by Ervin Staub
Pluralism, values and institutions that stress procedural justice, the positive social currents that I have described, and positive political currents such as improved relations with the Soviet Union make me confident that we will pass through this period without extreme destructiveness. But to decrease the violent potential in the United States we must strive to fulfill constructively the basic needs that have arisen from these upheavals and that are strengthened by the nature of our societal self-concept. This requires crosscutting relations (see Chapter 17) to create positive connections among subgroups of society, efforts to create a sense of community, and different segments of society working together to fulfill the basic needs and provide decent and dignified conditions of life for all citizens. It requires societal ideals that stress joining (rather than exclusion), an expansion of the boundaries of “us.”
My analysis also suggests ways to prevent group violence. In the short run we can diagnose predispositions. We can identify the motivations of groups and the destructive potential in the ways they attempt to fulfill them. We can try to make individuals and nations aware of their power and obligations as bystanders. A more permanent decline in the probability of group violence requires changes in individual personalities, in culture and social organization, and in the international system. I will discuss these in Part IV of the book.
The psychology of torture and torturers
As I have noted from time to time, the psychology of perpetrators presented in this book applies to torturers. Torture has been used for many purposes. Among these are eliciting information, forcing an admission of guilt, intimidating political adversaries, and establishing one’s power and the superiority of one’s group. In China and in medieval Europe torture was part of the legal process.14 Sometimes the scale of torture is limited, and sometimes (as in Germany, Cambodia, and Argentina) it accompanies mass killing or genocide. Although torture is more frequent in nondemocratic societies, it has also been practiced by democracies, both at home and in their colonial role; for example, the French used torture in Algeria extensively. Currently, torture is used in many countries.
When torture occurs on a limited scale or is performed by colonizers in a colonized country, it does not require broad societal processes, and torturers need not have psychological processes and motivations that are part of a more general societal psychology. In many ways, however, the psychology of the torturer resembles that of perpetrators of mass killing and genocide.
“Us”-“them” differentiation, the devaluation of victims, and just-world thinking (and other processes of moral exclusion that distance the self from victims), as well as a better-world ideology, often characterize torturers. Victims of torture are often seen as a threat to the ingroup. Perpetrators are self-selected or selected by people in authority. Their characteristics include obedience to authority, membership in trusted groups, and belief in the group ideology. Some may have an antisocial value orientation. A capacity and willingness to harm others is required and enjoyment of it is useful (although the torturer should not enjoy it too much, because he is there to do a job). Learning by participation contributes to the psychological evolution of torturers.
When torture is not part of a broad societal process, obedience to authority becomes more important. The group or its leaders must find the “right” persons to use as perpetrators, must further shape them, and at times must exert strong influence to gain obedience, especially in the early stages. The study of torturers has been limited, but it does seem that a mixture of self-selection and selection by personality, learning by doing, shaping, and “educating” is involved. In the case of the Greek torturers, special procedures were used to produce blind obedience. However, this might be unnecessary in groups with well-established hierarchical systems. For example, the relatively sudden onset of large-scale torture in Argentina suggests that the military personnel, who were the perpetrators, did not need special training in obedience. Military training itself aims to produce obedience. The motivations of many who later became torturers had evolved and their inhibitions had declined in the course of the increasing violence between left-wing terrorists and right-wing death squads partly composed of military personnel.g15
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a It is possible that the Germans saw themselves as having achieved greatness between 1871 and 1914, which was followed by decline.
b The importance of the group in defining the “right” behavior is evident from reports about Vietnam veterans. The killing of civilians was widespread in Vietnam, partly as a consequence of the bombing and partly due to the belief that many civilians supported the Vietcong. Soldiers who did not go along, for example, those who withheld fire at My Lai, reported wondering whether something was wrong with them. Leaders often set the stage for atrocities in Vietnam by instituting body counts and search-and-destroy missions and by silence in the face of rumored atrocities.6
c In an experiment my students and I conducted in the early 1970s, we observed as passersby saw a person collapsing on the street. Some people, after a single but unmistakable glance, turned their heads and moved on without looking again, as if to avoid any further processing of the event they had witnessed. A few of them turned away when they reached the first corner, apparently in order to escape.10
d The courage needed is not necessarily a willingness to put one’s life on the line. It may be the courage to oppose the group and endanger one’s status or career. Many army leaders in Vietnam reported after the war that they disliked search-and-destroy operations and the policy of using body counts as an index of success. In a 1974 survey “almost 70 percent of the army generals who led the war in Vietnam were uncertain what the objectives of that combat were.. .and 61 percent believed that body counts, kill ratios.. .were inflated and invalid.” They seem to have kept quiet, according to researchers, because their careers were at stake.11The emotional difficulty of opposing the group must also have been important. Arguing against group policies should be respected and rewarded, but groups in general and the military in particular are disinclined to do this.
e It would be worthwhile to examine whether times of especially intense violence against Indians were also periods of economic hardship or other life problems.
f This model may also help us identify effective ways for bystanders to intervene. For example, in South Africa, actions that destroy the economy without producing other changes might make life more difficult and thereby increase the probability of genocide. Therefore, boycotts and divestment ought to be accompanied by other efforts, which must be based on understanding of the cultural self-concept, world views, and values of South African whites. Those who have friendly relations with South Africa should constantly communicate the values and beliefs that make them object to South African policies. They should point to positive values that white South Africans hold but do not apply to the black population. Bystander nations might create commissions to develop conceptions of just social and political organization in South Africa, taking into account the need of the white population to maintain not only security but self-respect while they relinquish their unjust and, late in the twentieth century, unrealistic superior position. Such conceptions might then guide international policies toward South Africa (see also the next chapter).
g A flexible use of the conception I have presented can provide a framework for understanding many types of harmdoing – for example, father-daughter incest. With all forms of harmdoing we need to identify what motivates the perpetrators, how their inhibitions are lost, and what blocks them from other ways of fulfilling motives.
In addition to cultural and subcultural characteristics (like devaluation of women, rules about ways of relating and sexual relations between men and women, tolerance for incest or sexual abuse) the culture of the family must be considered. This is largely the result of the parents’ past experience, their “blueprints” from their families of origin. Difficult life conditions in the society can generate intense needs; added to this are the condit
ions of life in the family. Within incestuous families emotional disconnection and withdrawal by the wife are common.
Individual characteristics assume special importance. In one type of incestuous family the man is insecure and has strong needs for being cared for, for emotional security, and for feelings of control. These needs had been satisfied by his wife, but her emotional and sexual withdrawal powerfully activate them. The evolution toward incest begins when a “parentified” daughter replaces the withdrawn mother, initially in physical caretaking (preparing food, etc.), then in providing emotional closeness. Ultimately, the father violates the parent-child boundary. His insecurity prevents him from seeking the satisfaction of his needs outside the family.
Another type of perpetrator clearly devalues women, and considers his wife and children his property, to do with as he pleases. In such cases physical violence is likely to accompany incest. In both types of incest some perpetrators use fantastic justifications or forms of moral equilibration: that it is good to teach the child about sex, or that incest protects the daughter from wild sex outside the home.
The mother is frequently a passive bystander. At least in the first type of incest she may (unconsciously) defend herself from awareness of it, partly because not being burdened by her family is one of her important needs. When the perpetrator is of the second type, fear may contribute to her passivity. Occasionally mothers join fathers or stepfathers as accomplices or coperpetrators.
Incest usually has a profound impact on the victim. In her own home, where she should be most secure, she is victimized by one parent and abandoned (not helped) by the rest of her family.
Part IV
Further extensions: the roots of war and the creation of caring and nonaggressive persons and societies
16 The cultural and psychological origins of war
Many of the psychological reactions, motives, and needs that give rise to genocide can be a source of war as well. Difficult life conditions and their psychological consequences combined with cultural preconditions can lead to the selection of another nation as the enemy rather than a subgroup of society.
War has other sources as well, of course, among them the relationship between a nation and one or more other nations and, more generally, the quality and mood of the international order. However, relations among nations are themselves shaped by their cultures, which join with “real” conflicts of interest and other conditions to generate the psychological reactions that are often the main cause of war.
Motivations for war
Like genocide, war may be an attempt to fulfill motivations that arise from difficult life conditions and cultural preconditions – the need to defend or elevate the personal and societal self-concept, the need for connectedness, the need for a renewed comprehension of reality.a Other motivations are power, wealth, and national or personal glory. In addition to occupying territory or gaining physical dominance, conquest may involve getting others to adopt one’s ideals and values. Conflicts of interest – conflict over territory or competition in trade – can also give rise to hostility and war. Insecurity and fear of attack are obvious sources of hostility and at times of “preventive” attack. Such fear may be realistic, as in the case of Poland facing Nazi Germany, or exaggerated. Feelings of injustice, deprivation, or suffering attributed to the actions of other nations can also be powerful sources of hostility.
Injured honor and the need to defend it (what Ralph White calls macho pride) are another important source of antagonism.1 But cultural and psychological factors determine what is insulting, what causes embarrassment or shame, and what is regarded as weakness or failure that must be balanced by the assertion of strength.
Like genocide, war is often the outcome of steps along a continuum of antagonism. Hostile acts by one party or acts of self-defense that are perceived as hostile cause retaliation, which evokes more intense hostility. A progression of mutual retaliation may start with small acts that escalate. Morton Deutsch calls this cycle of negative reciprocity the “malignant social process.”2 As hostility increases, nations may operate in a conflict mode. Each wants to impose loss on the other to gain relative advantage, even if this does not realistically serve security or other aspects of the national interest. One frequent antecedent of the conflict mode is a history of antagonism between neighboring states.
Cultural preconditions for war
The ideology of antagonism
Often what participants see as genuine conflict of interest or threat from another country is the result of “us”-“them” differentiation, negative evaluation and mistrust, or a societal self-concept.
The wars between India and Pakistan (1947-49, 1965, and 1971) are good examples.3 Free from British rule, the two became separate nations because of the mutual distrust, devaluation, and fear of Moslems and Hindus. The leader of the Moslem League, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, explained his insistence on separate states this way:
How can you even dream of Hindu-Moslem unity? Everything pulls us apart: We have no intermarriages. We have not the same calendar. The Moslems believe in a single God, and the Hindus are idolatrous. Like the Christians, the Moslems believe in an equalitarian society, whereas the Hindus maintain their iniquitous system of castes and leave heartlessly fifty million Untouchables to their tragic fate, at the bottom of the social ladder.4
The wars were fought partly for disputed territories, but mutual devaluation and mistrust were central causes. Devaluation led to miscalculations. In 1971, belief in their inherent superiority led the Pakistanis to initiate war, despite their great numerical inferiority. They suffered a decisive defeat. According to John Stoessinger, even the Pakistani leader’s, Yahya Kahn’s, traditional views on the sexes influenced his decision to attack: he was unable to believe that a nation led by a woman (Indira Gandhi) could defeat him.5
Conflicts will arise, and real conflict will be magnified, as we respond not to the issues at hand or the people on the other side, but to the stereotypes and negative images that we hold. An ideology of antagonism may evolve out of differences in values, beliefs, and ways of life, devaluation, and a past history of antagonism. It encodes the negative evaluation and identifies the other as a threat to the well-being, security, and even survival of one’s group. It may lead to a belief that superiority is required for security and a wish to diminish, subdue, and in extreme cases exterminate this enemy.
An ideology of antagonism is an “other-conception” in some ways comparable to a self-conception. The group’s own past actions will contribute to the formation of its ideology of antagonism. For example, U.S. participation in an international force attempting to overthrow the young Russian communist state in 1919 probably helped to shape the ideology of antagonism toward the Soviet Union.
Another source of an ideology of antagonism is better-world thinking. For example, Marxist-Leninist ideology devalued the beliefs, values, lifestyles, and social and ecomonic arrangements of capitalist countries. Its view that workers were repressed and exploited in them could incite moral indignation. To create a better world, capitalism was to be eliminated. Moreover, it was a hostile force that required constant vigilance and self-defense. Intense anticommunism qualifies as a parallel better-world ideology.
An ideology of antagonism provides a powerful tool in explaining the other’s actions, guiding one’s own actions, and justifying aggressive acts. It makes it difficult to realistically evaluate the other’s actions and intentions and to draw proper distinctions; for example, to follow a policy that aims to lighten the repressive nature of the Soviet system, while at the same time acts on the shared goal of diminishing the threat of nuclear war. It also further reduces a nation’s normally weak inclination to see itself as other nations see it; for example, to consider how the Soviet Union might have perceived repeated U.S. buildup of arms.
Societal self-concept and national goals
A society’s self-concept of superiority or of self-doubt or their combination is important in giving rise to war
-generating motives. A societal self-concept often designates the territories that are part of a nation and may include some that the nation has not possessed for centuries. The Jews have prayed for two thousand years for their return to Jerusalem. Hungary joined Germany in World War II partly in the hope of regaining territories lost in World War I. The Palestinians see themselves as a people defined by the land of which they were dispossessed. The Falklands war was fought, as were many others, for land of extremely limited value that Argentina regards as part of its territory.
One focus of the nation’s account of its history may be the wounds others inflicted by taking and holding lost territory. A nation’s identity, like the identities of individuals, is often defined by past hurt, pain, or injury. According to Isaiah Berlin, the “infliction of a wound on the collective feelings of society, or at least on its spiritual leaders, may be a necessary condition for the birth of nationalism.”6 These conditions tend to create both a shaky self-esteem and nationalism, which is the desire to protect and enhance the nation economically and to maintain or increase its power, prestige, and purity.
A national self-concept often includes a view of the “right” relationship to other nations. The self-concept of the United States seems to include the right to dominate Central America. Policies that maintained the arms race may have been partly due on the American side to a national self-concept of superiority over the Russians, which made parity in arms unacceptable. (Obviously, in this dangerous nuclear age, superiority of arms also diminishes fear.) Leaders and citizens often refer to the United States as the “best country in the world.” This is in part an exaggeration of a universal tendency toward ethnocentrism, in part a reflection of real accomplishments, and in part an outgrowth of the U.S. role as a superpower and defender of the free world from communism. Whatever its source, for the United States as well as other nations, a balanced view of the self would serve as a better guide in relations with others.
