Essay Example on Group Violence: An Age-Old Human Trait

Group violence or collective violence is a human trait that is as old as human beings themselves. As a result, history is full of acts of group violence and genocide. A group of seemingly ordinary people gathered and turned against other people and their property, on the group’s behalf. Genocide is a term that is used in the description of group violence that targets members of a particular nationality, race, ethnicity, tribe or religion, to destroy all members of the group. Although such acts have always been present in human society, the use of the term “genocide” became standard after the holocaust (1). The Nazi regime’s actions against the Jews became the first mass genocide in the modern era. Since then, the world has realized some high-profile genocides such as The Killings Field, the Bosnian genocide and the Rwandan genocide. The study of the cultural and political history of Rwanda reveals the impact of psychological concepts of desensitization, diffusion of responsibility, Milgram’s agency theory and risky shift phenomenon in causing or creating ideal conditions for a genocide to continue.

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The psychological concept of desensitization made the aggressors less sensitive to the suffering and plight of their victims. Desensitization is the process through which an individual’s emotional responsiveness decreases with increasing exposure to the positive of negative stimulus. Desensitization is a crucial ingredient in genocides because it allows for dehumanization (2). The aggressor sees the other party as less of a human and hence increases the aggressor more tolerance to the other party’s suffering.

The diffusion of responsibility allows the rest of the group to be indifferent to the suffering of their fellow countrymen. The psychological concept of diffusion of responsibility makes people less obligated to act when in the presence of a large group of people. For example, in the Rwandan genocide, most of the aggression was directed towards the country’s ethnic Tutsi population. However, they were only small groups of mainly Hutu militias that went around conducting the killings. Most of the other Hutu’s, failed to act because they expected someone else to act to help their countrymen. The same behaviour was displayed by the international community and organizations such as the UN, which were hesitant to intervene. They were expecting someone else to intervene, other than them.

The agentic state, which is one of the two states of consciousness in Milgram’s agency theory, allows people to act as the agents of other people or a person’s will. In the agentic state, an individual would allow his or her actions to be dictated by someone else, and consequently pass off the responsibility for their actions, to the one giving the orders (3).

Finally, the cautious shift hypothesis is the psychological concept that explains how a group’s behaviour might change to become more risk-loving due to the input of the dominant personality (4). The concept explains why an ordinary group of religious, loving people that respect human life may all a sudden become militias and engage in acts of genocide that are risky even to their safety.

Conclusion

The psychological concepts of desensitization, diffusion of responsibility, agentic state, and cautious shift hypothesis have enabled me to understand the complex behaviour of individuals and groups that participate in group violence. I selected modern genocide because genocide activities represent the worst of human psychology. Some of the worst human actions are performed during genocides. Genocides are still happening despite the legislations and measures such as ‘rules of engagement’ that seek to prevent genocides from happening. I now understand the reason for individuals acting in a way that is different from their norm. The concept of agentic state in Milgram’s agency theory also shows how the members of the various militaries can perform violent acts in the line of duty.

References

History.com [En ligne]. History.com Editors. Genocide; 14 Oct 2009 [cité le 18Jun2020]. Disponible: https://www.history.com/topics/holocaust/what-is-genocideVargas JH. Never meant to survive: Genocide and utopias in black diaspora communities. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; 2010 Jan 16.

McLeod SA. The Milgram experiment. Simply Psychology. 2007.

Reynolds DB, Joseph J, Sherwood R. Risky shift versus cautious shift: determining differences in risk-taking between private and public management decision-making. Journal of business & economics research (JBER). 2009 Jan 1;7(1).