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Everybody Can Turn Into a Monster
More and more frequently we hears about brutal violence towards defenceless and innocent persons. Who can act so violently? Who can be so sadic? “They are mentally ill persons, they’re disturbed… they are monsters!”: this is the most frequent expression pronounced by people who read and listen about these horrible deeds. We use to think that these horrible acts can be thought and realized only by monsters, and not by normal men. “I wouldn’t ever performed a so bloody and horrible act, I’m not a monster, I am a good and respectable citizen”: each of us is usually led to think in this way. It’s a spread conviction that the most atrocious, sadistic and violent acts are caused by madmen, psychiatric patients, or genetically-biologically violent people. According to this way of thinking, there is a fairly spread belief that the violent and sadistic deeds are caused only by specific personality (according to the theory of "violent personality"), or by neurological, biological or genetic problems: social psychology summarize all these beliefs under the so-called “dispositional theories of violence”. These kind of theories generally divide people between good citizens and bad ones. Dispositional perspective is still more spread: it is much easier and reassuring for the human soul think of a clear distinction between good or violent people rather than admit the presence of a permeable barrier between good and evil: it’s terrible for the human’s mind to think that there’s no a clear and strong distinction between the “Us - good” and “Them - evil”.
Social psychology’s studies made during the Seventies have shown that there is no clear difference between good people and bad ones. Even the so-called good people, generally respectful of social and ethical standards, may become under certain circumstances a violent, criminal and sadic citizen. American psychologists Philip Zimbardo, Stanley Milgram, Albert Bandura and Ervin Staub, thanks to numerous scientific experiments, have demonstrate as “good citizens” may become the protagonist of extremely violent behaviour. It’s the psychology of evil. According to Zimbardo’s theory, the particular situation and inputs become the cause of sadistic and violent behavior: hence, the name of “situational perspective”. Based on the results obtained from these studies, the psychology of evil shows that in everyday life there’re critical situations (“input variables”) that are able to implement some psychological processes that become responsible for the collapse of all.
A basic responsible of the transformation from Dr. Jeckill to Mister Hide is the psychological phenomenon called deindividuation. In certain circumstances, the human being momentarily loses consciousness of its Self, and tends not to think about the negative consequences of its acts: it’s precisely in this moment that a man becomes ready to behave in an antisocial way. Another phenomenon that can turn good people into bad ones is the “living for the moment” or “Mardi Gras” effect: the deindividuated man completely forgets that the victim has a specific past and a future. He “lives for the present” (it’s the “expanded present” phenomenon) and therefore he does not questioned if his current aggressive impulses are to be condemned (and therefore inhibit), on the base of the teachings and social prohibitions learned in the past. He becomes literally kidnapped by the situation. Here are some conditions that can turn good people into evil: 1) “Dive” of the individual inside a mass of people, 2) Taking alcohol or drugs, 3) Anonymity, 4) The “physical involvement in the act”, that is the complete absorption of the man in the action, 5) Arousal, 6) Responsibility: given up, shared or diffused.
Important contributions to the psychology of evil has been given by Milgram, expecially through his studies on the obedience to authority and psychological eteronomic state. To get an idea of the importance and the outcry that generated the results of experiments of this psychologist, just think that he was defined “the man who shocked the world!”. Other decisive contributions were conferred by Albert Bandura on the the concept of self-regulation, moral disengagement and dehumanization.
Zimbardo, Milgram and Bandura have demolished the common belief that good people do good deeds and bad people do evil deeds. The important lesson received from these studies is that man protagonist of horrible and violent acts is not pushed to behave in this way only by special mental illnesses, by “violent genes” or by specific conformations and neurological injuries, as suggested by the dispositional pshychologists of violence (Hess, Bucy, Delgado, MacLean, Jacobs, Rose, Gross, Barman, and more), but he is driven by the special situation and specific inputs. There are situations able to completely transform the way of thinking and acting of a person. In this case, the consciousness and rationality go sleep: human mind is captured by irrationality, instincts and impulses. Using the words of Nietzsche, we can say that the “Apollinean” side of a man (that is calculation, the ordered and rational thinking) is completely demolished and abandoned, to leave the place exclusive to the “Dionysian” side (that is, the instinct, chaos, the irrational thought). The fact that a man is “immersed” in a mass, the fact of being unrecognizable in the eyes of the victim, because he hides or disguises his identity (i.e.: wearing an uniform), the fact of taking drugs or alcohol, the fact that be in an eteronomic state, may promote development within the individual mind of a psychological state of deindividuation, and thus can cause fast and unthinkable traformation: from a good citizen and scrupulous person in a dangerous and violent one.
We are all potential “monsters”.
EVANGELISTI@HOTMAIL.IT
About the Author
Dr. David Evangelisti
57100 Livorno, Italy
Date of birth: 28/6/1979
evangelisti@hotmail.it www.evangelistidavid.blogspot.com
○ Bachelor’s degree in Political science (Università degli Studi di Pisa), mark 110/110 cum laude. Final dissertation (19/10/2005): “Good people make bad things: dal comportamento aggressivo alla psicologia del male” [Good people make bad things: from the aggressive behaviour to the psychology of evil].
○ In 13/2/2006 he has been invited by the University of Pisa to a conveign about “The social costruction of good and evil”: he has taken a lesson about The psychology of evil (See more at http://www.sp.unipi.it/sp/files/2605-Seminario_Bene_e_male.pdf).
○ Main subjects: Social psychology, sociology, education, communications.
SEE: HTTP://EVANGELISTIDAVID.BLOGSPOT.COM
