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

by Ervin Staub

  Other experiments have explored the “foot in the door” phenomenon.11 When people are asked for a small favor and comply, they become more likely to agree later to a larger favor than they would if they had been immediately asked for the larger favor. For example, they are more likely to agree to put a large campaign sign on their front lawn if they earlier agreed to put on a small one.

  When helping persists for some time, with increasing risk to the helper, the helper’s commitment often grows. Rescuers of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe often responded first to the need of a friend or acquaintance and then went on to help others, sometimes becoming active in underground railroads. Some who intended to hide a family for only a day or two decided to keep hiding them for years. Still other helpers, such as the Swede Raoul Wallenberg and the German Oscar Schindler, became obsessed with their mission to save lives.

  The evolution from indifference to total devotion is clear in the case of Oscar Schindler.12 He followed the German army into Poland, took over a confiscated factory, and enriched himself, using Jewish slave labor. However, he treated his Jewish laborers as human beings, talked to them, listened to them. He started doing them small favors, then greater ones. Later he established a camp next to his factory to protect his workers from the SS, especially the murderous commander of the nearby concentration camp. He repeatedly endangered his life and sacrificed all his possessions, while saving the lives of twelve hundred Jews.

  People also change as they harm others. Many experiments use the “teacher-learner paradigm,” in which a “teacher” gives a “learner” electric shocks every time the learner makes an error. Even without any instruction to do so, teachers tend to increase the intensity of the shocks over time.13 When there is instruction to increase the shock level, in the obedience experiments, the increase is gradual, step by step, so that learning by participation makes obedience easier. Both in these experiments and in real life, repeatedly and increasingly harming others makes it difficult to shift course. Unusual events offer decision points; in the obedience studies many who decided to stop did so when the learner-victim began to protest. However, the pressures of authorities and the system and changes that result from past harm-doing often combine with predispositions to override such opportunities.

  Learning by doing is also found in research using verbal reinforcements. One person is instructed to speak either approving or disapproving words in response to certain words used by another person.14 As time passes, the intensity of both rewarding and punishing verbal reinforcements tends to increase. In addition, the learners are devalued by those who punished them.a

  How does harmful behavior become the norm? What internal changes take place in people? Doing harm to a good person or passively witnessing it is inconsistent with a feeling of responsiblity for the welfare of others and the belief in a just world. Inconsistency troubles us.15 We minimize it by reducing our concern for the welfare of those we harm or allow to suffer. We devalue them, justify their suffering by their evil nature or by higher ideals. A changed view of the victims, changed attitude toward that suffering, and changed self-concept result.

  Hannah Arendt describes a turning point for Eichmann. When he was first exposed to the bodies of massacred Jews, he reacted with revulsion. But “higher ideals” (that is, powerful motives) such as Nazi ideology and loyalty to the führer, as well as a desire to advance his career, led him to ignore his distress and continue with his “work.” The distress eventually disappeared.16 Bruno Bettelheim described the inner struggle of a man who was against the Nazis but had to use the obligatory greeting “Heil Hitler.” Even such a limited participation can result in substantial psychological reorganization.17

  The Greek torturers also learned by participation.18 First they stood guard outside interrogation and torture cells. Then they witnessed torture and provided help in beating up prisoners. They had to perform these duties satisfactorily before they were given a role as torturers.

  Ideological movements and totalitarian systems induce members to participate. Members must follow special rituals and rules; they must join in educational or work activities for building the new society. The more they participate, the more difficult it becomes for them to distance themselves from the system’s goals and deviate from its norms of conduct, not only overtly but also internally.

  Bystanders also learn and change through passive or semiactive participation. Germans who boycotted Jewish stores or abandoned Jewish friends had to find reasons. The danger of resistance was one reason, but it was not enough to account for the wide-ranging participation and for the actions of the system itself that most Germans came to accept and like. The truly passive also, as a result of not taking any contrary action, come to accept the suffering of victims and the behavior of perpetrators.

  Another very important phenomenon is self-persuasion, especially among leaders and decision makers. As they create propaganda or devise plans against victims, they reinforce and further develop their own world view. Psychological research shows that when people are asked to persuade others to a certain point of view, they also convince themselves and change their own views.19

  Leaders or decision makers are also affected by the consequences of their own actions. Violence instigated by propaganda and official acts reinforces the leaders’ views and intentions. In Germany random murders of Jews and looting of Jewish shops made Nazi leaders decide that further official acts against Jews were needed. This may happen even when the acts of violence are instigated by the leaders themselves and intended as justification for their policies.

  Compartmentalization and integration

  In 1984 George Orwell shows one way complicity evolves. His protagonist, Winston Smith, hates the repressive system of Big Brother, but he occasionally enjoys his work – rewriting history to conform to the current propaganda line. In the middle of Hate Week, the enemy country becomes an ally, and the ally an enemy. All previous history must be rewritten. He and others at the Ministry of Truth work feverishly, day and night, for over a week. “Insofar as he could remember, he was not troubled by the fact that every word he murmured into the speakwrite, every stroke of his ink pencil was a deliberate lie. He was as anxious as everyone else in the Department that the forgery should be perfect.”20

  This kind of compartmentalization enables people to focus and act on goals that conflict with important values. When the discrepancy persists, a splitting of the self can occur that enables people to live with it. Usually, further progression along a continuum will lead to moral exclusion and other changes that lead to a personal integration that allows destructive goals and behavior. Occasionally the split may remain and enlarge.

  Dedicated or fanatical perpetrators may come to value killing; there is no inconsistency or need for splitting. However, less fully committed perpetrators must be able to compartmentalize. They may concentrate on the immediate task, ignoring ethics and long-term consequences. Many Nazi doctors focused on medical “achievements” in their cruel experiments.21 Camp commanders focused on efficiency. Bureaucrats prepared regulations and train schedules for transporting victims. Over time, internal changes will increasingly diminish the need to compartmentalize.

  Two psychological developments are of great importance: a reversal of morality and relinquishing a feeling of responsibility for the welfare of the victims. To a greater or lesser extent, most human beings learn that they are responsible for the life and welfare of others. A feeling of responsibility for others’ welfare is central to people helping and not hurting others.22 Feelings of responsibility are subverted by excluding certain people from the realm of humanity or defining them as dangers to oneself and one’s way of life and values. At the extreme, a complete reversal of morality may occur, so that murder becomes a service to humanity. This is well expressed in a conversation described in testimony at Nuremberg by a Nazi who “worked” at Belzec, one of the extermination camps. When asked: “Wouldn’t it be more prudent to burn the bodies instead of burying them?
Another generation might take a different view of these things,” he responded:

  “Gentlemen, if there is ever a generation after us so cowardly, so soft, that it would not understand our work as good and necessary, then, gentlemen, National Socialism will have been for nothing. On the contrary we should bury bronze tablets saying that it was we, we who had the courage to carry out this gigantic task!”23

  The feeling of responsiblity can also be subverted through the assumption of responsibility by leaders. Himmler told the SS that he and the führer would assume all the responsibility for their actions – and that they were discharging a heroic duty requiring tremendous sacrifice.24 In Argentina, superior officers signed release forms for each kidnapping, which relieved the direct perpetrators of responsibility.25 In the obedience studies, the experimenter assumed full responsibility for the consequences of shocking the learner. In a variant of this research, participants who had an observer role and were told that they were responsible for the learner’s welfare induced the “teachers” to administer weaker shocks.26 Research on helping in emergencies (for example, when someone falls and is injured or has a sudden asthma attack) shows that a witness is likely to help if circumstances focus responsibility on him or her (for example, he or she is the only person present or has a special competence) or if other people make the witness responsible by instructions or orders. When circumstances diffuse responsiblity, helping is much less probable.27 Persons with greater ego strength or a greater personal feeling of responsibility for others’ welfare are less affected by the presence or passivity of others.28 The others in this case are strangers. Members of a close-knit group are likely to be more affected by each other.

  Specialization and bureaucratization make violence easier, partly by subverting the feeling of responsibility.29 Peck notes that in conversations with Pentagon officials at the time of the My Lai incident members of each group involved claimed that their role was circumscribed and disclaimed responsibility.30

  As the destruction process evolves, harming victims can become “normal” behavior. Inhibitions against harming or killing diminish, and extraneous motives can enter: greed, the enjoyment of power, the desire for sex or excitement. This is helped along by the belief that the victims do not matter and deserve to suffer, and even that any form of their suffering furthers the cause the perpetrators serve.

  The further the destruction has progressed, the more difficult it is to halt it. Human beings have a tendency to complete what they start. Kurt Lewin described this in terms of a goal gradient: the closer you are to a goal, the stronger the motivation to reach it.31 Interruption of goal-directed behavior is a source of tension; the closer the goal, the greater the tension. Cognitive consistency theories also present human beings as motivated to reach closure.32 The further you have progressed toward a goal, the more difficult it is to give up. Combined with personal and societal changes this explains why Germans, while losing the war, diverted substantial resources for the continued killing of Jews. Continued killing may also have served to give the Nazis a feeling of power and invulnerability as their fortunes declined.33

  A progression of changes in a culture and individuals is usually required for mass killing or genocide. In certain instances – the Armenian genocide, for example – the progression takes place over decades or even centuries and creates a readiness in the culture. In other cases there is a speedy evolution of ideology, personalities, or social conditions that ready people for mass killing.

  “Vicarious” rather than direct participation can also contribute to this evolution. Members of Nazi movements outside Germany identified with German Nazis and vicariously participated in their practices.34 This prepared them for their role as perpetrators when their country was later occupied by or allied itself to Nazi Germany. However, several such countries had themselves enacted anti-Jewish laws, so that learning by direct participation also occurred (see Chapter 11).

  Other origins of mistreatment

  The model presented here, with its emphasis on the psychological roots of group violence, is not always fully applicable. Leaders in nondemocratic states, protecting their power from real or imagined threats, may perpetrate wide-scale violence even when life conditions are not unusually difficult and the group membership of victims is poorly defined. In Stalin’s purges the criterion was at first ideological, but people were encouraged to betray others and did so for many reasons, including past enmity and a desire to please the authorities.35

  The desire for material gain or power can be important. North and South American Indians were killed mainly because others wanted their land. In Paraguay, for example, roads were built into the jungle, greatly increasing land values, and the Ache Indians became “inconvenient.”36 In such cases of “internal colonialization,” cultural preconditions include profound devaluation and a history of discrimination – the victims often excluded from participation in society- and at times a history of conflict and mistreatment. In genocides and mass killings that follow decolonialization, as in Burundi and Biafra, deep-seated historical conflicts can come to the fore in the context of profound social-political change. A history of conflict and antagonism fuels a power struggle that ends in genocide.

  In these cases and others when mass killing serves to gain wealth or power or to protect entrenched interests, the model is still at least partially applicable. The conflict is fueled by social disorganization and intense devaluation along class or other group lines. Authoritarian systems may limit free exchange. Ideological components (such as anticommunism) may result in a very broad definition of the enemy group.

  Relations between a dominant and a subordinate group often remain peaceful until difficult life conditions, social change, or a new ideology intervene. A subordinate group’s claims to greater privilege are a threat not only to the material interests of the dominant group, but also to its self-concept and sense of what is right. The established order has usually been elaborately justified by devaluation, an elevated view by the privileged of themselves, and a world view, all fortified by social institutions. Thus the conflict of interests is psychologically enlarged. In countries like Argentina, Guatemala, and El Salvador, anticommunism, belief in free enterprise, and perceived threat to Christianity all have bolstered opposition to social change.

  Selection for mass murder may be based not on cultural devaluation, but on a newly evolving or speedily adopted ideology. Usually, the ideology still draws on existing divisions in society. The identification and elimination of class enemies has often been part of established communist practice. In Cambodia, a country traditionally divided between a peasant countryside and cities dominated by a small and partly foreign ruling and commerical class, city dwellers were identified as incapable of contributing to a communist society. Thus, the Cambodian genocide had roots in Cambodian culture and communist ideology.

  Leaders’ decisions, of course, are also crucial.37 At times they simply express a leader’s personality, motives, or world view. More often the leaders offer devaluation, scapegoating, and murder as ways to deal with persistent life problems and their psychological effects.

  The role and power of bystanders

  Bystanders, people who witness but are not directly affected by the actions of perpetrators, help shape society by their reactions. If group norms come to tolerate violence, they can become victims. Bystanders are often unaware of, or deny, the significance of events or the consequences of their behavior. Since these events are part of their lifespace, to remain unaware they employ defenses like rationalization and motivated misperception, or avoid information about the victims’ suffering.

  Bystanders can exert powerful influence. They can define the meaning of events and move others toward empathy or indifference. They can promote values and norms of caring, or by their passivity or participation in the system they can affirm the perpetrators.38

  Research on helping in emergencies has shown that, when a number of people are present, responsibility is diffused
, and each person is less likely to help.39 Another consequence is what Bibb Latane and John Darley call pluralistic ignorance.40 People tend to inhibit expressions of feeling in public. In an emergency, the fact that all bystanders are hiding their feelings may lead them all to believe that there is no need for concern and nothing need be done. Hiding reactions is also common when suffering is inflicted by agents of society on members of a minority.

  As I have noted, psychological research shows that a single deviation from group behavior can greatly diminish conformity.41 In emergencies the likelihood of helping greatly increases when one bystander says the situation is serious or tells others to take action.42 When a society begins to mistreat some of its members, resistance by bystanders, in words and action, will influence others and inhibit the personal changes that would result from passivity.

  Even the behavior of governments can be strongly affected by bystanders–individuals, groups, or other governments. Repeatedly when they faced substantial opposition, the Nazis backed away. They did not persist, for example, when Bulgaria (where the people protested in the streets) refused to hand over its Jewish population or when, within Germany, relatives and some institutions protested the killing of the mentally retarded, mentally ill, and others regarded as genetically inferior.43 Public protest in the United States greatly affected the war in Vietnam. Amnesty International groups have freed political prisoners all over the world simply by writing letters to governments.