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

others caring or selfish, safe or aggressive? Is aggression normal, or permitted only in extreme cases? Aggression is more likely to occur if it is an acceptable means to fulfill goals, if the world is seen as a dangerous place, and if other groups are regarded as untrustworthy.

Cultural goals and values

Cultures can be characterized by their goals, explicit and implicit.²² In the United States, for example, according to one analysis, a basic goal is to maintain belief in equality of opportunity.²³ The substantial inequalities of wealth, status, and power are often explained by either hereditary differences in ability or differences in effort. These are genuine influences, but exclusive emphasis on them obscures the extent to which inequality is due to a social organization that enables some people to maintain unearned privileges and limits opportunity for others. One consequence is that people regard themselves as failures when they do not live up to aspirations based on a faith in unlimited opportunity. Another consequence is devaluation of the poor, who are seen as incompetent or lazy, and who may also see themselves this way, which may keep them passive. A contrasting goal, adopted by the Hutterites, for example, is equality of outcome as the basis of social organization.²⁴

Some goals are agreed upon by a whole society; others are promoted by conflicting subgroups, who want to influence the whole society. Some goals are internal: health care, freedom from hunger, protection of civil rights, equality under law, and maintenance of certain moral or religious values. Other goals are international; they involve the role of the nation in the world, its relationship to other nations, and its relative power, prestige, and wealth. Nationalism, or the desire to enhance the status, power, or influence of one’s country, is a goal more important in some cultures than others. A society’s goals include the propagation of a way of life and the creation of a culture and institutions that will socialize the young to maintain it. Long-standing differences among subgroups of a society in values, goals, and ways of life, especially when there are no well-established ways to reconcile differences and resolve conflict, are likely to be seized upon and their significance intensified when life conditions are difficult.

Moral value orientations

Individuals and cultures differ in their concern for others’ welfare. A number of writers have distinguished rule-centered and person-centered moral orientations.²⁵ The focus of a rule-centered morality is norms, conventions, and the maintenance of society. The focus of a person-centered orientation is the well-being of individuals or the group.

On the individual level, there is evidence that certain characteristics, such as the belief in the acceptability of aggression in contrast to anxiety about its use, promote aggressive responses to instigation.²⁶ But there is little research on the influence of broader value orientations. My students and I exposed individuals to another person who seemed to be in either physical distress from a stomach condition or in psychological distress because a boyfriend had suddenly ended a long-term relationship. Individuals with a strong prosocial value orientation – a positive evaluation of human beings, concern about their welfare, and a feeling of personal responsibility for their welfare – helped more.²⁷ Presumably this person-centered orientation also diminishes the likelihood of aggression.

Lawrence Kohlberg reported that in experiments on obedience to authority, a small number of persons with a stage six (principled) moral orientation were less likely to obey the experimenter and administer the strongest shocks to the learner.²⁸ When asked to resolve hypothetical moral conflicts, such persons’ moral thinking centers on a belief in justice and the sanctity of human life. Using another system to categorize moral thinking, Kohlberg and his associates found that the few people with principled moral reasoning, as well as persons whose reasoning is less advanced but who see themselves as responsible for fulfilling important values, tended to act morally in both the obedience study and another morally relevant situation.²⁹ This type of morality seems similar to prosocial orientation.

Carol Gilligan has drawn a distinction between typical male orientation to morality (based on rules and logic) and female orientation (characterized by caring and responsibility).³⁰ A prosocial value orientation and a morality of care and responsibility, although not identical, have evident similarities. In our research there were both males and females with strong prosocial orientations. Gilligan later reported that the two moral orientations characterize both sexes, although rule-centered orientation is dominant in males and person-centered in females.³¹ In a recent in-depth interview study males and females reported similar values.³²

Whole societies and their subgroups also differ in moral orientation. The moral orientation of a society sets limits on acceptable conduct and influences the choice of avenues to cope with difficult life conditions. Sparta subordinated individual dignity and freedom to the interests of the state; Athens elevated individual freedom, dignity, human reason, and creativity. The institution of slavery in Athens demonstrates that dominant value orientations need not apply to those outside the boundaries of the ingroup. Indians and blacks in America, Jews in many places, Armenians in Turkey, and those defined as enemies by ideology or other criteria have been traditionally excluded from the domain of dominant moral orientations; otherwise unacceptable acts become acceptable when directed at them.

While moral rules arise to serve human welfare, rules can be reified or held as absolutes, and at times the group rather than the individual is made the focus of their concern. This makes it easier to exclude specific individuals or subgroups from the universe of moral concern. In addition, given the widespread belief in a just world (see Chapter 6), victims will often be seen as deserving their fate.³³

Moral value orientations are expressed in standards and rules adopted by social groups. Adherence to and deviation from rules have powerful social consequences, but people also obey rules because they have adopted them as their own and believe in them. But group morality can shift and permit harm-doing that was previously inconceivable. It then becomes difficult to maintain a personal morality that deviates from the new group morality. Progressively, personal