Week 5: Evil and How it Grows

               This week we covered a lot of topics both in our readings, presentations, and our discussion. The question that stood out to me is how hate escalates within a group to the point of mass violence such as Ku Klux Klan or even the Nazi Party. According to Baumeister, there are many factors. A group can start out small and relatively harmless, for example, the KKK started out as something like a fraternity that played pranks on black citizens. These acts somehow escalated until they were responsible for violence and murders due to racism and extremist views. Baumeister explains that when in a group of relatively like-minded people, the ideas and opinions in the group can become amplified in a particular direction when there is overall outward agreement due to the need to fit in and agree with others. This may not fit with each individual’s thoughts within the group, but individuals who disagree are less likely to share their thoughts out of fear of rejection or punishment, so even when there are multiple people who disagree, they will continue to outwardly show support to fit in.

               A construct that addresses this phenomenon is the groupthink model that Baumeister briefly mentions attempts to explain the widespread obedience and agreement within a group. An older study by Ahlfinger and Esser examined the role of leadership in groupthink and conformity. Groupthink is defined as a need for unanimous agreement within a group when making decisions and planning actions. Symptoms of groupthink are an overestimation of the group and its strengths, closemindedness, and pressure to conform to the group. They ran an experiment where they categorized members and grouped them based on high or low levels of conformity predisposition. They assigned one participant from each group as a the leader, and the leader was trained to either be promotional, where they openly share their opinion and strongly encourage a unanimous decision, or they were trained to be nonpromotional, where they withheld their own opinion and encouraged everyone to give their own opinion. The groups were then given a problem-solving task with a hypothetical scenario and were observed and timed by the researchers who coded for different symptoms of groupthink. They found that the level of conformity predisposition was not related to groupthink symptoms, but leadership style was. Those who had a promotional leader reported more self-censorship, brought up fewer facts, and made a decision faster. This could explain why such large groups can make drastic and sometimes violent decisions during conflict. The members of the group, regardless of their conformity predisposition, may be pressured by a leader to conform and outwardly agree with the leader’s thoughts despite their own thoughts and opinions. The group believes then that everyone must agree, causing the group to make quicker decisions with less information due to the silence of group members who oppose these decisions.

Outside influences also lead to this escalation, because bystanders and authorities who do not interfere act as a catalyst for these groups or people to continue because they know they won’t be confronted until it’s too late to make a difference. Something that stood out to me was when Baumeister explained that during the Holocaust, after each escalating step the Nazis took with their plans for genocide, they paused to gauge the reaction of the rest of the world. When there was no backlash or confrontation from the rest of the world, they took this as confirmation that they weren’t doing anything wrong, or that they would at least not face opposition from others. When our conversation turned to the idea of eugenics, around the possibility of removing evil as a gene or disorder, and the lines that we should or should not cross, I thought about this. The line between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is not a line crossed in a single step, doing something ‘evil’ is the often the result of a continuous escalation of increasingly horrible deeds. When people fail to stop someone at the earlier steps, they are encouraged to keep going with their acts because they know they won’t be opposed or stopped.

               A show that reminds me of this is You, which shows a gradual escalation of increasingly horrible deeds (spoilers ahead for the first season). Joe starts out as creepy and somewhat questionable at the beginning of the show but would not be characterized as “pure evil”, using social media to stalk a girl he likes. From there, his acts become more and more questionable. He breaks into people’s houses, then escalates to kidnapping the girl’s boyfriend which eventually leads to murder, and after this he continues with a string of escalating murders. There was no single step for Joe between being a decent, if somewhat creepy, guy to committing multiple murders, it was series of gradually increasing steps. As he realizes that he is getting away with each act, his actions become more and more bold and horrible, and he continues to see himself as being justified in his actions because of the slow increase in his questionable acts. Bystanders may not see all of these steps, or they may witness them but claim that they didn’t know when to step in because it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment that someone has crossed the line. This shows the importance of knowing when to stop groups or individuals early before they begin to cause great harm or violence.

Ahlfinger, N. R., & Esser, J. K. (2001). Testing the groupthink model: Effects of promotional leadership and conformity predisposition. Social Behavior and Personality, 29(1), 31-42. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy1.lib.trentu.ca/10.2224/sbp.2001.29.1.31