However, their

efforts were in vain as the animals crushed the attack. Boxer, the horse, accidentally

killed a human in the process. Upon realization of what he had done, Boxer regretted his

sin and said “I have no wish to take life, not even human life” (Orwell, 1996, p.32).
Boxer’s killing of a human represents the effect of deindividuation of people when they

are in large groups. Deindividuation is a process of decrease in individual identity

accompanied by reduced self-evaluation that overcomes a person when he or she is in a

large group (Gilovich, Keltner & Nisbett, 2006). Upon realization of the seriousness of

his act, Boxer felt individuated and regretted his actions as part of the group. The pigs

however indulged in more ethnocentrism, whereby the animals who had fought and

those who had died were given a military decoration. Ethnocentrism is defined as

glorifying one’s own groups while vilifying other groups (Gilovich, Keltner & Nisbett,

2006).

Soon after, the power struggle between Snowball and Napoleon intensified. They

both had different visions for what the farm should become in the future as a result of

which the farm was divided into two. Snowball wanted to build a windmill to create

electricity, but Napoleon refused the plan. Finally, when Snowball convinced the group

that the windmill was the way of the future, Napoleon unleashed his trained dogs on

Snowball and took control of things. With Snowball out of the picture, Napoleon

continued with the plan of building the windmill. Thus Napoleon used the entire episode

as a means of eliminating his only threat to complete and unquestioned power. Thus,

Napoleon let his power get to him resulting in him partaking in behavior that would have

been considered inappropriate under normal circumstances. He became more aggressive

and openly attacked his opponent and took over. His behavior is an extension of the

social dominance orientation to the individual.

 The unquestioned power began to affect the behavior of Napoleon to an even

greater extent. Right after the initial rebellion, Napoleon established seven

commandments by which the animals were to conduct their daily lives. However, with

Snowball out of the way, Napoleon started doing some of the things he had banned earlier

and began re-writing the commandments so that no one would notice. He even made the

animals work harder. Snowball was categorized with the humans as the next individual to

be discriminated against and he was blamed for sabotaging work on the windmill, even

though severe winds had caused the destruction. The group of animals, even though a

little frustrated, agreed with the pigs because they knew no better and because there was

no one to oppose the will of Napoleon. The animals’ behavior is almost similar to that of

the participants in the Milgram experiment. The animals feel compelled to go on, even

though they feel that they are being treated unfairly. As determined in the Milgram

experiment, “tuning out the experimenter” was more powerful than “tuning in the

learner” and therefore, the animals were dominated by the more powerful force.

Napoleon thus emerged as a directive leader, who took control of the group and

converted the group into a cult using textbook methods of brainwashing. After taking

absolute control of the group, Napoleon established an authoritarian rule where his

leadership became more important than what he preached. He established rules for others

which he himself did not follow. He subjected the animals to hours of work, deprived

them of sleep and thus made them enter an altered state of consciousness. After this cycle

of brainwashing, he tolerated only those people who followed his orders, thus refreezing

the animals with the behavior that he wanted. Refreezing is defined as the phenomenon
by which members are reinforced with new behaviors (based on a need for affiliation)

after being brainwashed (Anz-Meador, 2007). Even though, the animals felt that they

were being treated unfairly, they went on because cognitive dissonance kicked in.

Cognitive dissonance is defined as a phenomenon whereby contradictory thoughts

created discomfort (Anz-Meador, 2007). The animals thus began to look only at the

positive side of life (the fact that they are autonomous) and neglected the negative aspects

(the fact that they are being treated unfairly).

Eventually, the ineffective leadership affected the productivity of the farm and all

the animals in the farm were facing starvation. However, Napoleon tried to conceal this

fact. He tried to show that the farm was happy and prosperous, while in reality he knew

that everything was going downhill. Napoleon resorted to appropriating all the eggs from

the hens (in addition to taking all the milk), which made him no different from his human

master. The hens were outraged and tried to rebel against Napoleon. However, they were

crushed and executed. Other animals felt the same way, and believed that the source of all

their rebellious feelings and behavior was Snowball. All the animals who believed so

were executed by Napoleon. Boxer, the horse, was appalled by the situation. However,

unable to blame the leadership, he blamed himself and vowed to work harder to make

things right. Boxer’s attitude closely represents the fundamental attribution error

whereby he attributed the blame to himself rather than situational influences or causes.

The fundamental attribution error is defined as the failure to recognize the importance of

situational influences on behavior coupled with a tendency to overemphasize the

importance of disposition or traits on behavior (Gilovich, Keltner & Nisbett, 2006).

 Finally, Napoleon and his confederate pigs began to make friends with the

humans and eventually ended up being the reason why they started the rebellion in the

first place. The uneven power hierarchy led to an abuse of power which benefited the

leaders (the pigs). However, the people who suffered in this process were the horses and

other animals that went along with Napoleon’s plans without question.
REFERENCES

Anz-Meador, D. (2007). PSY350: Social Psychology lecture notes. Unpublished notes.

College of Arts and Sciences. Prescott, AZ: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical

University.

Gilovich, T., Keltner, D. & Nisbett, R.E. (2006). Social Psychology. Norton: New York.

Orwell, G. (1996). Animal Farm. Plume/Harcourt Brace: New York.