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 during 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
