Institutional Aggression

Institutional Aggression

1. Genocide (aggression between institutions)

   • The deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group.
   • Stages (Staub, 1999)
     • 1. Difficult social conditions
     • 2. Scapegoating of a less powerful group
     • 3. Negative evaluation and dehumanisation
     • 4. Moral values and rules becoming inapplicable
     • 5. Passivity of bystanders
       • Doing nothing appears to merely allow the killing to continue unabated, may even escalate it by signalling apathy.
         • Intervention (e.g. by the UN) can shorten a conflict; might also hasten perpetrators to step up their genocidal policy within that period of time.
           • e.g. Rwandan Genocide, 800'000 people died within 100 days
     • Social Conflict
       • Power/feelings of superiority
       • Change/removal of consequences/laws
       • Propaganda
         • Negative portrayal
         • Unintelligence
         • Hate radio
   • Prevention
     • Spreading awareness
     • Identifying and challenging dehumanisation (e.g. media & politics)
     • Early identification of warning signs
     • Importance of early intervention
     • Public figures
   • Dehumanisation: the psychological process of demonizing a target group, making them seem less than human and thus not worthy of moral consideration.
     • Can lead to increased violence, human rights violations, war crimes and genocide.
     • e.g. Rwandan Genocide (1994): Hutu-controlled 'hate' radio station RTLM encouraged Hutu listeners to murder Tutsi neighbours by referring to them as 'cockroaches'.
     • e.g. Jews in Holocaust deemed 'inferior' and were 'an alien threat to German racial community.'
     • Real-World Application: may also explain violence towards immigrants
       • Esses et al (2008) demonstrated that individuals high in social dominance orientation (SDO) have a tendency to dehumanise outgroup members, in particular foreign refugees and asylum seekers. Negative media depictions of refugees cause greater contempt in high SDO individuals than in low SDO individuals. Negative attitudes become rationalised through 'legitimising myths' which indicate to high SDO individuals that these groups deserve our hostility because they are somehow less human than others.
   • Obedience to authority: the tendency to comply with the commands of those in authority.
     • e.g. Milgram (1974) believed that the Holocaust was primarily a result of situational pressures that forced Nazi soldiers to obey their leaders regardless of personal moral repugnance.
       • If many participants in his study could administer painful electric shocks simply because they were instructed by an authority figure, the Nazi regime would have no problem making soldiers kill innocent people.
       • Mandel (1998) rejects this claim; Milgram's account is monocasual (ignores other possible causes) and does not match historical record.
         • e.g. Goldhagen (1996) suggests main casual factor in the atrocities was a form of anti-Semitism so deeply entrenched in German people at the time that they implicitly condoned the elimination of Jews.