Ervin Staub - The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence

Preface

Before I first thought of writing this book, I had for many years been conducting research and writing articles and books on the psychological origins of people helping others in need. Psychologists call this altruism, or prosocial behavior. In early 1979 I completed the second of my two-volume Positive Social Behavior and Morality,and that summer, during a sabbatical leave, I began to read seriously about the Holocaust. I realized that a number of concepts that were useful for understanding why people did or did not help others in need were also useful for understanding the extreme destructiveness of the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

For example, a feeling of responsibility for other peoples welfare greatly increases the likelihood of helping during an accident or sudden illness. This is partly a matter of personality, but it also depends on circumstances. A person helps more when circumstances focus responsibility on him or her. People help less when circumstances diffuse responsibility among a number of those who are present or focus it elsewhere (e.g., on a doctor who is present). I reasoned that harming and killing members of a group become possible when a feeling of responsibility for their welfare has been lost as a result of profound devaluation by a society or by an ideology adopted by the society.

It was clear to me that devaluation and loss of responsibility alone will not directly lead to genocide. Instead, an evolution must occur. Limited mistreatment of the victims changes the perpetrators and prepares them for extreme destructiveness. This was first suggested to me when in my laboratory children whom we involved in prosocial acts became more willing to help others. Research indicates that adults are also changed by their own prior actions. People learn by doing. Extreme destructiveness, it seemed to me, is usually the last of many steps along a continuum of destruction.

I was also struck by the influence of bystanders who knew of or witnessed the persecution of Jews. In Denmark, in the French Huguenot village of Le Chambon, and in a few other places where bystanders resisted Nazi persecution of Jews, the persecutors changed their behavior. Research strengthened my belief in the power of bystanders.