Beyond the Banality of Evil: Three Dynamics of an Interactionist Social Psychology of Tyranny

A warrant for violence? An analysis of Donald Trump's speech before the US Capitol attack

On January 6th, 2021, Donald Trump's speech during a 'Save America' rally was followed by mass violence, with Trump's supporters storming the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's victory in the presidential election. In its wake, there was a great deal of debate around whether the speech contained direct instructions for the subsequent violence. In this paper, we use a social identity perspective on leadership (and more specifically, on toxic leadership) to analyse the speech and see how its overall argument relates to violence. We show that Trump's argument rests on the populist distinction between the American people and elites. He moralises these groups as good and evil respectively and proposes that the very existence of America is under threat if the election result stands. On this basis he proposes that all true Americans are obligated to act in order prevent Biden's certification and to ensure that the good prevails over evil. While Trump does not explicitly say what such action entails, he also removes normative and moral impediments to extreme action. In this way, taken as a whole, Trump's speech enables rather than demands violence and ultimately it provides a warrant for the violence that ensued.

Do we need a strong captain to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic? Social identification, conspiracy theory beliefs, and the wish for a strong leader

Introduction

In times of great uncertainty and hardship, calls for a strong leader tend to arise. The present study delved into this issue by examining possible sociopsychological antecedents of the wish for a strong leader during the COVID-19 crisis.

Methods

We examined the role of social identification, belief in conspiracy theories related to COVID-19, and trust in various relevant social actors in a sample of 350 Italian citizens.

Results

Structural equation modeling analyses showed that identification with Italians was related to a lower wish for a strong leader through the mediation of trust. Identification with Europeans had a direct and negative association with the wish for a strong leader. Finally, greater endorsement of conspiracy beliefs was related to a greater wish for a strong leader, directly and through diminished trust.

Discussion

These findings suggest that belief in conspiracy theories might drive individuals to depart from democratic principles, whereas relying on meaningful social identities can effectively contrast possible authoritarian turns brought about by a global societal crisis, such as the coronavirus outbreak.

Competent Witnesses: How Penitentiary Workers Explain the Violence in Italian Prisons during the COVID-19 Pandemic

BACKGROUND

During the COVID-19 pandemic, in the Italian prison of Santa Maria Capua Vetere (SMCV), prison police repressed a riot with extreme violence, bringing the state of prisons and the conditions of prisoners back to the attention of the Italian public opinion.

OBJECTIVE

This exploratory study aimed to collect the experiences and the competent opinions of the social and health personnel of Italian prisons regarding the episode of violence that happened in SMCV; the general state of health of the Italian prison system was explored, too, together with the collection of proposals for interventions aimed at the eradication of violence in prison.

METHOD

The study employed a qualitative research design. Eighteen social-health workers from 12 Italian prisons were interviewed using in-depth interviews of ~60 min each that were conducted and recorded via Skype video calls. The interview transcripts were analyzed with qualitative reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) to identify the most relevant and recursive themes.

RESULTS

Four themes were identified: (1) reactions and thoughts about the events of SMCV; (2) structural problems of Italian prison police; (3) Italian prison system; and (4) reform proposals.

CONCLUSIONS

A new and deeper awareness of the suffering of the current Italian penitentiary system emerged, together with courageous reform proposals that can restore dignity and centrality to the re-education of the detainees, preventing further future violence.

A Psychology of Ideology: Unpacking the Psychological Structure of Ideological Thinking

The psychological study of ideology has traditionally emphasized the content of ideological beliefs, guided by questions about what people believe, such as why people believe in omniscient gods or fascist worldviews. This theoretical focus has led to siloed subdisciplines separately dealing with political, religious, moral, and prejudiced attitudes. The fractionation has fostered a neglect of the cognitive structure of ideological worldviews and associated questions about why ideologies—in all their forms—are so compelling to the human mind. Here I argue that it is essential to consider the nature of ideological cognition across a multitude of ideologies. I offer a multidimensional, empirically tractable framework of ideological thinking, suggesting it can be conceptualized as a style of thinking that is rigid in its adherence to a doctrine and resistance to evidence-based belief-updating and favorably oriented toward an in-group and antagonistic to out-groups. The article identifies the subcomponents of ideological thinking and highlights that ideological thinking constitutes a meaningful psychological phenomenon that merits direct scholarly investigation and analysis. By emphasizing conceptual precision, methodological directions, and interdisciplinary integration across the political and cognitive sciences, the article illustrates the potential of this framework as a catalyst for developing a rigorous domain-general psychology of ideology.

"They're Not True Humans:" Beliefs about Moral Character Drive Denials of Humanity

A puzzling feature of paradigmatic cases of dehumanization is that the perpetrators often attribute uniquely human traits to their victims. This has become known as the "paradox of dehumanization." I address the paradox by arguing that the perpetrators think about their victims as human in one sense, while denying that they are human in another sense. I do so by providing evidence that people harbor a dual character concept of humanity. Research has found that dual character concepts have two independent sets of criteria for their application, one of which is descriptive and one of which is normative. Four experiments provided evidence that people deploy a descriptive criterion according to which being human is a matter of being a Homo sapiens; as well as a normative criterion according to which being human is a matter of possessing a deep-seated commitment to do the morally right thing. Importantly, I found that people are willing to affirm that someone is human in the descriptive sense, while denying that they are human in the normative sense, and vice versa. In addition to providing a solution to the paradox of dehumanization, these findings suggest that perceptions of moral character have a central role to play in driving dehumanization.

Effect of Computer-Simulated Leaders' Compromise on Members' Emotional State and Protest Behavior

Participants (N = 119) played the "Dictator Game" (computer mediated) with two bogus computer-simulated players, one of whom, the Dictator, distributed money across ten trials, either as extremely unfair (Inflexible Dictator) or being less unfair (Flexible Dictator). The other player either protested against (Protest condition) or did not react (Apathy condition) to the dictator's decision, after each trial. We measured participants' self-reported anger and disinterest, physiological skin conductance (SCL), heart rate (HR), and number and type of comments directed to the Dictator. Anger and number of comments were lower in the Apathy than in the Protest condition. Participants' SCL, HR, and protest comments decreased in the Apathy condition, and increased in the Protest condition. Protest assumed a more punitive tone in the Inflexible than in the Flexible Dictator condition. We discuss these results' contribution to understand individuals' motivation to engage in protest and apathy, and the role of emotions in that process.

Revisiting the Stanford prison experiment, again: Examining demand characteristics in the guard orientation

The day before the Stanford prison experiment began, the investigators held an orientation session for the guards in which they communicated expectations for hostile guard behavior, a flippant prisoner mindset, and the possibility of ending the study prematurely. While the study's principal investigator has minimized the influence of this orientation, critics have speculated that it provided a "script" for guard abuse. In the present studies, participants were presented with a hypothetical prison simulation study and randomly assigned as guards to an orientation session that included these expectations (Stanford orientation) or one providing basic study information. Across three studies, participants exposed to the Stanford orientation relative to a control orientation, reported greater expectations for hostile and oppressive behavior on the part of the study's investigator and from others and themselves as guards. The present results provide empirical support for speculation that the language of the guard orientation in the Stanford prison experiment sanctioned abuse among guards.

The systematic study of how subtle forms of bias related to prosocial behavior operate in racial and gender relations

Psychological research and theory have traditionally focused on bias and conflict between separate groups. Our central thesis is that the processes that shape hierarchical group relations within a society are distinctive and typically operate in ways that are frequently subtle rather than blatant. The challenges of detecting new subtle forms of bias are receiving considerable attention in the field of social psychology, internationally. Although explicit hostility toward minority groups seems to have faded in modern societies, cross-cultural data show that the status, resources, and the power of women and ethnic/racial minorities remain unequal. The present literature review integrates the findings of cross-cultural research showing the role of paternalistic legitimizing ideas and behavior for establishing, maintaining, and reinforcing group hierarchy and the disadvantage of members of traditionally underrepresented groups. Specifically, we explain how intergroup helping relations can be used as a mechanism to maintain social advantage in racial and gender relations. These theoretical and experimental insights help illuminate the dynamics of relations between socially linked groups and the nature of contemporary bias. We also highlight how this perspective suggests novel and productive directions for future research.

Resolving the Meat-Paradox: A Motivational Account of Morally Troublesome Behavior and Its Maintenance

A majority of people the world over eat meat, yet many of these same people experience discomfort when the meat on their plate is linked to the death of animals. We draw on this common form of moral conflict—the meat-paradox—to develop insights into the ways in which morally troublesome behaviors vanish into the commonplace and every day. Drawing on a motivational analysis, we show how societies may be shaped by attempts to resolve dissonance, in turn protecting their citizens from discomfort associated with their own moral conflicts. To achieve this, we build links between dissonance reduction, habit formation, social influence, and the emergence of social norms and detail how our analysis has implications for understanding immoral behavior and motivations underpinning dehumanization and objectification. Finally, we draw from our motivational analysis to advance new insights into the origins of prejudice and pathways through which prejudice can be maintained and resolved.

Nietzsche or Aristotle: The implications for social psychology

In this article, I argue that there is a divide in social psychology between a mainstream paradigm for investigating the flow of power in a largely competitive social life (such as social cognition, social identity theory, and discourse analysis) and a fringe paradigm for investigating the experience of flourishing in conditions of social learning (such as “the community of practice metaphor,” “dialogical theory,” “phenomenological analysis”). Assumptions of power and flourishing demand different conceptions of the self and the social world (e.g., a strategic subject or motivated tactician in a social group versus a reflective learner/artist in a community of practice). The first goal of this article is to reveal the assumptions that lead to this new classification. The second goal is to draw dotted lines to the blind spots within these paradigms, using one as a foil for the other. These blind spots are: (a) internal goods could be useful to consider for the power paradigm and external goods for the flourishing paradigm; (b) communicative rationality is underplayed within the power paradigm, while instrumental rationality is underplayed for the flourishing paradigm; and (c) judgements and skill are underplayed in the power paradigm, self-interested motivations are underplayed in the flourishing paradigm.

Coercion Changes the Sense of Agency in the Human Brain

People may deny responsibility for negative consequences of their actions by claiming that they were “only obeying orders.” The “Nuremberg defense” offers one extreme example, though it is often dismissed as merely an attempt to avoid responsibility. Milgram’s classic laboratory studies reported widespread obedience to an instruction to harm, suggesting that social coercion may alter mechanisms of voluntary agency, and hence abolish the normal experience of being in control of one’s own actions. However, Milgram’s and other studies relied on dissembling and on explicit measures of agency, which are known to be biased by social norms. Here, we combined coercive instructions to administer harm to a co-participant, with implicit measures of sense of agency, based on perceived compression of time intervals between voluntary actions and their outcomes, and with electrophysiological recordings. In two experiments, an experimenter ordered a volunteer to make a key-press action that caused either financial penalty or demonstrably painful electric shock to their co-participant, thereby increasing their own financial gain. Coercion increased the perceived interval between action and outcome, relative to a situation where participants freely chose to inflict the same harms. Interestingly, coercion also reduced the neural processing of the outcomes of one’s own action. Thus, people who obey orders may subjectively experience their actions as closer to passive movements than fully voluntary actions. Our results highlight the complex relation between the brain mechanisms that generate the subjective experience of voluntary actions and social constructs, such as responsibility.

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Responsibility for action is a key feature of human societies

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It depends on association between actions and outcomes in the brain

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Claims of reduced responsibility are sometimes based on “only obeying orders”

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Two experiments suggest coercion can reduce implicit measures of sense of agency

Value-oriented citizenship index: New extensions of Kelman and Hamilton's theory to prevent autocracy

In Crimes of obedience, Kelman and Hamilton argue that societies can be protected by the degeneration of authority only when citizenship is based on a strong values orientation. This reference to values may be the weakest point in their theory because they do not explicitly define these values. Nevertheless, their empirical findings suggest that the authors are referring to specific democratic principles and universal values (e.g., equality, fairness, harmlessness). In this article, a composite index known as the value-oriented citizenship (VOC) index is introduced and empirically analysed. The results confirm that the VOC index discriminates between people who relate to authority based on values rather than based on their role or on rules in general. The article discusses the utility of the VOC index to develop Kelman and Hamilton's framework further empirically as well as its implications for the analysis of the relationship between individuals and authority.

The Stanford prison experiment in introductory psychology textbooks: A content analysis

The present content analysis examines the coverage of theoretical and methodological problems with the Stanford prison experiment (SPE) in a sample of introductory psychology textbooks. Categories included the interpretation and replication of the study, variance in guard behavior, participant selection bias, the presence of demand characteristics including the contribution of the guard orientation, and the ecological validity of the prison. In general, results revealed minimal coverage of problems with the study, with only two of the 14 textbooks citing any critical articles. The majority of textbooks presented the study in a fashion consistent with a “power of the situation” interpretation with no account of a more theoretically robust study, namely the BBC prison study, nor mention of methodological shortcomings. A review of the post-SPE criticisms and suggestions for addressing the landmark study in introductory textbooks are included.

Shock treatment: using immersive digital realism to restage and re-examine milgram's 'obedience to authority' research

Attempts to revisit Milgram’s ‘Obedience to Authority’ (OtA) paradigm present serious ethical challenges. In recent years new paradigms have been developed to circumvent these challenges but none involve using Milgram’s own procedures and asking naïve participants to deliver the maximum level of shock. This was achieved in the present research by using Immersive Digital Realism (IDR) to revisit the OtA paradigm. IDR is a dramatic method that involves a director collaborating with professional actors to develop characters, the strategic withholding of contextual information, and immersion in a real-world environment. 14 actors took part in an IDR study in which they were assigned to conditions that restaged Milgrams’s New Baseline (‘Coronary’) condition and four other variants. Post-experimental interviews also assessed participants’ identification with Experimenter and Learner. Participants’ behaviour closely resembled that observed in Milgram’s original research. In particular, this was evidenced by (a) all being willing to administer shocks greater than 150 volts, (b) near-universal refusal to continue after being told by the Experimenter that “you have no other choice, you must continue” (Milgram’s fourth prod and the one most resembling an order), and (c) a strong correlation between the maximum level of shock that participants administered and the mean maximum shock delivered in the corresponding variant in Milgram’s own research. Consistent with an engaged follower account, relative identification with the Experimenter (vs. the Learner) was also a good predictor of the maximum shock that participants administered.

Against obedience: Hannah Arendt’s overlooked challenge to social-psychological explanations of mass atrocity

This article explores the theoretical underpinnings and implications of a situationist social psychology of mass atrocity through a re-examination of Hannah Arendt’s work. The perception of a convergence between the views of Arendt, Stanley Milgram, and certain Holocaust historians inspired the situationist argument that ordinary people become mass murderers because they find themselves in circumstances that subvert their ability to make or act upon individual moral judgments. This explanation originated in a selective reading of Arendt that distorted her account. In fact, Arendt’s writings serve to question the situationists’ claim to explain historical instances of collective violence. The article uses Arendt’s thought to develop both an ontological and a normative critique of situationism, suggesting an alternative meta-theoretical foundation for a social psychology of mass atrocity. At stake is the concept of personal responsibility for mass killing, as well as social psychology’s ability to say something meaningful about collective violence.

Bridging intragroup processes and intergroup relations: needing the twain to meet

Despite their shared focus on groups, research bridging intragroup processes and intergroup relations is surprisingly rare. The goal of the present article is to highlight how understanding the reciprocal relationship between intragroup processes and intergroup relations offers valuable new insights into both topics and suggests new, productive avenues for research and theory development - particularly for understanding and improving intergroup relations. The article next briefly reviews key findings from three dominant frameworks in the field of intergroup relations: social cognition, social identity, and functional relations. It then discusses the complementary role of intergroup and intragroup dynamics, reviewing how intergroup relations can affect intragroup processes and then discussing how intragroup dynamics can shape intergroup relations. The final section considers the implications, theoretical and practical, of the proposed reciprocal relationships between intragroup and intergroup processes.

Understanding the impact of political violence in childhood: a theoretical review using a social identity approach

The present paper reviews the literature that has assessed the psychological impact of political violence on children. Concern for those growing up in situations of political violence has resulted in two areas of research within psychology: the first considers children as victims of conflict and considers the mental health consequences of political violence. The second considers children as protagonists or aggressors in conflict and considers related moral and attitudinal consequences of exposure to political violence. These two literatures are most often considered separately. Here the two strands of research are brought together using a social identity framework, allowing apparently divergent findings to be integrated into a more coherent understanding of the totality of consequences for children and young people growing up in situations of armed conflict.

Contesting the "Nature" Of Conformity: what Milgram and Zimbardo's studies really show

Understanding of the psychology of tyranny is dominated by classic studies from the 1960s and 1970s: Milgram's research on obedience to authority and Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment. Supporting popular notions of the banality of evil, this research has been taken to show that people conform passively and unthinkingly to both the instructions and the roles that authorities provide, however malevolent these may be. Recently, though, this consensus has been challenged by empirical work informed by social identity theorizing. This suggests that individuals' willingness to follow authorities is conditional on identification with the authority in question and an associated belief that the authority is right.

Working Toward the Experimenter

The behavior of participants within Milgram’s obedience paradigm is commonly understood to arise from the propensity to cede responsibility to those in authority and hence to obey them. This parallels a belief that brutality in general arises from passive conformity to roles. However, recent historical and social psychological research suggests that agents of tyranny actively identify with their leaders and are motivated to display creative followership in working toward goals that they believe those leaders wish to see fulfilled. Such analysis provides the basis for reinterpreting the behavior of Milgram’s participants. It is supported by a range of material, including evidence that the willingness of participants to administer 450-volt shocks within the Milgram paradigm changes dramatically, but predictably, as a function of experimental variations that condition participants’ identification with either the experimenter and the scientific community that he represents or the learner and the general community that he represents. This reinterpretation also encourages us to see Milgram’s studies not as demonstrations of conformity or obedience, but as explorations of the power of social identity-based leadership to induce active and committed followership.

Criminal behavior, criminal mind: being caught in a "criminal spin"

The innovative theory of the "criminal spin" presents a phenomenological description and interpretation of criminal conduct. The theory indicates a process that occurs in different phases of criminality, involving an escalation of criminal activity, thinking, and emotions that run beyond self-control, sometimes contrary to initial decision. Its phenomenology indicates an interaction between individual, group, and situation and a growing self-centeredness with two leading motives: "I can" and "I must." The first denotes a perceived legitimacy and capability to perform criminal conduct. The second reflects an existential threat and a belief that it must be removed by any action. These motives may operate in an acute or a chronic phase, within individuals, groups, or societies. The spin is a detectable process with known characteristics and prognosis. Implications for intervention are outlined.

When Prisoners Take Over the Prison

There is a general tendency for social psychologists to focus on processes of oppression rather than resistance. This is exemplified and entrenched by the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). Consequently, researchers and commentators have come to see domination, tyranny, and abuse as natural or inevitable in the world at large. Challenging this view, research suggests that where members of low-status groups are bound together by a sense of shared social identity, this can be the basis for effective leadership and organization that allows them to counteract stress, secure support, challenge authority, and promote social change in even the most extreme of situations. This view is supported by a review of experimental research—notably the SPE and the BBC Prison Study—and case studies of rebellion against carceral regimes in Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Nazi Germany. This evidence is used to develop a social identity model of resistance dynamics.

In Their Own Words: Explaining Obedience to Authority Through an Examination of Participants' Comments

The authors examined data generated during a replication of Milgram’s obedience studies to address some lingering questions about those studies. In Study 1, judges coded comments participants made during experimental and debriefing sessions. Participants who refused to follow the experimenter’s instructions were significantly more likely to express a sense of personal responsibility than those who followed the instructions. Participants who expressed concern for the well-being of the learner exhibited a greater reluctance to continue the procedure than did those not expressing this concern. However, whether participants expressed concern for the learner was not related to whether they ultimately continued the procedure. Study 2 looked at participants' reactions to each of the experimenter’s four prods. The further along the prod sequence the experimenter went, the less likely participants were to continue the procedure. This pattern challenges interpretations of the obedience studies based on the notion that participants were following orders.

What do people mean when speaking of evilness?

The term evilness started to become popular in social psychology after the publication in 1999 of the special issue edited by Arthur G. Miller, "Perspectives on evil and violence". It is usually used to define behaviors that are extremely and strongly harmful. However, the concept is still imprecise and needs to be empirically delineated. This article attempts to answer the following questions. What is evilness? What is the difference between aggression and evilness? We conducted several studies with three goals: to analyze how laypersons and experts define evilness, to verify whether laypeople distinguish between different intensities of evilness, and to determine the dimensions that predict aggression and evilness. The results offer preliminary answers to the three questions.

Different meanings of the social dominance orientation concept: predicting political attitudes over time

We examined predictors of political attitude change by assessing the independent and interactive effect of social dominance orientation (SDO) as a context-dependent versus an individual difference construct. In a longitudinal study, British students' political orientation was assessed before entering university (T1) and after being at university for 2 months (T2) and 6 months (T3; N=109). Results showed that initial SDO (T1) did not predict political attitudes change nor did it predict self-selected entry into course with hierarchy enhancing or hierarchy-attenuating ideologies. More support was obtained for a contextually determined model whereby SDO (T2) mediated the relationship between social class (T1) and political attitude change (T3). We also found support for mediated moderation in accounting for effects of initial SDO on political attitude change. Findings suggest that SDO as a concept that is sensitive to group dynamics is best suited to explain shifts in political attitudes.

A Situation's First Powers Are Attracting Volunteers and Selecting Participants: A Reply to Haney and Zimbardo (2009)

This reply addresses three issues raised by C. Haney and P. G. Zimbardo (2009) in their critique of T. Carnahan and S. McFarland (2007). First, it clarifies Carnahan and McFarland's appreciation of the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) but suggests that as a model for the power of situations, the SPE does not adequately consider self-selection and selection by others, both based in part in personal dispositions. Second, it comments briefly on Haney and Zimbardo's critique of Carnahan and McFarland's study and of its applicability to the SPE. Finally, it illustrates the importance of selection and self-selection for situations of torture and suggests their importance for many situations.

When differences become essential: minority essentialism in response to majority treatment

There is considerable interest in how essentialist beliefs support prejudice and discrimination against minorities. Less attention has been given to essentialism within minority groups. The authors argue that minorities might use essentialism to counter the denial of their identity by the majority (e.g., marginalization) but that essentialism might be less appealing when minority identity is recognized but devalued (e.g., discrimination). In Study 1, gay, lesbian, and bisexual participants contemplated treatment that either devalued or denied their identity. Minority identification was related to stronger endorsement of beliefs about the immutability of sexuality in the context of identity denial but not in the context of identity devaluation. Study 2 replicated this pattern and showed that endorsement of immutability beliefs was mediated through the perceived possibility for social change and was in turn related to feelings of self-efficacy. The results are discussed in relation to current perspectives on essentialism.