When whistleblowers are silent, it harms us all

In late June, Al-Riyadh newspaper reported on the implementation of executive regulations for the Law on the Protection of Whistleblowers, Witnesses, Experts and Victims. The report noted that the legislation included stringent measures regarding data confidentiality. These include concealing the identity of individuals to prevent attempts to assault them or to exert retaliatory and workplace pressure upon them.

The report noted that the legislation included stringent measures regarding data confidentiality. These include concealing the identity of individuals to prevent attempts to assault them or to exert retaliatory and workplace pressure upon them.

Such a step signaled the desire of the Saudi legislative system to end the era of enforced silence, and to confront those who favor or flatter influential figures in the workplace and in social disputes.

The new legislative measure is intended to dismantle a deep-rooted crisis in Saudi society, which has continuously worked to rearrange the balance of power within it, forcing people to make decisions that contravene their actual principles and convictions.

In 1902, the American sociologist Charles Cooley formulated his well-known theory on the “mirrored self” to explain how people assess themselves based on the judgment of others. Many individuals experience an internal conflict between the desire to tell the truth, in all its details, and the potential consequences that might result from doing so.

These consequences might hurt their personal interests or cause them psychological or physical harm. Or it could place them under the microscope of social criticism: “What will people say?” The prospect of such judgment can turn into a distressing nightmare that forces individuals to sacrifice the desire for justice and their legitimate rights, simply to avoid isolation, exclusion or being accused of folly.

The most difficult thing is that these concerns can take hold of a person to the extent that they dictate fateful decisions and influence family and professional disputes to the point that the person resorts to what is known as “utilitarian compliance.” This means an individual will side with a person they believe to be influential, capable or powerful, whether through influence, wealth or connections, even if that person is unjust or a liar, based on the pretext that the person will inevitably prevail and get what they want, with or without the consent of others.

In sociology, the weight of a society’s authority is measured by its ability to compel individuals to make decisions that contravene their own principles. In his thesis, “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind,” published in 1895, French psychologist Gustave Le Bon explained that people within groups voluntarily relinquish their individual judgment in favor of the prevailing tides of power and collective spirit. This surrender does not stem from fleeting fear, he explained, but rather represents the utilitarian submission to which a person resorts after assessing the balance of power within their environment and choosing what they perceive to be the strongest party in the equation. 

Many people favor individuals in positions of authority and align themselves with them, even if they are unjust.

Dr. Bader bin Saud

This assertion was supported by an experiment on the social power of formal attire, conducted in the United States by Leonard Beckman in 1974 and published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. In field tests he studied the effect of an influential person’s appearance on how people responded to what they said.

He found that acceptance of what people said while wearing ordinary clothes did not exceed 42 percent, but shot up to 92 percent if the speaker was wearing clothes that symbolized influence or authority, such as the uniform of a police officer or traffic warden.

This provides conclusive statistical evidence that the human mind instinctively links outward appearance with credibility, and might explain why so many people favor individuals in positions of authority and align themselves with them, even if they are unjust.

An experiment demonstrating bias in attitudes was carried out by the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1955. It isolated a test subject in a room and led them to believe the other participants had chosen an opinion that was, in reality, illogical. The experiment revealed that a desire to maintain one’s status in a group led people to side with the illogical opinions, even though they knew them to be false, simply because the majority agreed with them or because they were expressed by a figure of authority or popularity.

This type of conformity increases in social and professional contexts the more the subordinate party benefits from a person with greater influence or prestige, and the more that those around them exercise coercive self-censorship to avoid undermining that person’s commercial or family standing.

This aligns with a study by Alan de Botton, published in 2004, on “status anxiety,” in which he examined the chronic anxiety that affects people when they fear social judgment or the loss of prestige, and their eagerness to align themselves with those in power and other influential figures, to endorse even their falsehoods, and to cite them in an effort to protect their own social standing from the threat of marginalization.

We can find further real-world evidence in a similar vein, for example in the case of Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of the American media billionaire William Randolph Hearst. Her abduction in 1974 by far-left American militant organization the Symbionese Liberation Army, the threats she faced from her captors and her isolation from the outside world ultimately led her to accept her kidnappers’ narrative of persecution by the state and capitalist society. She took up arms alongside them and participated in their crimes, viewing this as her only path to salvation. In other words, the victim was transformed into a new perpetrator.

The situation illustrated by these studies and examples is no different in Saudi society, particularly with regard to certain individuals who abandon their principles out of modesty or fear when conflicts arise, transforming them from victims to perpetrators as they remain silent about the facts as they know them, in order to protect their own future interests, to maintain prestige, or out of simple courtesy. 

Behavioral and utilitarian aberrations in Saudi society that were common practice have now been addressed by the legal system.

Dr. Bader bin Saud

However, the response to this by legal authorities in the West has differed from that in Saudi Arabia. Examples include the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act, enacted in 2002, and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977. They impose severe criminal penalties on anyone who panders to or yields to pressure from the powerful, thereby ensuring that these powerful figures are stripped of their moral authority the moment they are publicly confronted and questioned by authorities.

Behavioral and utilitarian aberrations in Saudi society, which were common practice in the past, have now been addressed by the legal system in a manner that undermines the reasons for passive silence in both public and private life.

A study published in the British Journal of Management Studies in 2003 looked at the framework of what is known as the “psychology of the neutral employee.” It found that workers often opt for complete silence within organizations, particularly in relation to misconduct involving an official with extensive influence, so as not to lose their business with that official.

It is essential that we highlight the consequences of opportunistic silence within the Saudi system. False testimony does not begin and end merely with the uttering of falsehoods, it extends to the deliberate withholding of testimony and the resulting loss of people’s rights, placing the individual under a cloud of suspicion and complicity.

In my view, a person’s worth is measured by their integrity, moral character and commitment to the system, not by the extent to which they are able to cling to a temporary position of power or to a person of standing or influence, which will be of no benefit to them if they become implicated in that person’s wrongdoing.

• Dr. Bader bin Saud is a columnist for Al-Riyadh newspaper, a researcher in media and knowledge management, a university professor, an expert in crowd management and strategic planning, and the former deputy commander of the Special Forces for Hajj and Umrah Security in Saudi Arabia.

X: @BaderbinSaud.