I. Generally two competing explanations
for the behavior of perpetrators
A.
Dispositional factors
1. Background Theory/Research
a. Abnormality -- "They're crazy"
1. Anyone who would kill
innocent
people has to be insane (circular!)
2. Perpetrators are
mentally
ill
3. Perpetrators must have
a
particular personality trait
a. blind obedience to
authority
b. impulsivity
c. socially isolation (some
evidence)
b. They're driven
by intense hate or prejudice (Why do they hate us?)
1. Studies with U.S.
soldiers
indicate that emphasis is on comraderie (i.e., love), not hate
2. Studies with terrorists
indicate
main motivation is to benefit in-group, rather than hurt out-group
2. Application to the Holocaust
a. Hard to fathom, since it requires one to argue that tens of thousands of Germans were flawed
b. Hard to find. Dawidowitzc comes closest:
| "The insecurities of post-World-War I Germany
and the anxieties they produced provided an emotional milieu in which irrationality
and hysteria became routine and and illusions became transformed into delusions.
The delusional disorder assumed mass proportions....In modern Germany the
mass psychosis of anti-Semitism deranged a whole people" (Dawidowitzc, quoted
in Browning "Ordinay Germans or Ordinary Men?" |
| "I by no means agree with much of Lucy Dawidowitzc's
formulation. I have never said and do not hold the view, that the German
people were deranged by a delusional mass psychosis." (Goldhagen, Ordinary
Men or Ordinary Germans) |
B.
Situational factors "…The social psychology of this century reveals a major
lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person
a man is as the
kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he
will act." (Milgram, 1974)
1. Persuasion pressures (mass propoganda, leaders, peers)
a. Background research
1.
Propoganda often effective, especially when no other source of information
is available
2. People persuaded by leaders and peers they trust and like
b. Application to the Holocaust
1. Anti-Jewish propoganda very effective
2. Some leaders (e.g., "Papa Trapp") were liked, many were not
3. Peers were often friends and acquaintances from before the War
2. Conformity
pressures
a. Background research
1. Original Asch Study
a. Method: 18 sets of different
size lines, "False" answers given 12 times (subjects
| stimulus)
b. Results: 76% conformed
at least once, over 50% conformed at least 3 times
2. Follow-up studies showed that the following factors increase conformity
a. no prior commitment to answer/behavior
b. subjects made to feel incompetent
or insecure by experimenter
c. importance/attraction of group
membership
d. size of
group (at least 3 people)
e. group unanimity
f. group
pressures
such as ridiculing the non-conformist
g. cultural value of
respect
for social standards (e.g., the nail that sticks out gets hit)
b. Application to the Holocaust
1. Prior commitment to anti-semitism but usually not to willful killing
2. SS and police battalion members often rediculed by commanders if
not up to task
3. In foreign terrirory, away from all family and friends, group membership
VERY important
4. Groups were large, significantly more than 6 people
5. Group unanimity hard to say: Browning reports multiple cases of
dissent in Battalion 101, but this may have been rare
6. Group pressures to conform were high (nonconformists were rediculed
and looked down upon for not doing their share)
7. Cultural value for respect of social standards: moderately high
to high
3. Obedience pressures
a. Background Research:
1. Milgram's original obedience study (see StanleyMilgram.Com)
a. the experimental design
1. schematic of experimental lab
2. reenactment available at www.milgramreenactment.org)
b. the findings
2. Follow-up studies identified factors that increased
obedience (bar graph of replication studies)
a. legitimacy of the authority
b. greater distance from the
victim
c. closer supervision by authority
d. presence of people who modeled
obedience
e. gender, age, education not
relevant
3. Theories about why people obey
a. normative influence: obey
authority
b. informational influence: can't know everything!
when situation is confusing, trust expert
c. conflicting norms (obey authority
and don't hurt people) are hard to figure out
d. incremental steps (starts out being reasonable,
each small increase is reasonable, where do we draw the line?
e. cognitive dissonance theory
(after shocks get too high, can't undo past behavior and don't want to label
self as "bad" or "immoral")
f. fast pace -- not enough time
to make good decisions
4. Conclusion: Most people will obey orders to hurt someone, given strong situational factors
b. Applications to the Holocaust
1. Many situational influences present
a. authority was seen as powerful and
insurmountable
b. distance to the victim varied, but
obedience generally high regardless
1. mobile killing squads rounded up victims and killed at point-blank
range
2. extermination camps created in part because of the psychological
toll of above method
c. ever-present perception of authority
presence, even when it wasn't
d. constant presence of peers modeling
obedience
e. ability to give up responsibility
to someone else
2. but also lacking in many ways
a. study subjects were uncomfortable,
many NAZI perpetrators enjoyed it (see Goldhagen)
b. study obedience decreased when physical
intimacy increased, but Jews were often hit, kicked, and shot point-blank
c. study obedience decreases when researcher
is not present, but many Nazi atrocities occured without commanders
d. study may not have anything to do
with obedience (implied contract -- the magic act)
4. Effects of role assignment
a. Background
Research: Zimbardo prison
study:
1. Normal
students assigned to be guards took on the characteristics associated with
the role
2. Some sadistic
behaviors emerged in just a few days; experiment had to be stopped after
6 days
3.
Three types of guard profiles emerged (sadistic, duty-bound, and lenient),
no one rebelled against system
b. Application
to the Holocaust
1.
Lots of men with no military or police experience were put into roles
of guards and executioners
2.
Reports exist of all three types of perpetrators. Again, no one
(as far as we know) rebelled against system
5. Economic pressures
a. Background research:
Sherif's Realistic Group Conflict Theory
1. The
theory states:
a. people fight/compete over limited resources
b. during competition, the "other" is considered an enemy
to
justify trying to "win"
c. enemy is then dehumanized and scapegoated
2. The research evidence
a. Southern state lynching study
b. Sherif's Robber's
Cave study
b. Application to the Holocaust
1. The
Great Depression did create an economic crisis
2. Jews
were indeed scapegoated and dehumanized
6. Socialization pressures (affects disposition)
a. Background research
1. cultural socialization
a. narratives
about victimization
b.
cultural myths about heroes and heroic deeds
c. long-standing, widely
accepted group beliefs such as prejudice
d. religious beliefs about death
2. group socialization (e.g., army, militant group)
a. we watch out for one another
b. we support/help one another (e.g., doing unpleasant tasks)
b. Application to the Holocaust
1. Substantial cultural socialization
a. narratives about "Jewish devils" and Jewish
drain on resources
b. myths about the first two Reichs
c. long history of anti-semitism
d. Catholoic Church (including the Pope) supported the Nazi
party, so pathway to heaven was not blocked
2. Substantial group socialization (see both
Browning's
and Goldhagen's descriptions of the 101st Reserve Police Battalion
II. The special case of perpetrators
in Nazi Germany: Integrating the historical evidence and scientific research
B. Cultural explanation (dispositional or situational?)
1. Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners"
| "Germans' antisemitic beliefs about Jews were
the central causal agent of the Holocaust. They were the central causal
agent not only of Hitler's decision to annihilate European Jewry...but also
of the perpetrators' willingness to kill and brutalize Jews. The conclusion
of this book is that anti-semitism moved many thousands of "ordinary" Germans
-- and would have moved millions more had they been appropriately positioned
-- to slaughter Jews. Not economic hardships, not the coercive means
of a totalitarian state, not social psychological pressure, not invariable
psychological propensities, but ideas about Jews that were pervasive in Germany,
and had been for decades induced ordinary Germans to kill unarmed, defenseless
Jewish men, women, and children by the thousands, systematically and without
pity." |
C. Situational explanation
1. Browning's "Ordinary Men" claims that the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 killed because of numerous situational factors
a. Strengths
1. Recognizes a wide variety of contributing factors, including
anti-semitism
2. Presents relatively persuasive evidence that many Germans did
not
want to kill and tried to evade the task
b. Weaknesses
1. Over-reliance on German perpetrator testimony (which is rather
revealing
in this case)
2. Probably understates the importance of anti-semitism
D. Conclusions
