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
