Why Do People Become Perpetrators of Genocide?

Explanations of the behavior of genocide perpetrators—and evildoers in general—are not always well received. Social scientists condemn evil, but they also seek to understand and explain it. However, explanations of wrongdoing in terms of general principles of human behavior can strike many people as a way of making excuses for it. Research is reviewed indicating that explaining wrongdoing in terms of situational or contextual factors (i.e., a social psychological explanation) is especially likely to be perceived as an attempt to exonerate the wrongdoer. Research also reveals cultural and individual-level moderators of this tendency. Interactionist accounts trigger less resistance. Psychological accounts of genocide are meant not to absolve perpetrators of responsibility but to inform the prevention of future genocides.

The Aftermath of Genocide

This chapter reviews research on how historical genocide continues to affect victim and perpetrator groups’ beliefs, emotions, and intergroup attitudes in the present. The authors organize their review around four central psychological processes that help in understanding why and how members of victim and perpetrator groups respond in such divergent ways: which psychological needs members of these groups have in light of the events (e.g., needs for meaning, agency, power, acknowledgment), how central the genocide is to their identity and how relevant it is seen to the present, how they perceive the scope of genocide and who is considered a victim, and the various lessons group members draw from the events. The authors also discuss possibilities for bridging these divergent responses and factors that complicate the picture such as when groups were both victims and perpetrators.

Understanding Intergroup Violence and Its Aftermath From Perpetrator and Victim Perspectives

This chapter reviews and integrates the psychological literature on how members of perpetrator and victim groups perceive, evaluate, and respond differently to large-scale intergroup violence, as well as institutional and psychological interventions. Despite considerable interest in the psychological analysis of evil and victims of evil, the field’s understanding of collective violence has not yet arrived at a stage where perspectives of perpetrators and victims are well integrated and considered in tandem. This chapter therefore provides insights into the dynamics between perpetrators and victims of intergroup violence, covering topics such as internal and external attribution, harm perception, intergroup emotions, temporal distance, retributive and restorative justice, and various conflict intervention strategies. Furthermore, the authors discuss how social identity shapes involved parties’ divergent responses to violence. They argue that acknowledging the differences between victim and perpetrator groups’ perspectives is key to developing constructive responses to collective violence.

Obedient Authoritarians or Lay Darwinists?

This chapter discusses the role of ideology in genocides, beyond the traditional conservatism–liberalism distinction. This chapter analyzes ideological views in greater detail by reviewing established psychological concepts, such as authoritarianism and social dominance orientation, as well as conspiracy theories, racial health ideology, and the concept of Lebensraum that formed the ideological foundation of the Holocaust and other large-scale crimes. Authoritarian ideology accurately explains the behavior of desk killers, bureaucrats responsible for organizing the mass murder. Social dominance ideology seems to give a more general explanation of genocide—it can be found in German social Darwinism, the idea of Lebensraum, the Nazi eugenic program, and the illusions spread by occupiers among the victims and the bystanders. The chapter suggests that deep study of ideologies might provide important insight into perpetrators’ worldviews and into their justifications of criminal acts, as well as an explanation of bystanders’ and victims’ behavior.

Understanding and Counteracting Genocide Denial

Denial of genocide and other forms of mass violence is the most common response to confrontation with in-group atrocities. Denial is detrimental to peace, reconciliation, and justice. In this chapter the authors provide a social psychological analysis of genocide denial and review the nature of denial as well as the collective (e.g., group and conflict narratives) and individual-level (e.g., in-group identification, ideology) processes that perpetuate it. Then, the second part of the chapter provides an overview of strategies to address and counteract denial of atrocities. These include confrontational strategies (specifically, introducing factual information about the atrocity, introducing information about moral exemplars, and perspective-taking/engaging with out-group’s narrative) and nonconfrontational strategies (interventions targeting genocide construal in general, lay theory interventions, and affirmation strategies). The authors discuss the potential and possible drawbacks of each strategy to effectively reduce denial and discuss avenues for future research.

Engaged Followership and Engaged Fellowship

In this chapter the authors argue that the human capacity for harming or else helping others flows from the same basic psychological group processes. They start by reanalyzing Milgram’s classic “obedience studies” in terms of “engaged followership”. This analysis suggests that participants obey toxic instructions to the extent that they see these as necessary in order to advance a worthy cause with which they identify. They argue that such engaged followership explains real-world as well as laboratory examples of harm-doing. They then reanalyze both laboratory and real-world examples of helping as engaged fellowship. This indicates that people aid others to the extent that they are construed as part of a common in-group. The difference between harming and helping, then, depends upon how one draws the boundaries of “us” and “them” and, hence, the extent to which one identifies with either perpetrating authorities or their victims.

The Many Roles of Dehumanization in Genocide

In genocide studies, dehumanization is commonly understood as a preparatory step on the path to mass killing. On this understanding, the perpetrator’s propaganda explicitly likens victims to animals, and these dehumanizing metaphors enable violence. The author argues that the role of dehumanization in genocide is considerably broader and more multifaceted than this account suggests. Subtle forms of dehumanization precede the tactical use of explicit animal metaphors, and dehumanizing metaphors are not always expressed in language or invariably animalistic in content. Dehumanization not only is a prelude to violence but also facilitates violent acts in the present and justifies and minimizes violence after it has been committed. Finally, an account that posits dehumanization as a stage of the genocidal process fails to recognize that some aspects of genocidal violence do not require the dehumanization of victims.

Moral Courage and Moral DisregardDifferent Sides of the Same Coin?

The goal of this chapter is to describe how the same act can be perceived as morally courageous, on the one hand, and as evil, on the other. The authors contend that both moral courage and moral disregard could be driven by two sides of the same process. Strong moral conviction that a stance is right or wrong (i.e., moral or immoral) may make it easier to disengage from normative standards to serve that belief, including harming others for a perceived higher moral purpose. In turn, the consequences of disengaging from normative standards could be perceived as heroic by like-minded observers or as morally bankrupt by non-like-minded observers (e.g., violence incited by the Israeli–Palestinian conflict may be perceived as heroic by observers who believe that it serves a higher moral purpose or as deeply immoral by people on the other side of the conflict who do not share that moral conviction).

Emotional Sources of Intergroup Atrocities

In this chapter, the authors put forth the proposition that group-based emotions reside at the core of extreme intergroup violence. That is, genocide is not cold; it is cruelly heartfelt. Perpetrator groups act because of specific (perceived or real) threat-induced, group-based emotions, which motivate specific destructive action tendencies. The authors focus on a genocidal triad of group-based emotions that stem from threat appraisals: (1) collective hate, which stems from the belief that an out-group is evil by nature; (2) collective angst, which stems from existential concern for the in-group’s future vitality; and (3) collective nostalgia, which stems from a sense that pressures are forcing unwanted change to the in-group. The authors contend that this triad of emotions propels group members toward engagement in cruel and unusual behavior. Research is reviewed to substantiate this proposition.

Genocide and the Male Warrior Psychology

Is the capacity for genocide “hard-wired” into the evolved psychology of our species? Using perspectives from evolutionary psychology, this chapter discusses and provides evidence for the evolved psychological underpinnings of intergroup violence and outlines how sexual selection may have prompted the evolution of psychological mechanisms that facilitate intergroup violence, particularly among men. For ancestral humans, participating in strategic intergroup violence may have allowed men to enhance their reproductive fitness, thereby inducing selection pressures for psychological mechanisms that produce cognitions, affect, and behaviors that promote intergroup violence under specific circumstances. This chapter emphasizes how these psychological mechanisms may interact with features of our modern environment, such as social, cultural, and political factors, to produce genocide.