Teaching about and Teaching through the Holocaust: Insights from (Social) Psychology

2015 ◽  
pp. 95-107
Author(s):  
Barry van Driel
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
The Holocaust

Social Psychology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
George R. Mastroianni
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Social Cognition ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
The Third ◽  
Implicit Biases ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Critical Literature

Chapter 9 examines social-psychological approaches to understanding the Holocaust. Since Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments were published in the early 1960s, social-psychological formulations based on obedience and social influence have dominated the psychology of the Holocaust. There is also a significant critical literature that challenges some of the findings and interpretation of Milgram and Phillip Zimbardo as they apply to the Holocaust. Social cognition is the study of thinking as situated in a social milieu and offers a fruitful framework for considering the ways Germans thought about one another during the Third Reich. Modern approaches to prejudice and racism, especially the study of unconscious or implicit biases, may provide insight into anti-Semitic attitudes prevalent in Germany (and elsewhere) during the Nazi years.

Dlaczego ludzie postępują niezgodnie z obowiązującymi normami moralnymi? Konfrontacja perspektywy etycznej z badaniami psychologicznymi

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 13-14
Author(s):  
Ariadna Ciążela
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Unethical Behavior ◽  
Moral Dimension ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
The Holocaust

This article discusses the sources and motivations of human behavior in the moral dimension. Starting with the ethical perspective, selected research in the field of social psychology on unethical behavior and its possible causes including Stanley Milgram’s experiment, which was inspired by the experience of Nazism and the Holocaust, is presented. This article points out that behavior defined as ethically reprehensible does not always have to be the result of ethically reprehensible motives.

Evil Is More Than Banal: Situationism and the Concept of Evil

1999 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 246-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard Berkowitz
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Obedience To Authority

Social psychology as a discipline has given relatively little attention to the problem of evil in society, and those discussions in this field that do exist typically regard evil actions as only varieties of aggression without any characteristics that distinguish them from other forms of intentional mistreatment of others. Because of the field's situationistic perspective emphasizing the individual's susceptibility to the power of the immediate situation, social psychologists generally view the fairly high levels of obedience to authority displayed in Milgram's (1963, 1974) classic experiment as the paradigmatic example of evil behavior. For them, much evil is, in Arendt's (1963) well-known phrase, only “banal,” and Milgram's findings are often viewed as illustrating the “central dynamic” involved in the slaughter of millions of Jews and other “undesirables” in the Holocaust. This article holds that Milgram's (1974) obedience research does not represent significant features of the Holocaust, especially the sadism that occurred not infrequently, and disregards the vital difference between those who initiated the murderous policy and the others who followed their orders. Building on Darley's (1992) earlier conjectures about the features that ordinary people might consider in judging whether any given action is evil, I suggest that many persons have a prototypic conception of evil and speculate about the dimensions that could be involved in this prototype.

Typology of Guilt and Shame

2021 ◽  
pp. 45-69
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Fredericks
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Collective Agency ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Different Types

Because primary sources about environmental guilt and shame discussed in Chapter 2 do not define or differentiate guilt or shame consistently, systematically explore their implications, or explain the notions of collective agency that they presume, Chapter 3 constructs a typology of guilt and shame to stabilize the subsequent analysis. It uses material from moral and social psychology, especially work by June Price Tangney and her colleagues, as well as social, historical, and philosophical studies of collective experiences of guilt and shame after the Holocaust and other atrocities. The state of being guilty or shameful occurs when an agent breaks or fails to live up to their ideals. “Guilt” here refers to the actions and shame to the conditions of the agent’s identity under these circumstances. Guilt and shame feelings are negative emotions about such actions (guilt) or assessments of identity (shame). Guilt and shame states and feelings can refer to individuals, membership groups, or collectives. Memberships are groups in which the individuals are the agents, whereas collectives have agency, identity, and responsibility more than the sum of the individuals in them. Agents can also judge another as guilty or shameful and/or attempt to instill guilt or shame feelings in them; such judgments depend in part on the cultural views of guilt and/or shame. The distinctions articulated in this typology are analytically and practically useful but are not absolute, as different types of guilt and shame may co-occur or catalyze each other.

In search of a genocidal frame: Preliminary evidence from the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-152
Author(s):  
Maria Armoudian
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Religious Group ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Rwandan Genocide ◽  
Group Psychology ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Greater Good

Research on genocide has provided a rich background of common structural, ideological and psychological antecedents that culminate in the attempted annihilation of a specific ethnic or religious group. Integrating the literature on framing, genocide, emotions and social psychology, this article first presents the concept of a master ‘genocidal frame’ and preliminary evidence from two modern-day genocides, Rwanda and Nazi Germany, where it located common themes in genocidal communication. Secondly, it suggests that the genocidal frame’s five themes together are used as an effort to persuade the countries’ ‘own’ people that annihilating ‘the others’ is necessary for the ‘greater good’. Finally, the author embeds this framing into three bodies of literature to preliminarily theorize how a genocidal frame, whether communicated interpersonally or institutionally, may interact with other conditions to help shape the psychological antecedents of genocide – negative emotions, cognitions and group psychology.

V. Revising the Holocaust without Freud, Marx or Social Psychology

1998 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 700-702
Author(s):  
Leon Rappoport
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
The Holocaust

scholarly journals Radicalization as cause and consequence of violence in genocides and mass killings

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-143
Author(s):  
Omar Shahabudin McDoom
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Attitudes And Beliefs ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Group I ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Victim Group ◽  
Pain And Suffering ◽  
Mass Killings ◽  
Dissonance Reduction

Major theories of participation in genocides and mass killings offer seemingly opposing explanatory logics for how and why individuals come to commit violence. The long-standing consensus on “perpetrator ordinariness” contrasts with explanations that continue to highlight the prior, intensely held negative attitudes and beliefs about the victim group. I propose a theoretical reconciliation. Radicalization would be better theorized not only as an antecedent to the act of violence but also as a consequence of it. Killing transforms individuals. A well-established point in social psychology, not only do attitudes drive behaviors, but behaviors also shape attitudes. Some perpetrators dehumanize their victims, internalize exclusionary ideologies, and otherwise develop negative sentiments toward their victims following their participation in the violence. Attitudinal shift becomes a form of dissonance-reduction. Perpetrators come to espouse radical beliefs in order to justify their actions. This revised theorization has implications for our understanding of (1) perpetrator heterogeneity: individuals must vary in their vulnerability to radicalization, and (2) non-instrumental violence: why we often observe the infliction of gratuitous pain and suffering on victims. I re-interpret testimony of perpetrators from Rwanda, the Holocaust, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Cambodia to support the article’s central theoretical proposition.

Violence, Resistance, and Rescue during the Holocaust

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-180
Author(s):  
Laia Balcells ◽  
Daniel Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
World War ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Comparative Study

What do different forms of anti-Semitic violence during World War II teach us about the comparative study of political violence? In this article, we review three recent political science books about the perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence, the responses of their Jewish victims, and the rescue efforts that helped European Jews evade violence. These books demonstrate promising theoretical, empirical, and methodological uses for the rich historical record about the Holocaust. We use these studies to highlight the methodological innovations that they advance, the blurry theoretical boundaries between selective and collective forms of mass violence, and the possibility of agentive action by perpetrators, victims, and rescuers alike. We conclude by highlighting the social-psychology of genocidal violence and the legacies of these episodes as areas for future inquiry.

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