In a recent study of genocide, James Waller proposed the following model for the transformation of ordinary people into evil ("Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing," second edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). He distinguished ultimate from proximate causes. For an answer to the ultimate cause, which may explain the underlying need but not the precipitating factors, he cited the universal reasoning neural circuits that evolved in our hunter-gatherer ancestors fostering the cooperative behavior of in-group members in their competition for survival against out-group members. In-group cooperation provides a general basis for social cooperation (and the defining identities of in-groups and out-groups), but to understand genocide, that monstrously evil social creation of the in-group perpetrated against the out-group, more specific proximate causes are required.
Waller identifies three proximate influences that together can result in a society and its members "becoming evil": a cultural construction of world view, the psychological construction of "other," and the social construction of cruelty, all of which can be only very briefly summarized here.
The cultural construction of world view reflects three factors. The first factor is collectivist values (obedience, conformity, tradition, safety, and order) that put the focus on the group and not on the individual. This group focus creates an "assumed similarity effect" in which all in-group members are perceived to be more similar (and more human) than any out-group members as well as an "out-group homogeneity effect" in which all out-group members "look alike" (in a shared vulgar way). The second factor is authority orientation which emphasizes a strong social hierarchy. The third factor is social dominance, which is essentially climbing the social status ladder. Evolutionary psychology suggests that the drive for social status and dominance is one of the most universal and powerful motivating forces and it can result in aggressive and violent responses to achieve the desired (socially encouraged) goals of advancing the new ideology.
The psychological construction of "other" reflects the following three factors. The first is "us-them thinking" in which we easily form and then self-identify with a group, resulting in ethnocentric loyalties and conversely, xenophobia. The second is moral disengagement, resulting in some individuals or groups being placed outside the boundary within which moral values apply. Three disengagement processes are needed to make evil actions morally acceptable to in-group members. These are moral justification (protecting the values of the community), dehumanization of the victims (depriving individuals of their social identity by defining them as members of some other category that in turn is not within the community of the human family), and the euphemistic labeling of evil actions (for example "resettlement," "collateral damage," or "ethnic cleansing"). The third is blaming the victims themselves for their mistreatment by assuming that the world is just and so the victims must somehow deserve what has befallen them.
The social construction of cruelty involves the creation of an immediate social context that fosters the perpetration of cruelty to the out-group members. In a nutshell, this is essentially turning mass murder into a humdrum, business-as-usual, ‘honey I have to go to work now,’ job. This genocide business, like any other, has its executives, its factory line workers, secretaries, and so on. This construct is facilitated by three factors. The first factor is professional socialization that involves escalating commitments (or promotions with increasing responsibilities), ritual conduct (for example, camp parades of concentration camp prisoners), and the merger of role and person (we become our job and so the ordinary naive person may escalate in evil as he grows in his job rather than coming to the job as an evil person initially). The second factor is group identification in which locally generated values dominate and outside values are excluded (resulting in the replacement of an objective "external" conscience with the new "internal" group norm). This in turn is facilitated by social contexts that promote anonymity (diffusion of responsibility and "deindividualism" in which a person’s identity becomes more that of a group member, making that person less personally responsible than would be an accountable individual with a personal identity) and rational self-interest, meaning these individuals pursue professional advancement and personal factors such as self-esteem (as anyone might do in a more normal job). The third "binding" factor refers to the group dynamics that keep people within an evil-doing situation. Milgram’s subjects also kept themselves in the experimental situation administering (they believed) painful, even potentially lethal shocks to innocent victims. Conformity to peer pressure, kin recognition cues (the motherland or fatherland of in-group members), and gender (yes, men are the ones who generally do this) contribute to this group dynamic.
Genocide is a particularly gruesome example of our creative potential when it is misdirected. It is also a humbling reminder of our fallibility and vulnerability, and, if anything, should teach us to not judge those who came before us too hastily. Genocide, slavery, medieval torture, and all that we would consider evil may be out of fashion in the United States today, but the ultimate foundations upon which the proximate circumstances took hold are still alive within each of us. We all share the ultimate foundation. We can only be thankful that we do not all share the proximate circumstances.
Dr. Caselli is medical editor of Clinical Neurology News and professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, Ariz.