by Ervin Staub
Victims of mistreatment can reach a point where they welcome another’s death or misfortune if it contributes to their own survival or relative wellbeing. Eli Wiesel says in Night that when his own father died in Buchenwald of dysentery, his sorrow was mixed with relief over the lifting of a burden that made his own survival more difficult. Another dramatic example is described in the following statement by a survivor of the Treblinka concentration camp, quoted in Sereny’s book Into That Darkness. Jewish workers lived on supplies taken while sorting the belongings of incoming “transports,” the wagon loads of people brought to the camp to be killed in gas chambers. The survivor talks about a time when, for a while, no transports were arriving.
Things went from bad to worse that month of March... .There were no transports. .. .In the storehouses everything had been packed up and shipped – we had never before seen all the space because it had always been so full.... You can’t imaging what we felt when there was nothing there. You see, the things were our justification for being alive. If there were no things to administer, why would they let us stay alive? On top of that, we were, for the first time, hungry.... It was just about when we had reached the lowest ebb in our morale that, one day towards the end of March, Kurt Franz [a guard] walked into our barracks, a wide grin on his face. “As of tomorrow,” he said, “transports will be rolling in again.” And do you know what we did? We shouted “Hurrah, hurrah.” It seems impossible now. Every time I think of it I die a small death; but it’s the truth. That is what we did; and that is where we had got to. And sure enough, the next morning they arrived. We had spent all of the preceding evening in an excited, expectant mood; it meant life – you see, don’t you? – safety and life. The fact that it was their death, whoever they were, which meant our life, was no longer relevant.36
Sociologists have explained social movements and revolutions in terms of threat to interests. However, participants often represent varied elements of society – the “heterogeneity problem.” Thus, members of the lower middle class, who were small merchants and artisans powerfully affected by the financial problems in Germany after World War I, were long regarded as the main supporters of the Nazi movement. The actual evidence indicates, however, greater complexity. A recent analysis argues on the basis of new evidence that the elites voted for Hitler and had a substantial role in bringing him into power.37 Participation in the French Revolution also came from varied social groups.38
Difficult life conditions affect people in many different ways, such as material loss and suffering, diminished social status, and threat to values. In different groups the cultural preconditions for violent reactions are present to different degrees. A larger percentage of Lutherans than Catholics supported the Nazis in Germany. There were probably several reasons for this: for example, a connection between nationalism and Protestantism in Germany and Martin Luther’s intense anti-Semitism (see Chapter 9).
Religious groups and groups with conservative values and life-styles will be greatly threatened by societal changes such as the acceptance of homosexuality, feminism, permissive child raising, and drugs. In Latin American countries small rich elites (and their military supporters) are materially threatened by challenges to the status quo. But they also regard their power and privilege as right, natural, and maybe even God-given, they devalue the poor, and they hold a strong anticommunist ideology.
Analyses might specify how different subgroups are affected psychologically by difficult life conditions. This would help us predict which groups will join social movements, including those that lead to genocide. On an individual level, personal characteristics also affect what motives arise and what avenues for satisfying them are acceptable and appealing.
The long-term effects of combat experience
The persistent stress and intense danger that soldiers experience in combat have many long-term effects, as indicated by past work and recent research with Vietnam veterans.
Veterans with a significant long-term stress reaction are diagnosed as suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. Major symptoms are uncontrollable reexperiencing of the traumatic event(s) (through intrusive recollections, dreams, and in other ways), “numbed responsiveness” to the external world, and denial and avoidance of memories and experiences associated with the traumatic events.
These veterans often lack goals; they have lost a sense of self, identity, meaning, and control. They give the impression of being “empty shells.” Other symptoms are easily stimulated anger and rage and sensation-seeking, the need to engage in dangerous activities.39 They have lost faith in legitimate authority.40 They no longer believe that the world is a benign, orderly, and controllable place or that they themselves are worthy and that other people are worthwhile to relate to.
Three of the four genocides and mass killings that I will analyze were associated with war, often in multiple ways. In Germany, life problems following World War I contributed to Hitler’s rise to power, and the genocide itself began during World War II. Turkey had suffered defeats in wars of liberation; the genocide of the Armenians occurred soon after one such war and during another war, World War I. In Cambodia, the genocide followed an intense civil war. In Argentina the disappearances followed left-wing terrorism and right-wing death squad murders – a civil war on as yet a limited scale.
All wars produce some people with posttraumatic stress disorder. They are likely to be attracted to a movement and leader offering them a sense of significance as well as scapegoats and enemies. Their need for activity and excitement may make the pseudomilitary roles that perpetrators sometimes start with (and later the actual role of perpetrator) appealing.
The effects of traumatic combat stress probably depend partly on the nature of the experiences, partly on personality, and partly on culture, which shapes responses to stress. The feeling in the United States that the Vietnam War was meangingless, a mistake, and even immoral may have shaped and intensified the posttraumatic response of veterans. The loss of World War I, the abdication of the kaiser, and unemployment after the war may have shaped the experience of German veterans in a similar way. Both wars involved movement back and forth over terrain that was won and lost repeatedly; this would heighten the sense of meaninglessness.d43
Strategies for coping and goal satisfaction
When the motives that I described earlier arise from difficult life conditions, certain internal, psychological modes of satisfying them may cause aggression.
Devaluation and scapegoating. When there is no aggressor or the aggressor is too powerful or the source of responsibility cannot be identified or the responsibility is one’s own (or one’s group’s), identifying a scapegoat will have “beneficial” psychological effects.44 A cause is found, and life problems become comprehensible. Known danger is preferable to vague anxiety about an unspecified threat. Finding a scapegoat makes people believe their problems can be predicted and controlled; and it eliminates one’s own responsibility, thereby diminishing guilt and enhancing self-esteem.
Devaluation and assigning people to outgroups (seeing a group or its members as “them” rather than “us") are widespread human tendencies that often serve as a basis for scapegoating and a precondition for harm-doing. Devaluation confers a sense of superiority. Poor southern whites who led impoverished, humiliating lives could elevate their self-esteem by a feeling of superiority over blacks; Germans could do the same by feeling superior to Jews. Devaluation and scapegoating also make “retaliation” easier. People who are judged mean or vicious or worthless deserve to suffer. There is also material gain when the property or job of a “wrongdoer” is taken over. Finally, those who scapegoat become an ingroup whose members feel less alone.
Scapegoats are usually selected from groups who are already devalued. Some are chosen for specific occasions, but others are used frequently and repeatedly. In the third century A.D., Tertullian, a Roman as well as Christian, wrote:
They take the Christians to be the cause of every disaster to the state, of
every misfortune to the people. If the Tiber reaches the wall, if the Nile does not reach the fields, if the sky does not move or if the earth does, if there is a famine, or if there is a plague, the cry is at once, “The Christians to the Lions.”
Joining groups. Submerging the self in a group can enable a person to relinquish the burdens of unfulfilled goals and a threatened identity and to gain a new identity. It also helps to protect the psychological self and serves the need for connectedness to other human beings.45 Antagonism to another group intensifies feelings of belonging.
Shared enmity strengthens group identity especially when the ingroup is not greatly endangered by the outgroup. In an experiment two groups of boys in adjoining summer camps were pitted against each other in a series of athletic competitions. One group consistently lost. Their morale plummeted, the group disintegrated, members turned against each other, and their leaders deserted them.46 To increase cohesion the group must turn against a weaker enemy. Leaders try to select as enemies groups they perceive as weaker, although they often miscalculate, as Pakistan did in its war with India and Hitler and Napoleon did in their wars against Russia.47 Sometimes past enmity and hatred overcome judgment, as in the case of Cambodian attacks on Vietnam between 1976 and 1979.
When life conditions threaten national self-concept and identity, people need a different group (or improvement in the national self-concept) to provide “positive group distinctiveness,” which “serves to protect, enhance, preserve or achieve a positive social identity for members of the group.”48 Religions, cults, political movements, and even social groups that promote new life-styles can fulfill this function. As I have pointed out, scapegoating can accomplish the same end.
The greater the demands a group makes on its members and the more it guides their lives, the more completely the members can relinquish their burdensome identity and assume a group identity. However, submerging oneself in a group makes it difficult to maintain independent judgment of the group’s conduct and exert a contrary influence. Deindividuation, a disinhibition of the usual moral constraints on individual action, is a likely consequence. Experiments show that aggressiveness is increased by conditions that weaken a sense of identity or increase anonymity, such as wearing masks.49
Adopting ideologies. Adopting an ideology is another solution to difficult life conditions that threaten existence and self-worth. By ideology I mean a system of beliefs and values concerning an ideal social organization and way of life. When traditional ways stop working, an ideology may offer renewed comprehension of the world and give meaning and direction to life. It is useful to distinguish between the existing culture, which consists of beliefs, meanings, values, valuations, symbols, myths, and perspectives that are shared largely without awareness, and ideology, which I define as a primarily consciously held set of beliefs and values.
Psychological research shows that attitudes and values are related to behavior.50 Strongly held values give rise to the motivation to act. Attitudes, beliefs, and values will lead to action especially when a person feels competent or the circumstances clearly indicate what action is likely to succeed.51 Ideology, an interconnected system of beliefs and valuations, can be a powerful source of motivation.
History shows that people will sacrifice themselves to promote ideologies. As I have mentioned, followers of ideologies often identify some people as a hindrance and commit horrifying acts in the name of creating a better world or fulfilling higher ideals. This scapegoating occurs partly because the new social or spiritual order is defined in contrast to an existing order and partly because the ideal way of life is difficult to bring about or the new social system does not fulfill its promise. Examples include the great bloodbath after the French Revolution, the Inquisition and other religious persecutions, as well as genocides and mass killings.
Constructive reactions to life conditions. Responses to difficult life conditions can also be positive and constructive. Like Davitz’s children, whose training enabled them to respond to frustration with renewed efforts to reach their goals, so constructive coping efforts by a group can result in positive psychological effects and real improvement in life conditions.52 Ideologies can be constructive. Different groups can find common goals rather than focus on conflicting goals.53 Unfortunately, the culture and social organization that would give rise to such constructive responses often do not exist. How to create them is the focus of the last two chapters of the book.
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a Most likely, people can learn to accept inequality with others in skills, character, and so on, and still have a positive self-esteem. What are the minimal requirements for positive self-regard? Can people accept, for example, less intelligence but a positive character in themselves as a basis for positive self-regard? This is an important question for creating a world characterized by the values of caring and connectedness (see Part IV).
b Traumatic events – accidents that result in significant harm, rape and other violent attacks, and certain combat experiences – shatter assumptions about the world and one’s place in it. The world is seen as less controllable and predictable, less safe, less benevolent.24 Similar changes in assumptions are likely to follow from severe life problems and social disorganization.
c The late British psychologist Henry Tajfel and his associates made significant contributions to the understanding of group relations. Social categorization, the classification of individuals into different categories (even if arbitrary), results in the perception of similarity among members of one’s category (group) and difference from members of other categories. It leads to stereotyping people in categories other than one’s own and to discriminating against them. The desire for favorable social comparison is strong. People are motivated to positively evaluate not only themselves but also their group and to compare it favorably to other groups. Even when they are arbitrarily assigned to a group, people’s self-esteem increases when they are allowed to discriminate against outgroup members. Tajfel and others also stressed the importance of social identity, which is the tendency of individuals to perceive and define themselves in terms of broad, “superimposed” social categories.28 (com. p. 43)
I use in this book the concept of societal (or cultural or group) self-concept. I stress both its importance for individual identity and that the content or nature of societal self-concept strongly affects individual and group behavior and responses to life problems. In difficult times both individual and group self-concepts may no longer provide positive self-evaluation and guidance. They may be intensely defended, or they may become disorganized and weakened, creating an intense need for a new self-definition and a new social identity.
d Many of the factors contributing to posttraumatic stress disorder are situational. One is poor leadership. Another is uncertainty – in Vietnam, uncertainty whether the Vietnamese were friends or enemies and uncertainty about the aims and strategy of combat missions (see endnote 39). Situational factors seem most important, but personality characteristics associated with posttraumatic stress disorder have also been identified. In a prospective study, low self-esteem in ninth grade was positively related to posttraumatic stress syndrome at the ages of thirty-six to thirty-seven.41 In another study veterans who were exposed to traumatic events (e.g., in combat) but showed no later symptoms were compared with veterans who suffered from posttraumatic stress.42 Characteristics of the former group were striving for understanding, consistent attempts to make their experience meaningful, a trust in their own values and judgment, acceptance of fear, and lack of excessive violence. These men were willing to disobey the order of a superior if they felt this was essential for survival.
4 Cultural and individual characteristics
The influence of culture
A primary determinant of the response to difficult life conditions is culture and its institutions. Culture helps to determine what motives arise and whether they are fulfilled by turning against subgroups or external enemies.
Culture provides shared ex
planations and images of the world, shared values and goals, a shared symbolic environment. Through such institutions as the military, schools, and child rearing, it shapes individual personality. Many aspects of culture are processes that occur among individuals – such as the relative influence of peers versus adults on children.
The correspondence in values between individual and culture is most obvious in simple societies with a single set of dominant values and rules; it is less clear in pluralistic cultures. Moreover, cultural characteristics modify each other. For example, authoritarian child rearing teaches children to be submissive to authority, but also to raise their own children in an authoritarian manner. Depending on other aspects of the culture, this practice can be highly effective or lead to rebelliousness.
Different psychological tendencies predisposing humans to mistreatment of others or prosocial action are present in different cultures and social institutions to different degrees. Unproductive research approaches and excessive initial expectations have reduced interest in the notion of national character. But research has found cultural differences in many domains. For example, Milgram found that individuals conform to a group more in some cultures than in others when they are asked to compare the length of lines in an experiment.1 The relative influence of peers (as opposed to adults) on children is greater in the United States than it is in the Soviet Union.2 Abraham Maslow suggested cultural differences in “synergy,” the extent to which people fulfill themselves by contributing to the common good as opposed to competitively advancing their own interests.3 Beatrice Whiting and John Whiting’s studies show that cultural differences in child rearing are related to differences in children’s altruism and egoism.4 David McClelland demonstrated differences in achievement imagery in children’s stories in different societies and that related differences exist in actual achievement.5
