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Personality and Social Psychology

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 DOI: 10.1207/s15327957pspr0303_1

1999 3: 176Pers Soc Psychol RevArthur G. Miller

Harming Other People: Perspectives on Evil and Violence  

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Personality and Social Psychology Review1999, Vol. 3, No. 3, 176 178

Copyright 1999 byLawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

INTRODUCTION

Harming Other People: Perspectives on Evil and Violence

Arthur G. MillerDepartment ofPsychology

Miami University

The study of harmful behaviors has long been ofmajor concern to personality and social psychologists.The contexts in which people regularly impose harmand suffering on others seem, at times, depressingly in-finite. The mere listing of representative scenarios ofharmdoing- rape, genocide, war, child abuse, domes-tic violence, murder, prejudice and discrimination, bu-reaucratic corruption, and corporate crime-will, formany readers, bring to mind numerous specific in-stances, some of these in tragic detail.

Within the past decade, there has been an intensi-fied concern about pervasive and serious harmdoingthat has drawn the attention of researchers. One man-

ifestation of this interest may be the appearance ofthe term evil, itself, in the titles of a number of schol-arly publications by well-known psychologists andsocial theorists (Alford, 1997; Baumeister, 1997;Darley, 1992; Delbanco, 1995; Katz, 1993; Staub,1989; Zimbardo, 1995). The primary objective of thisspecial issue is to consider the contributions of socialand personality psychology toward understanding theperpetration of sustained harmdoing and to assess theimplications (theoretical, methodological, and, to a

degree, philosophical) for our field of undertaking re-

search in this area.

Each of the authors represented in this issue havemade significant contributions to the study ofharmdoing and evil. Ervin Staub (1989, 1996) wrote a

number of influential analyses of genocide and group

violence. Albert Bandura (1973) wrote an early, highlyinfluential text on aggression from a social-learningperspective, and more recently (Bandura, 1991) has fo-cused on processes ofmoral thought and behavior. RoyBaumeister (Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996) hasparticularly been interested in the role ofself-esteem inhuman violence, and more recently (Baumeister,

1997) authored the most comprehensive analysis todate of the subject of evil. Charlene Muehlenhard(1998) has been a major contributor to research on rapeand sexual aggression, including an interest in the cul-tural and political influences on the definition of thesephenomena (Muehlenhard, Powch, Phelps, & Giusti,1992). Lee Hamilton's (Hamilton & Sanders, 1995)major concerns have focused on attributing responsi-bility to perpetrators in bureaucratic organizations. Shecoauthored, with Herbert Kelman, Crimes of Obedi-ence (Kelman & Hamilton, 1989). Leonard Berkowitz(1990, 1993) has been, for more than 30 years, a pre-eminent theorist and researcher on aggressive behav-ior. Arthur Miller (1986; Miller, Collins, & Brief,1995) has written a number ofanalyses ofthe Milgramobedience experiments. John Darley's interests cen-tered on processes of moral judgment (Darley &

Schultz, 1990) and social influence. He (Darley, 1992)has focused, in particular, on the interplay between ex-

ternal and dispositional influences on harmdoingwithin social organizations.

The articles in this issue deal with a variety of con-ceptual and empirical perspectives on harmdoing.There is a general agreement with Staub's position thatsustained harmdoing is situationally embedded and theproduct of historical, cultural, and group processes, inaddition to individual motivation. The evolved aspect ofevil is also a common theme. Manifestations ofevil, of-ten striking in their sudden impact on observers, arelikely to be the end result of a complex pattern of pro-cesses developing over time. Staub notes that the insti-gating conditions ofharmdoing are often, in their initialstages, rational responses to the frustration of basicneeds. Contributing to the progression of violence areself-regulation processes. Bandura notes that the re-straints that are normally operative, such as guilt or fearofpunishment, are subject to numerous disengagementprocesses. Underlying diverse instances ofmoral disen-gagement is the harmdoer's need to preserve a positivesense of self. Bandura notes that these processes, which

176

Requests for reprints should be sent to Arthur G. Miller, Depart-ment ofPsychology, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056. E-mail:milleraggmuohio.edu.

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INTRODUCTION

sustain evil behavior by reducing guilt, may reflectdispositional characteristics ofindividual actors as wellas features of the social setting. Although social psy-chologists often portray the harmdoing as committed byreluctant individuals subjected to powerful externalforces, Baumeister and Campbell consider evidencethat, for some individuals, evil might have an intrinsicappeal. Moderating the degree to which people "enjoy"harming others are individual differences in guilt, sen-sation-seeking, and narcissism. This focus on individ-ual differences provides an important complement tothe more situational emphases in other articles in this is-sue (e.g., those by Staub; Hamilton & Sanders;Muehlenhard & Kimes), contributing to a balanced un-derstanding of harmdoing.

Muehlenhard and Kimes, using an historical andcultural perspective, discuss factors that have influ-enced the manner in which sexual and domestic vio-lence are defined and conceptualized. Their analysisdocuments that an act that harms others is rarelyself-evident or obvious in its importance to all whomight be involved-victims, perpetrators, or bystand-ers-but depends crucially on one's perspective. Sug-gesting that some perspectives "count" more thanothers, Muehlenhard and Kimes consider, in particu-lar, the roles of social power and gender in defining vi-olence. Hamilton and Sanders examine anothermanifestation of social power, namely, harmdoing bysocial organizations. Their focus is on destructive ac-tions by corporations. Although these actions appearsignificantly less purposeful, thoughtful, or intentionalthan other forms ofharmdoing considered in this issue,Hamilton and Sanders find that individuals persist inholding organizations to a relatively high level of re-sponsibility. They discuss the origins and implicationsof this judgmental orientation.

Leonard Berkowitz raises what he views to be a sig-nificant limitation in the situationist emphasis of socialpsychological explanation of harmdoing. He chal-lenges the prevailing view that the Milgram obedienceexperiments provide a convincing explanation of theHolocaust. As in Baumeister and Campbell's article,Berkowitz emphasizes the role of individual differ-ences, including sadism. Berkowitz's critique ofsituationist explanations of evil provides an interestingbackdrop for the article by Miller, Gordon, andBuddie, who consider not the causes of evil and vio-lence, but rather the effects of explaining these phe-nomena. They suggest that explaining harmdoing,under certain conditions, influences the explainer aswell as observers of the explanation in the direction ofcondoning the perpetrator. Miller et al. consider thedistinctive features ofdispositional and social-psycho-logical explanations of evil and violence, and presentevidence that social-psychological explanations maybe construed as relatively condoning toward perpetra-

tors. These findings relate closely to a major argumentin the article by Berkowitz.

As noted in several of the articles in this issue, therehas been a tendency for theorists to line up either on thesituational or dispositional side in terms oftheir prefer-ence for theoretical explanations of harmdoing. Thistheoretical allegiance reflects, in large measure, thecompelling features of laboratory experiments on vari-ous forms of aggression and antisocial behavior, inwhich both social-psychological and personality orien-tations have been impressive in generating voluminousempirical studies. However, in the epilogue to this issue,John Darley suggests that in more ecologically mun-dane settings social organizations and bureaucra-cies-harmful acts evolve over time. Processes oftransformation and conversion become operative. Aperson enters a situation naive, adjusted, normal, moral,"banal," and so forth, but, overtime,may change. Harm-ful, perhaps evil, behaviors that might initially be val-idly attributable to external influences ultimately maybe more accurately attributed to the person, himself orherself. This is not simply an interactionist perspectivebutone that incorporates crucial changes that occur overtime. Darley's emphasis on the evolving nature ofevil issimilar to that of Staub and poses considerable chal-lenges in terms ofthe ethical and methodological obsta-cles facing researchers who wish to capture this vitaldimension ofharmful behaviors.

References

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iNTRODUCTION

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