When we reflected on the reasons for which ordinary men can become such ruthless killers and mass murderers, I feel that there were two very important psychologists whose work wasn\u2019t mentioned as a possible further explanation and those men are Albert Bandura, an eminent figure in the social psychology field, and Muzafer Sherif, another eminent figure in the social psychology field and in the study of conflicts.<\/p>\n
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So, how can they be useful to the topic at hand?<\/p>\n
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Albert Bandura, when discussing moral standards found that it\u2019s not enough to be well educated and morally just, in order to act morally. There\u2019s an in-between which can be crucial to the way a person acts towards another (Celia Moore, 2015). He defines this concept as moral disengagement. Which is a cognitive mechanism by which someone, who has actual moral standards, can step away from them and act immorally without the feeling of distress that usually follows such acts. Moral disengagement is divided into eight specific mechanisms:<\/p>\n
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I\u2019ll now offer an example for each of those mechanisms.<\/p>\n
When talking about the distortion of consequences one might of someone who doesn\u2019t control the use of the water they use because \u201cnothing\u2019s going to happen, this is not going to change the climate change crisis\u201d, whereas diffusion of responsibility often comes in the form of \u201cI shot those innocent people, but so did all my fellow comrades\u201d. Whenever you split your responsibility with somebody else, your guilt lessens, and the more the people you split it with, the less the guilt.<\/p>\n
An example of an advantageous comparison is \u201cat least I was quick with killing them, others would have taken them their time with it and maybe even tortured them\u201d.<\/p>\n
Then, there’s the one that most of the perpetrators of horrors against the Jew people used: displacement of responsibility, which we read in \u201cit wasn\u2019t my fault, I was just following orders\u201d.<\/p>\n
Moral justification is another tricky one, not uncommon during wars \u201cI killed them to protect my people, so if I kill them first they can\u2019t kill us\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Euphemistic labeling comes near the distortion of consequences mechanisms, in this case, you dismiss your action as something not even worth blame, such as \u201cI just merely insulted them, it was nothing\u201d.<\/p>\n
Dehumanization is one of the most dangerous mechanisms, fairly common during wars in general, and fundamental during the genocide of the Jew people: when you don\u2019t see the other person as a human anymore, but as a mere object, or nothing more than an animal, you can easily become ruthless because you tell yourself that rules don\u2019t apply anymore. You don\u2019t feel guilty or horrified because you\u2019re not really killing anyone, they\u2019re just bugs, rats, snakes, they\u2019re poisonous plants that need to be eradicated. When you don\u2019t see one\u2019s humanity, you don\u2019t see the one thing you always share with everyone, the one thing that makes us all the same and that<\/em> is the most dangerous thing.<\/p>\n And, finally, attribution of blame is pretty much self-explanatory. \u201cThey deserved this, they did this and brought all this upon themselves\u201d (Celia Moore, 2015).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sherif, on the other hand, becomes useful in explaining to us how easy can become to see someone as an enemy. A concept we already saw with Zimbardo\u2019s experiment. We, as human beings, have a need to identify with something, in someone. We are our experiences, our relationships, and our roles in society. And we like to think the best of ourselves, regardless of our confidence, we\u2019re like to think that between two groups, even if randomly chosen, our is the best, because that group, if we\u2019re in it, automatically becomes part of ourselves and of how we define ourselves, so if that\u2019s the best group there is, we\u2019re the best.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Briefly put, the Robbers Cave experiment is set in a summer camp. Twenty-two eleven years old boys, with a similar background, were invited to a summer camp. For a while, they all slept in the same, big house, and relationships were allowed to prosper, friendships rose. After a few days, the boys were split into two groups, chosen randomly, and placed in two different camps. After a while, the two groups were put in competition with each other, using games in which they could confront one another. Almost immediately after, the competition and friction on the playfield escalated into mean and vengeful acts, which then escalated into violence. There was nothing that was dividing these groups, no morals, no race, no religion, no social-economic background, and yet, they started hating each other (Muzafer Sherif, O. J. Harvey, B. Jack White, William R. Hood, Carolyn W. Sherif, 1954\/1961).<\/p>\n Sherif offers a further explanation of how conflict can literally birth out of thin air. And yet, Hitler did way more than just separate the groups. He yes, put these innocent people aside from society, but he also had laws created against them, he made sure people were indoctrinated against them, the regime taught<\/em> people to hate them, to fear them. This only amplified the hatred, the mistrust in them, just because someone told them to.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I hope this can be useful to further consider other factors that can come into place when such horrific and tragic acts are committed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n References:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When we reflected on the reasons for which ordinary men can become such ruthless killers and mass murderers, I feel that there were two very important psychologists whose work wasn\u2019t mentioned as a possible further explanation and those men are Albert Bandura, an eminent figure in the social psychology field, and Muzafer Sherif, another eminent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20719,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/daniellerousseau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/daniellerousseau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/daniellerousseau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/daniellerousseau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20719"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/daniellerousseau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/daniellerousseau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1851,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/daniellerousseau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions\/1851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/daniellerousseau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/daniellerousseau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/daniellerousseau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n