The psychology of evil underlines a strong link between human’s behaviour and the deindividuating and “evil” input of the situation. It’s clear that this branch of social psychology is based on a situationist conception of violence: accordino to this view, there’re some input (like group pressure and anonymity) that can induce a good and respecful citizen to behave in a very aggressive way towards innocent victims. Psychologists like Zimbardo, Bandura and Milgram don’t believe in the so-called dispositional conception of violence (that is: the key of aggressive behaviour must be found in some biological, genetic or neurological factors). The situationist approach tear down the conviction that there is an insurmountable imaginary line between good and evil, between 'good people' and 'bad people’ . Zimbardo says: "What is that line, that cosmic boundary, that one crosses to go from being a good person, a dutiful citizen, to a mass murderer with no coscience for evil deeds and no remorse for destroying human lives? And how is this line maintained? What would it take for you to slide across it? We want to believe it is impermeable, forever with us here and them over there permanently, when in fact, that line is permeable - we could become good ones those bad ones”. The Stanford prison experiment and the “Eichmann experiment”, above all, have demonstrated how strong can be the influence of the environment in the behaviour of a man. The prison environment, ad example, is a place that can favourish the loss of personality and the loss of inhibithions towards dehumanizing acts. In this place victims and perpetrators lose their personality and forget the boundary between the good and the evil. Milgram, in his Obedience to authority experiment, has demonstrated that it’s very easy to induct a “good man” to shock an unknown victim. The situation, and not the biology can be the key to understand and prevent violent acts. The great attention towards the conditions and stimulus originated by external environment bring back to the basic principles of Field-theory of Kurt Lewin. The study of human behavior, according to the principles of Gestalt theory, cannot forget the engagement in the context in which it is "surrounded" the subject. According to this approach, therefore, every person would be able to implement the most horrible and violent behaviour
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Dr. David Evangelisti
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].
Contacts:
evangelisti@hotmail.it
www.evangelistidavid.blogspot.com
www.psychologyofevil.com
David Evangelisti
evangelisti@hotmail.it
