Socio-Psychological Environmental Influences
Historical narratives have been used to teach facts and methodologies but also may be used to analyze the pathological process of inter group relationship and reconciliation. This creates a sense of citizenship and to correctly judge the past violent episodes that happened out of socio-psychological process. Social psychologists are interested in the means thorough which societal dynamics gets into the Physic of individuals. The study the psychological process that influenced by the dynamic in the society. This is the collective memory that acts as interplay between the society and an individual.
Various experiments and studies have been conducted to study the phenomena. These are the Asch’s Conformity experiment, Zimbardos Stanford Prison experiment and Milgarm experiment.
Asch’s Conformity Study
Asch study of conformity is about how individual’s attitude, behaviors, and beliefs are determined and conditioned by the perception of other people. Small groups and societies are mostly influenced by other individuals in the society. This may result to unconscious influence that may occur as an overt or direct social pressure. Conformity happens when there is the actual presence of people or implied presence of individuals. For instance, individuals tend to follow the societal norms when watching TV, eating or at home by themselves. People conform to the norms in order to achieve a sense of security in that given society. If these norms are not followed, one is at risk of rejection, bulling or criticism.
Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment.
This study was meant to establish the psychological effect of becoming a prison guard or a prisoner. The aim of the study was to test the personality traits that were inherent to the guards and prisoners when exposed abusive prison situation. Some of the students who took up the roles of prisoners quitted the experiment just a day after the onset of the experiment. The experiment lasted for six days instead of the intended two week because if the intense torture.
- experiment on obedience
The Milgarm experiment on obedience was a study of social psychological experiments on obedience to people in authority. The participant’s willingness to obey one in authority in comparison to personal conscience. Milgarm study was able to answer the question on whether or not Eichmannn and his accomplices and a mutual intention in the holocaust influence the holocaust goal and whether or not there was a mutual morality sense among the people involved. Milgarm experiment suggest that the millions accomplice were more likely to be following orders and rules despite their violation of moral beliefs.
The Holocaust
The holocaust was genocide of Europeans Jews which happened during the Second World War. Approximately six million of them were killed. This was program which was sponsored by Nazi Germany. Two third of the population who were killed were the Jews living in Europe. Most of them were members of the opposition. Various materials have been written describing the atrocities such as the killing of children and women and held men hostage. The men were physically punished, and forced to collect rubber in the deepest forests. Soldiers of the colonial army as explained by Hochschild were ordered to kill and bring corpses to justify their use of ammunition. They were also instructed to cut the hands of the living and even mutilated them. By the beginning of the twentieth century international humanitarian campaigns called an end to the abuse.
The holocaust exemplified the collective memory that was meant to facilitate human abuse and torture. Collective memory is a process of social identity and social representation of a set of common identity and shared representation (Licata &Klein 2005, pp45-57).
In January 1933, the Nazis came to power and they believed that the racially superior were the Germans. The Jews were viewed as aliens threatening to the racially community of the Germans and racially inferior. The German authorities during the Holocaust era also tortured other groups considered as racially inferior. They include the Gypsies, the Pole, the Russians and the disabled. Many other groups were persecuted on the basis of their ideological, political and behavioral aspects such as the homosexuals, Jehovah witness, communist, and socialist (Bergen, 2003 ,pp 234).
The Holocaust can be social physiologically analyzed by examined the reason as to why a person can kill a fellow human being; not because of the wrongs done by a person but because he or she belongs to an ethnic group, a particular religion or a community. Rationality is what confounds such a behavior which the focus should be on structural–cultural factor and identification of broad macro phenomena. These aspects relate to specific psychological processes that correlate and contribute to genocide. The holocaust is a genocide that is related to dislocation in politics as a result of the War 1. It was also caused by political empires that were breaking up, the Weimer Republic that was weak, punitive Versalities Treaty, and the economic depression experienced at the time, especially to Germany. The macro events that contributed the holocaust were the falling of USSR and Yugoslavia that was characterized by ethnic cleansing and also the break up of the Empire of Ottoman that gave rise to the Amenia Genocide.
Genocide is also most likely to occur in plural societies with diverse ethnic, racial, and religious groups. These groups exhibit pervasive and persistent communal cleavages. A strong cleavage depicts socio-economical and political inequalities .
The psychological factors that can explain the cause of genocide vary and are personal based. Genocide leaders have been psychoanalyzed as having a tendency towards personalities that are neurotic-psychopathic. For example, the scholar Allan Bullock has depicted Hitler in this sense. This means that genocide leaders have a deep psychopathological need which leads them to performing genocide. They have the power to influence a group of individuals to commit genocide as depicted by the Nazi solders. The entire society can also exhibit a particular behavioral pattern as studied by scholars such as Bob Altemeyer and Theodore Adorno. Authoritarian personality and various kinds of psychodynamics encourage genocide.
Situational factors can force even the most ordinary man with deep set moral beliefs to commit genocide. Daniel Gold Hagen, a scholar, depicts that cultural factors influence genocide. Christopher Browning and Stanley Migarn and other historians and psychologist view genocide as a situation which is more complex. They view the people with median personality to be more at risk because several of behavior occurs. This school of though view external stimuli and situation in the environment as well as effects in the context have the ability of making ordinary people to involve themselves in genocide
Reference
Nowak and B. Latané, Simulating the emergence of social order from individual behavior, in: Simulating societies, N. Gilbert and J. Doran, eds, London: UCL Press, 1994, pp. 63- 84.
Licat, L and Klein O(2005) Holocaust OR Benevolent Paternalism. Grenmoble university press, PPP 45-57
Bergen, Doris. War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003
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