by Ervin Staub
For those who suffered.
In hope of a better world.
The roots of evil
ERVIN STAUB is Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has conducted extensive research and published many articles on helping, altruism, values, aggression, and motivation. He is author of the two-volume work, Positive Social Behavior and Morality. In 1990, Professor Staub was awarded the Intercultural and International Relations Prize of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (a division of the American Psychological Association).
The roots of evil
The origins of genocide and other group violence
ERVIN STAUB
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press
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© Cambridge University Press 1989
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First published 1989
20th printing 2009
Printed in the United States of America
A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-521-42214-7 paperback
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Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I Psychological and cultural bases of genocide and other forms of group violence
1 An introduction
The approach and content of the book
A brief preview
• Differences and similarities and the selection of cases
The definitions of genocide and mass killing
Four mass killings/genocides
The Holocaust
• The genocide of the Armenians
• The autogenocide (Khmer killing Khmer) in Cambodia
• The disappearances in Argentina
• Is mass killing ever justified?
2 The origins of genocide and mass killing: core concepts
A conception of the origins of genocide and mass killing
Difficult life conditions
• Psychological consequences: needs and goals
• Ways of coping and fulfilling needs and goals
• The continuum of destruction
• Cultural-societal characteristics
• The role of bystanders
• The role of motivation
Leadership and followership
The individual and the system
The roots of evil
Groups as evil or good
Comparison of personal (and social) goal theory and other approaches
Compartmentalization of functions and euphemistic language
• Obedience to authority and the authoritarianism of culture
• Psychosocial consequences of World War I on German youth
• Anti-Semitism in Germany
• The role of the family
• Hitler’s personality and psychopathology
• The role of victims
• Complex analyses of the origins of the Holocaust
• Some further comparisons
Summary: a conception of motivation and evolution
3 The psychology of hard times: the effects of difficult life conditions
Motivations arising from threat, frustration, or difficult life conditions
Motivational sources of human behavior
• Motivations for aggression: psychological states and processes that promote aggression
• Difficult life conditions and aggression
The effect of stress and danger on psychological experience
The long-term effects of combat experience
Strategies for coping and goal satisfaction
4 Cultural and individual characteristics
The influence of culture
Aggressiveness as a persistent behavioral mode
• Cultural self-concept, self-esteem, and world view
• Cultural goals and values
• Moral value orientations
• Ingroup-outgroup differentiation and devaluation of outgroups
• Pluralistic and monolithic cultures
• Orientation to authority
• Unconscious motivation – individual and cultural
The influence of sociopolitical organization
Governmental system
• Social institutions
5 The psychology of perpetrators: individuals and groups
Roles and other social processes as origins of harm-doing
Self-selection and the personality of perpetrators
The potentially antisocial person
• Family origins of the potentially antisocial personality
• Authority orientation and its sources in the family
The origins of destructiveness in personality and in the situation
The fanatic as perpetrator
Behavior in groups
The subcultures of perpetrators
• Psychological functioning and individual responsibility
6 Steps along a continuum of destruction: perpetrators and bystanders
Just-world thinking
Learning by doing and the evolution of extreme destructiveness
Compartmentalization and integration
Other origins of mistreatment
The role and power of bystanders
Part II The Nazi Holocaust
7 Hitler comes to power
Genocide and “insanity”
Life conditions: loss of war, the Treaty of Versailles, and economic and political chaos
The guiding motive for the Holocaust: ideology
Reasons for Hitler’s appeal: a summary
8 Preconditions for the Holocaust in German culture
The devaluation of Jews
Self-concept, self-esteem, and national goals
The Germans as a superior people
Respect for and obedience to authority
The influence of Nietzsche
Rationality versus sentimental romanticism
The psychological effects on German youth of World War I and the postwar period
Youth groups and military groups after World War I
9 Nazi rule and steps along the continuum of destruction
Increasing mistreatment of Jews
The evolution of ideas, actions, and the system: euthanasia and genocide
The power of giving onself over to a group, an ideal, or a leader
The role of the totalitarian system
10 The SS and the psychology of perpetrators
The creation, evolution, and role of the SS
Characteristics of SS members
Learning by participation
The interweaving and merging of role and person
The extermination camps: Auschwitz
The psychology of perpetrators: individuals and the system
The characteristics and functioning of perpetrators
• Behavioral shifts
Moral equilibration, choice, and responsibility
Individual responsibility
The completion tendency: killing till the very end
11 The behavior and psychology of bystanders and victims
The role of bystanders
The passivity of German bystanders
• Bystanders and perpetrators in Nazi Europe
• The passivity of the outside world
Jewish cooperation, resistance, and psychological experience
The Jewish councils
• Jewish actions
• The psychology of victims
The power of heroic bystanders
Heroic rescuers
Part III Other genocides and mass killings
12 The Turkish genocide of the Armenians
Historical (life) conditions
Cultural preconditions
The devaluation of minorities and Christians
• Orientation to authority
Steps along the continuum of destruction
Devaluation and increasing mistreatment
Armenian “provocation”
The evolution of Young Turk ideology
The machinery of destruction
The genocide
The role of bystanders
13 Cambodia: genocide to create a better world
Historical (life) conditions
Cambodian peasants: economic conditions, uprising, reprisals
• Political instability and violence
The Khmer Rouge rule and “autogenocide”
Ideological bias and reports and views of atrocities
Ideology, world view, and the aims of the Khmer Rouge
Cultural preconditions: the roots of ideology and genocide
Class divisions, urban-rural rift, and slavery
• Orientation to authority
• The ideology of antagonism toward Vietnam
• Cultural self-concept
• A tradition of violence in Cambodia
Experiential and intellectual sources of ideology and fanaticism
Gaining followers: the tools of revolution and genocide
The role of specific individuals
Steps along the continuum of destruction
The role of bystanders
14 This disappearances: mass killing in Argentina
Historical (life) conditions
Economic difficulties
• Political conflict and violence
Cultural preconditions
The role of the military in public life
• The self-concept and ideology of the military
Steps along the continuum of destruction
Changing institutions
• The machinery of destruction
The mass killings
The selection of victims: ideology, self-interest, caprice
The psychology of direct perpetrators
The role of bystanders
Internal bystanders
• Mothers of the Plaza del Mayo
• External bystanders
Conclusions
15 Summary and conclusions: the societal and psychological origins of genocide and other atrocities
A comparison of the four instances
Difficult life conditions
• Cultural preconditions
Leaders and followers
The psychology and motives of perpetrators
The psychological processes of groups
Steps along the continuum of destruction
The obligation of bystanders
More and less central origins of genocide
Predicting genocide and mass killing
The psychology of torture and torturers
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
Motivations for war
Cultural preconditions for war
The ideology of antagonism
• Societal self-concept and national goals
• Nationalism, belonging, and the self-concept
• National security and related ideologies
• World views that contribute to war
• Pluralistic versus monolithic societies
• Leadership
The national interest
Minimalism in the relations of nations
Toward positive reciprocity
17 The nature of groups: security, power, justice, and positive connection
Assumptions about human nature and the nature of societies
An alternative view of individual and group potentials
Relations between the individual and the group
Important societal issues
Social justice and life problems
• Creating a society of enablement
• Individualism and community
• The accountability of leaders
• Freedom, pluralism, and self-censorship
18 The creation and evolution of caring, connection, and nonaggression
Changing cultures and the relations between societies
Crosscutting relations and superordinate goals
• Learning by doing and steps along a continuum of benevolence
• Creating positive connections between groups
Positive socialization: parenting, the family, and schools Avenues for change
Language and ideas
• Writers, artists, the media, leaders, all citizens
Notes
Index
Preface
Before I first thought of writing this book, I had for many years been conducting research and writing articles and books on the psychological origins of people helping others in need. Psychologists call this altruism, or “prosocial behavior.” In early 1979 I completed the second of my two-volume Positive Social Behavior and Morality, and that summer, during a sabbatical leave, I began to read seriously about the Holocaust.1I realized that a number of concepts that were useful for understanding why people did or did not help others in need were also useful for understanding the extreme destructiveness of the perpetrators of the Holocaust.
For example, a feeling of responsibility for other people’s welfare greatly increases the likelihood of helping during an accident or sudden illness. This is partly a matter of personality, but it also depends on circumstances. A person helps more when circumstances focus responsibility on him or her. People help less when circumstances diffuse responsibility among a number of those who are present or focus it elsewhere (e.g., on a doctor who is present). I reasoned that harming and killing members of a group become possible when a feeling of responsibility for their welfare has been lost as a result of profound devaluation by a society or by an ideology adopted by the society.
It was clear to me that devaluation and loss of responsibility alone will not directly lead to genocide. Instead, an evolution must occur. Limited mistreatment of the victims changes the perpetrators and prepares them for extreme destructiveness. This was first suggested to me when in my laboratory children whom we involved in prosocial acts became more willing to help others. Research indicates that adults are also changed by their own prior actions. People learn by doing. Extreme destructiveness, it seemed to me, is usually the last of many steps along a continuum of destruction.
I was also struck by the influence of bystanders who knew of or witnessed the persecution of Jews. In Denmark, in the French Huguenot village of Le Chambon, and in a few other places where bystanders resisted Nazi persecution of Jews, the persecutors changed their behavior. Research strengthened my belief in the power of bystanders. What one bystander said du
ring an emergency defined the meaning of the situation and influenced others’ helping. What a bystander did affected others; passivity reduced and action increased helping.
I felt I had the beginnings of an understanding. I knew, however, that the Holocaust had been described as an incomprehensible evil. This view, it seemed to me, romanticized evil and gave it mythic proportions. It discouraged the realistic understanding that is necessary if we are to work effectively for a world without genocides and mass killings and torture.
During the next few years I read and taught courses, first about the Holocaust, then about other genocides and “lesser” cruelties such as mass killings and torture (for a discussion of definitions see Chapter 1). I began to write and lecture on how genocides and mass killings in general come about and to work on this book. This process also led to further exploration of the development of human caring and connection and to an attempt to specify an agenda for creating caring and connection within and between groups.
The reasons for undertaking this task were not disinterested. Their origins are in my personal experience. It took me many years to begin to pay attention to this; my resistance may have been a defense against feelings of loss and sorrow that I was not ready to deal with. I was fortified in this by the professional stance of the disinterested social scientist.
As a Jewish child in Budapest, I was six years old in the horrendous summer of 1944, when the Nazis took over four hundred thousand Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, where most were murdered on arrival. My immediate family – my parents, my sister, and I – miraculously survived until the end of the war in one of the “protected” houses created by Raoul Wallenberg. Wallenberg, whose heroic deeds are by now well known, was a Swede who accepted a mission to come to Hungary and attempt to save Jewish lives.2 His strategy was to create, in his capacity as a Swedish diplomat, “letters of protection” that guaranteed Hungarian Jews Swedish citizenship after the war. The Hungarian authorities allowed a few thousand such documents; many false ones were also created. Some other embassies – the Swiss, the Spanish – followed Wallenberg’s example.
Wallenberg managed to buy houses into which people with letters of protection could move. Although there were constant raids on these houses by Hungarian Nazis (the Arrow Cross), many women and children survived. (My father was in a forced labor camp. He escaped when his group was on its way to Germany and was its sole survivor. He hid with us in the protected house and was undetected during several raids on the house.)
I was also powerfully influenced by a Christian woman who worked many years for my family. I love her and consider her my second mother. Maria Ggn took my sister and me into hiding at one point, when it seemed that all Jews would be collected for “deportation” (that is, taken to Auschwitz for extermination). She procured food for us and the others in the protected house. In the midst of cruelty and violence she risked her life for others, not only for our family, but even for strangers.