The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence

by Ervin Staub

  National leaders have tremendous potential to shape attitudes and lead people to action. John F. Kennedy, in creating the Peace Corps, inspired a generation of Americans. Those committed to positive change should engage politicians and other influential public figures in an exchange of ideas about the origins of antagonism and positive connection.

  A vision of the future, ideals that are rooted in the welfare of individual human beings rather than in abstract designs for improving “humanity,” small and intermediate goals along the way, commitment, and the courage to express ideas in words and actions – all are essential to fulfill an agenda for a world of nonaggression, cooperation, caring, and human connection.

  * * *

  a There are exceptions, however. The peace movement in the United States includes few blacks. For black people, concern about nuclear war may be overshadowed by immediate economic and social problems. Until their basic material and psychological needs are met, individuals and groups may be less inclined to concern themselves with the evolution of caring and nonaggression in general, unless they can see in it hope for themselves.

  b As I have noted, physical proximity alone does not increase acceptance. For example, foreign students’ evaluation of their host nation may become more negative over time. However, they start out with highly positive evaluations and perhaps unrealistic hopes and expectations. It may also be that evaluations turn more negative if the students experience no crosscutting relations or close contact. American students evaluated the French less positively after a year-long stay. They usually lived in apartments with other Americans. In contrast, American students in Germany maintained more of their initial positive evaluation of Germans. They lived in student dormitories with German students and reported greater ease in establishing contact with both students and nonstudents.4

  While contact is important to reduce negative beliefs, not all contact improves group relations. Certain conditions contribute to “positive exposure": equal-status contact between the members of interacting groups; cooperation between them to fulfill shared goals; intimate rather than casual contact; and authorities or the social climate approving of and supporting the intergroup contact.5 Other research shows that information about another group that prepares people for contact can improve the effects of contact. When casual contact (e.g., between Israeli tourists and Egyptians) reinforces the existing stereotypes, preparatory information can reduce the negative effects.6 In addition to information that stresses the positive characteristics of the other group or explains the roots of “negative” characteristics in their cultural history, communication that brings to the fore their shared humanity and personalizes them (perhaps through the “stories” of real individuals) may be of great value.

  That contact alone is insufficient to create positive relations but can strengthen devaluation was demonstrated in the real (rather than romanticized) history of the evacuation of children from London in World War II.7 The children removed from the city were mostly poor, innercity children. Their hosts in the countryside were all well-to-do. In spite of their initial desire to be helpful, without being prepared for the experience many reacted with aversion to these verminous children with poor habits of hygiene, cockney accents, and often religions different from their own, some of them Jewish. Given pronounced class differences and prejudice, many hosts became hostile and schemed to get rid of the children. Many went home.

  c In Metro High School in St. Louis, doing for others is an integral part of education. Its 250 selected students (65% black, 35% white) are required to work as volunteers in the community. In 1983, the service requirement was sixty hours a year at a nonprofit agency within the city of St. Louis. According to Ernest Boyer, and students receive “far more than they give.” “One young man with longish hair, tight and faded blue jeans, and a street-wise expression on his face spoke movingly of what he learned while working on the ‘graveyard shift’ (12 midnight to 7 a.m.) in the emergency room of a medical center: i learned a lot this past summer. I learned how to deal with my own feelings. I learned how to cry. That was a big step. When a little three-year-old girl goes into seizures and they found out she had meningitis and died that morning, you learn to feel for people.’”8

  Notes

  Preface

  1.Staub, E. (1978-79). Positive social behavior and morality. Vol. 1, Social and personal influences; Vol. 2, Socialization and development. New York: Academic Press.

  2.Marton, K. (1982). Wallenberg. New York: Ballantine Books.

  3. Staub, E. (1985). The psychology of perpetrators and bystanders. Political Psychology, 6, 61-86.

  Chapter 1

  1.Bettelheim, B. (1986). Their specialty was murder. Review of Robert J. Lifton’s “The Nazi doctors.” New York Times Book Review. October 5.

  2.Kuper, L. (1981). Genocide: Its political use in the twentieth century. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.

  3.Ibid., p. 23.

  4.Ibid., p. 28.

  5.Ibid., p. 28.

  6.Ibid., p. 19.

  7.On the political identification of groups for torture (and mass killing) see also:

  Staub, E. (1987). The psychology of torture and torturers. Paper presented at a symposium on torture at the American Psychological Association meetings, New York. Also in P. Suedfeld (Ed.). (In press). Psychology and torture. Washington, D. C: Hemisphere Publishing Co.

  8.Hilberg, R. (1961). The destruction of European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.

  Davidowicz, L. S. (1975). The war against the Jews: 1933-1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

  9.Davidowicz, War against the Jews.

  Des Pres, T. (1976). The survivor: An anatomy of life in the death camps. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Hilberg, Destruction.

  10.Toynbee, A. J. (Ed.). (1916). The treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office.

  11.Morgenthau, H., Sr. (1918). Ambassador Morgenthau’s story. New York: Doubleday.

  12.Etcheson, G. (1984). The rise and demise of democratic Kampuchea, 1942-1981. Boulder: Westview Press.

  Becker, E. (1986). When the war was over: The voices of Cambodia’s revolution and its people. New York: Simon & Schuster.

  13.Amnesty International Report. (1980). Testimony on secret detention camps in Argentina. London: Amnesty International Publications.

  Argentine National Commission. (1986). Nunca Mas: The report of the Argentine National Commission on the disappeared. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.

  14.Rubinstein, R. L. (1975). The cunning of history. New York: Harper & Row.

  Chapter 2

  1.Berlin, I. (1979). Nationalism: Past neglect and present power. Partisan Review, 46.

  Mack, J. (1983). Nationalism and the self. Psychohistory Review, 2, nos. 2-3, 47-69.

  2.Dimont, M. I. (1962). Jews, God and history. New York: New American Library.

  Po-chia Hsia, R. (1988). The myth of ritual murder: Jews and magic in Reformation Germany. New Haven: Yale Univeristy Press.

  3.Craig, G. A. (1982). The Germans. New York: New American Library.

  4.Staub, E. (1978). Positive social behavior and morality. Vol. 1, Social and personal influences. New York: Academic Press.

  Idem. (1980). Social and prosocial behavior: Personal and situational influences and their interactions. In E. Staub (Ed.), Personality: Basic aspects and current research. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

  Idem. (1984). Steps toward a comprehensive theory of moral conduct: Goal orientation, social behavior, kindness and cruelty. In J. L. Gewirtz & W. M. Kurtines (Eds.), Morality, moral behavior, and moral development. New York: Wiley-Interscience.

  Idem. (1986). A conception of the determinants and development of altruism and aggression: Motives, the self, and the environment. In C. Zahn-Waxler, E. M. Cummings, & R. Iannotti (Eds.), Altruism and aggression: Social and biological origins. New York: Cambridge University Press.

  Idem. (Forthcoming). Soc
ial behavior and moral conduct: A personal goal theory account of altruism and aggression. Century Series. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall.

  5.Craig, The Germans.

  6.Wilson, E. O. (1978). On human nature. New York: Bantam Books.

  7.Peters, E. (1985). Torture. New York & Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

  8.Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1979). Infant-mother attachment. American Psychologist, 34, 932-7.

  9.Sroufe, L. A. (1979). The coherence of individual development: Early care, attachment and subsequent developmental issues. American Psychologist, 34, 834-42.

  Bertherton, I., & Waters, E. (Eds.). (1985). Growing points of attachment theory and research. Monographs of the Society of Research in Child Development, vol. 34, nos. 1-2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  10.Bertherton and Waters, Growing points.

  Shaffer, D. R. (1979). Social and personality development. Monterey, Calif: Brooks-Cole.

  11.Sroufe, Coherence of individual development.

  12.Niebuhr, R. [1932] (1960). Moral man and immoral society: A study in ethics and politics. Reprint. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

  13.There is much evidence for this from the observation of group behavior, and there is also evidence from psychological research:

  Wallach, M. A., Kogan, N., & Bern, D. J. (1962). Group influences on individual risk taking. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 65, 75-86.

  Latane, B., & Darley, J. M. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn’t he help? New York: Appleton Century Crofts.

  Mynatt, C, & Sherman, S. i. (1975). Responsibility attribution in groups and individuals: A direct test of the diffusion of responsibility hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 1111-18.

  14.Campbell, D. T. (1965). Ethnocentric and other altruistic motives. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

  15.Hilberg, R. (1961). The destruction of the European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.

  16.Peck, M. S. (1983). People of the lie: The hope of healing human evil. New York: Simon & Schuster.

  17.Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. New York: Viking Press.

  Hilberg, Destruction.

  18.Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York: Harper & Row.

  Sabini, J., & Silver, M. (1982). Moralities of everyday life. New York: Oxford University Press, Chap. 4.

  19.Fromm, E. (1965). Escape from freedom. New York: Avon Books.

  20.Miller, A. (1983). For your own good: Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.

  21.Kren, G. M., & Rappoport, L. (1980). The Holocaust and the crisis of human behavior. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers.

  22.Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society. New York: Norton, Chap. 9.

  23.Charny, I. W. (1982). How can we commit the unthinkable? Genocide: The human cancer. Boulder: Westview Press.

  24.There has been a multitude of psychohistorical studies of Hitler. Some prominent ones are:

  Binion, R. (1976). Hitler among the Germans. New York: Elsevier.

  Waite, G. L. (1977). The psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler. New York: Basic Books.

  For reviews, see:

  Carr, W. (1978). Hitler: A study in personality and politics. London: Edward Arnold.

  Kren & Rappoport, Holocaust.

  25.Berghahn, V. R. (August 2, 1987). Hitler’s buddies. New York Times Book Review.

  Abraham, D. (1987). The collapse of the Weimar Republic. New York: Holmes & Meier.

  26.Staub, Social and prosocial behavior.

  Idem, A conception.

  Idem, Social behavior and moral conduct.

  27.Dekmejian, R. H. (1986). Determinants of genocide: Armenians and Jews as case studies. In R. G. Hovannisian (Ed.), The Armenian genocide: A perspective. New Brunswick, N. J.: Transaction Books.

  28.Hartt, B. (1987). The etiology of genocides. In I. Walliman and M. N. Dobkowski (Eds.), Genocide and the modern age. New York: Greenwood Press, p. 43.

  Chapter 3

  1.Averill, J. R. (1982). Anger and aggression: An essay on emotion. New York: Springer-Verlag.

  Baron, R. A. (1977). Human aggression. New York: Plenum Press.

  Berkowitz, L. (1962). Aggression: A social psychological analysis. New York: McGraw-Hill.

  2.Baron, Human aggression.

  3.Ibid.

  4.Wilson, E. O. (1975). Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University.

  Idem. (1978). On human nature. New York: Bantam Books.

  5.For genetic potential see:

  Staub, E. (1978). Positive social behavior and morality. Vol. 1, Social and personal influences. New York: Academic Press.

  For genetic predisposition see:

  Hoffman, M. L. (1981). Is altruism part of human behavior? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 121-37.

  6.Baron, Human aggression.

  Averill, Anger and aggression.

  7.Averill, Anger and aggression.

  Krebs, D. L., & Miller, D. T. (1985). Altruism and aggression. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology. Vol. 2, Special fields and applications. 3d ed. New York: Random House.

  Mallick, S. K., & McCandless, B. R. (1966). A study of catharsis of aggression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4, 591-6.

  Pastore, N. (1952). The role of arbitrariness in the frustration-aggression hypothesis. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 47, 728-31.

  Staub, E. (1971). The learning and unlearning of aggression: The role of anxiety, empathy, efficacy and prosocial values. In J. Singer (Ed.), The control of aggression and violence: Cognitive and physiological factors. New York: Academic Press.

  8.Staub, Positive social behavior, vol. 1.

  Idem. (1980). Social and prosocial behavior: Personal and situational influences and their interactions. In E. Staub (Ed.), Personality: Basic aspects and current research. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall.

  Idem. (1984). Steps toward a comprehensive theory of moral conduct: Goal orientation, social behavior, kindness and cruelty. In J. L. Gewirtz & W. M. Kurtines (Eds.), Morality, moral behavior, and moral development. New York: Wiley-Interscience.

  Idem. (1986). A conception of the determinants and development of altruism and aggression: Motives, the self, and the environment. In C. Zahn-Waxler, E. M. Cummings, & R. Iannotti (Eds.), Altruism and aggression: Social and biological origins. New York: Cambridge University Press.

  Idem. (Forthcoming). Social behavior and moral conduct: A personal goal theory account of altruism and aggression. Century Series. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall.

  9.See endnote 8.

  10.Staub, Positive social behavior, vol. 1.

  Idem, Social and prosocial behavior.

  Durkheim, E. (1961). Moral education. New York: Free Press.

  Hoffman, M. L. (1970). Conscience, personality, and socialization technique. Human Development, 13, 90-126.

  Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

  Gilligan, C. (1984). Remapping the moral domain in personality research and assessment. Paper presented at the Ninety-second Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Toronto.

  11.Staub, Positive social behavior, vol. 1.

  Idem, Social behavior and moral conduct.

  12.Buss, A. H. (1971). Aggression pays. In J. L. Singer (Ed.), The control of aggression and violence. New York: Academic Press.

  13.Bercheid, E., Boye, D., &Walster, E. (1968). Retaliation as a means of restoring equity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10, 370-6.

  Walster, E., Walster, G. W., & Berscheid, E. (1978). Equity: Theory and research. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

  Staub, The learning and unlearning of aggression.

  14.Festinger, L. (1954). A theory
of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117-40.

  15.Toch, H. (1969). Violent men. Chicago: Aldine.

  16.Moore, B. (1978). Injustice: The social bases of obedience and revolt. White Plains, N. Y.: M. E. Sharpe.

  17.Eron, L. D. (1982). Parent-child interaction, television violence, and aggression of children. American Psychologist, 37, 197-211.

  Copeland, A. (1974). Violent black gangs: Psycho- and sociodynamics. Adolescent Psychiatry, 3, 340-53.

  Bond, T. (1976). The why of fragging. American Journal of Psychiatry, 133, 1328-31.

  18.Dodge, K. A., & Frame, C. L. (1982). Social cognitive biases and deficits in aggressive boys. Child Development, 53, 620-35.

  Parke, R. D., & Slaby, R. G. (1983). The development of aggression. In P. Mussen (Ed.), Manual of child psychology, vol. 4. 4th ed. New York: Wiley.

  19.Perry, D. G., & Perry, L. C. (1974). Denial of suffering in the victim as a stimulus to violence in aggressive boys. Child Development, 45, 55-62.

  20.Des Pres, T. (1976). The survivor: An anatomy of life in the death camps. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  21.Gelinas, D. J. (1983). The persisting negative effects of incest. Psychiatry, 46, 312-32.

  Denise Gelinas expanded the information provided in her article in the course of our discussion about incestuous fathers in the spring of 1986.

  22.Becker, E. (1975). Escape from evil. New York: Free Press.

  23.Epstein, S. (1973). The self-concept revisited: Or a theory of a theory. American Psychologist, 28, 404-16.

  Idem. (1980). The self-concept: A review and the proposal of an integrated theory of personality. In E. Staub (Ed.), Personality: Basic aspects and current research. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall.