Houghton David. Political Psychology: Situations, Individuals, and Cases
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An even more fundamental problem in attributing nationalism to evolution-
ary processes, however, is that we cannot be sure just what has been “hard-
wired” into us, since it is difficult to disentangle innate or biological factors
from learned social behaviors; and even if we could specify exactly the nature
of our genetic hard-wiring, we would then face the problem of explaining how
these evolutionary factors interact with social and political forces (since
biology alone surely cannot account for everything). Even more telling, a
real problem for any theory that suggests that intense nationalistic conflict
is in some sense “innate” is that it seems more likely that we are hard-wired
to come to one another’s aid, as Clark’s work suggests, though as we have
seen various social pressures can interfere with this process. The sources of
conflict, in other words, are more likely to be found someplace other than
simple human biology. This is a problem not just for out-and-out biopolitical
theories that suggest that discrimination and prejudice are in a sense “integral”
to human beings, but is also a problem for approaches like social dominance
theory which propose that the mere existence of hierarchy is sufficient to
produce oppression and exploitation.
The Psychology of Genocide
As Kristen Monroe and her colleagues suggest, social identity theory is
especially troubling because it “suggests that genocide and racism may in fact
be extreme manifestations of normal group identification and behavior.”
37
Nevertheless, general situational theories like social identity cannot by them-
selves explain why national and ethnic identities sometimes “morph” into more
extreme behaviors, as James Waller suggests:
Social categorization, and its role in us–them thinking, does not lead us to
hate all out-groups. Social exclusion, let alone mass killing and genocide, is
not an inevitable consequence of social categorization. Social categoriza-
tion does remind us, however, that, once identified with a group, we find it
easy to exaggerate differences between our group and others, enhancing
in-group cooperation and effectiveness, and—frequently—intensifying
antagonism with other groups.
38
What all of this indicates is that we cannot fully explain nationalism and
ethnic conflict using theories that outline the mere existence of “us versus
them” thinking alone. This is probably a necessary condition for conflict to take
place, but it is often not sufficient for this outcome to occur. Clearly, what is
needed in the analysis of nationalism and ethnic conflict is a better understanding
of how “us versus them” situational dynamics interact with dispositional factors
178 Bringing the Two Together
such as personality and beliefs to produce extreme behaviors, and there is
currently very little research that does this.
The “sudden” nature of many genocidal events also exposes another weak-
ness of the theories we have examined in this chapter. The events in Yugoslavia
in the early 1990s provide a case in point. Serbs, Bosnians, and Croats—ethnic
groups which had lived together in seeming harmony for many years—sud-
denly not only went to war, but began attempting to destroy one another on a
massive scale. In the West, where the terms “Serb” and “Bosnian” were
assumed to be outdated labels of relevance only in a history test about World
War I, the genocide in Yugoslavia was initially met with stunned incredulity.
The events in Rwanda in 1994 also took many unawares, although mass
killings had been occurring there intermittently for a number of years at
regular intervals. But since none of the theories we have looked at in this
chapter really deals with change—all the theories are to varying degrees rather
static—they arguably provide only partial explanations for sudden acts of
genocidal activity.
What exactly is genocide? As Monroe notes, “genocide refers to the deliber-
ate and systematic destruction of people, not because of individual acts or
culpability but because of their birth in a national, ethnic, racial or religious
group.”
39
We have already seen various explanations for the Nazi Holocaust in
this book, but what might explain genocide—the most extreme form of ethnic
conflict—in general? As Monroe points out,
two explanations are frequently offered. The first stresses group disparities
in political-economic situations and the desire of the dominant group to
use its power to obtain better living conditions, more land, and the
material wealth held by an ethnic minority.
This offers a kind of Homo economicus approach or realistic group conflict
account—“a glimmer of rationality,” as Monroe puts it—and hence makes
some sort of sense to us. The second kind of explanation does not, however. “In
contrast to such rational explanations, we find genocide explained through
ancient hatred festering in the body politic, hatreds that remain inherently
unresolvable through moderate forms of political negotiation because of their
primordial force and passion.” Unfortunately, both kinds of explanation are
deficient, Monroe notes, not least because both competition over scarce
resources and ancient hatreds exist in many places where events do not boil
over into genocide.
40
Monroe suggests a more sophisticated, multilevel, layered explanation for
genocide. She argues that various factors must be present—many of them
situational, but others more dispositional—for genocides to occur. First of all,
The Psychology of Ethnic Conflict 179
there must obviously be existing ethnic divisions or a “pluralistic” society. This
is a facilitating condition or a necessary condition, but it is not of course a
sufficient one. At a second level, then, these divisions are overlaid by specific
contextual or situational factors (economic distress, political instability, war, or
revolution are notable examples). These serve to divide the society against
itself, so that it may temporarily or permanently “dissolve” into conflictual
elements along the existing ethnic fault lines. This is a vital step in the process,
but it still does not necessarily lead to the slaughter of members of one group
by another. At the third level, the various groups must come to develop a
cognitive perception of their neighbors as “the other.” Scapegoating and stereo-
typing must occur, providing a victim on whose shoulders blame for the
uncomfortable external condition can be heaped. The scapegoat, moreover,
must eventually be dehumanized in a way that makes it possible for the domin-
ant group to feel morally justified in committing horrendous atrocities against
the subordinate one.
The first level or prerequisite is clear enough. Almost by definition, geno-
cides do not occur within genuinely heterogenous societies where ethnic
fault lines aren’t present to serve as dividers, although genocides may occur
between such groups. Moreover, “genocide is greatly facilitated when such
long-standing inequalities in political participation overlap accentuated eco-
nomic and social cleavages and when there is a history of conflict between
the groups.”
41
The second level involves the appearance of destabilizing economic and
political conditions “that threaten the social order,” Monroe notes.
42
In Balkan
Tragedy, Susan Woodward offers us an excellent account of the breakup of
Yugoslavia that focuses on this second type of explanation.
43
As recently as the
late 1970s, Yugoslavia had been feted as the wave of the future, and its
economic system was widely regarded as an ideal marriage of the socialist- and
market-based systems by many liberal political economists.
44
It also survived
the death of its “strongman” Marshal Tito, whom many observers regarded
as having played an essential role in Yugoslavia’s economic and political
development as a state. After the Cold War, however, Yugoslavia rapidly
disintegrated into its older constituent “parts” (it had been constructed by
the victorious Allies after World War I, much as Iraq was). How are we
to explain this sudden event?
Many international observers rapidly resorted to the “ancient hatreds”
argument. British Prime Minister John Major, for instance, told the House of
Commons that the genocide took place because of
the collapse of the Soviet Union and of the discipline that that exerted
over the ancient hatreds in the old Yugoslavia. Once that discipline had
180 Bringing the Two Together
disappeared, those ancient hatreds reappeared and we began to see their
consequences when the fighting occurred.
However, this exaggerated the degree of control the Soviets had exerted
over the non-aligned Yugoslavia, ignored the fact that Serbs, Croats, Bosnians,
and others had coexisted in reasonable harmony within the same national space
for many years, and also downplayed the fact that the state had survived
the demise of a figure who had supposedly been holding its various ethnic
components together by force.
45
Eschewing the kind of views then popular,
Susan Woodward provided a conspicuously economic explanation for what
happened. Economic distress—more specifically, dismantling the existing eco-
nomic arrangements and plunging too far and too fast into the icy waters of
the global market system, what Woodward calls “a shock-therapy program
of economic reform”—had created tensions which pulled this relatively new
state apart at the seams.
46
Similarly, land shortages created in part by an influx
of Tutsis created economic instability in Rwanda, laying the groundwork
or potential for the horrors which followed.
47
Of course, these broad situational conditions—while critical forces which
always seem to be present in such cases—are not by themselves enough to
lead to genocide. It is conceivable in the Yugoslavian case, for instance, that
the various parties might have separated peacefully—much as the former
Czechoslovakia did—or that the factions might have gone to war but avoided
the full-scale genocide that occurred. Logically then, there has to be a further
step or series of steps, Monroe notes. This is where insights from psychology
become most useful to us, and where cultural and individual perceptions
and dispositions become critical.
As Monroe notes, the first step within this psychological level is that some
kind of legitimizing ideology frequently emerges to justify the slaughter that is
to occur. Often this justification takes a dubious “scientific” form. “Ironically,
the doctrine of biological determinism serves as a justification for genocide and
genocide is frequently equated with a holy crusade to free the body politic of
diseased tissue,” Monroe notes. “Thus genocide becomes a scientific prevention
of contamination by agents of ‘racial pollution’ who are viewed as parasites and
bacteria causing sickness, deterioration, and death in the host peoples they
supposedly infect.”
48
Demonization of the minority group, the perception that
it is a threat and a feeling of racial or religious superiority all follow from
commitment to such a radical ideology.
49
The next step is that we undergo a shift in our perception of ourselves in relation
to others. Evidence drawn by Monroe from Christopher Browning’s work on
Nazi Battalion 101 suggests that social etiquette and the desire not to “lose
face” in front of one’s colleagues become more important than the lives of “the
The Psychology of Ethnic Conflict 181
other” under these conditions.
50
We may also come to see ourselves as “having
no choice” but to act the way we do. A third psychological change is that we
may come to see ourselves as acting through a kind of “twisted compassion.”
We may begin to think of ourselves as moral beings, putting “the other” out of
their misery; in particular, some members of Battalion 101 saw it as a moral act
to kill children, since once their parents had been executed their lives would
become unbearable anyway. Lastly—and this is perhaps the “master” shift
which precedes all the others—dehumanization and distancing occur. Distancing
does not necessarily refer to physical distance—the kind of distance which kept
Eichmann away from those he was in effect killing—but to the psychological
and emotional distance perpetrators create in their heads from their victims,
who come to be blamed for their own fate.
51
Conclusion
Going back to the topic of neuroscience discussed earlier, it may be that there
are changes in the human brain that occur when—for instance—neighbors
kill people they have known for years, as frequently happens in genocides.
52
As Dave Grossman notes in regard to killing on the battlefield,
when a man is frightened, he literally stops thinking with his forebrain (that
is, with the mind of a human being) and begins to think with the midbrain
(that is, with the portion of his brain that is essentially indistinguishable
from that of an animal).
53
While fear is not the only psychological emotion we experience when
killing another member of our own species—in fact, the primary emotion in
normal human beings when confronted with the prospect of killing seems to be
a resistance to doing so, as Grossman notes—it would be interesting to learn
whether something similar happens in those who commit genocidal acts. It is
plausible to suppose that the more primitive parts of the brain are activated
when individuals engage in genocidal behaviors, but not much research exists
on this question.
Apart from the points Monroe makes, as we noted in Chapter 4 the
human propensity towards obedience—even where there is no “draconian”
authority standing over us ensuring that we comply—is at the very least a
powerful contributing factor to the occurrence of genocide; since genocides
require large numbers of people to kill similarly large numbers of victims,
genocide would probably not be possible were it not for some basic human
tendency to obey authority. Interestingly, moreover, Milgram was able to
elicit a high degree of obedience in his subjects even without dehumanizing
182 Bringing the Two Together
the “victim;” indeed, as Waller notes, the jovial-looking, likeable actor who
pretended to receive shocks was remarkably “personalized,” something which
leads us to expect that obedience in natural political settings might be even
higher.
54
Equally important is the nature of the authority itself. To Monroe’s otherwise
very comprehensive overview we should probably add the transformative potential
of leaders and other individual agents as critical variables. While both Adolf
Hitler and Slobodan Milosevic, for instance, capitalized upon social and political
conditions beyond their control, both also played an instrumental role in
shaping the course of events in Europe during two different genocides.
Although Hitler of course never faced justice for his actions, Milosevic did,
and no social scientist has seriously suggested that he was not at least partly
responsible for the genocide in Yugoslavia. Similarly, in Rwanda Hutu leaders
played an integral role in creating discriminatory practices which disadvan-
taged Tutsis at many levels, and in the Darfur region of Sudan the ongoing
genocide has been encouraged by the country’s leaders. On top of malevolent
leadership and the propensity of large numbers of people to go along with
what they are told (à la Milgram), what they think they are supposed to do
(Zimbardo), and things they know or suspect are wrong (Janis and Asch), it is
not surprising that genocide—when these factors are combined with broad
situational factors such as economic distress, “us versus them” thinking,
dehumanization and demonization of the other, ideological indoctrination
and the profound power of social etiquette and other forces—is such a
common and repetitive feature of human history.
The Psychology of Ethnic Conflict 183
The Psychology of Racism and
Political Intolerance
As Federico and Luks note, “race continues to play an important role in
conditioning not only individuals’ life outcomes, but also their social and
political attitudes.”
1
This is true in the United States, in Europe and in much of
the rest of the world. Not surprisingly, political psychologists have long been
interested in the roots of racial prejudice. What is it that makes apparently
reasonable, normal, psychologically healthy individuals discriminate—either
overtly or covertly—against someone else or an entire group, based on nothing
more than the fact that this person or group happens to possess a skin color
different from their own? This is one of the great puzzles of social and political
psychology—not to say social science as a whole—and it is unsurprising that
many have sought to address the causes of this widespread phenomenon.
As Susan Fiske notes, a great deal of the research that has been done
on racism, prejudice, and discrimination has come out of the United States.
“Centuries of dramatically heterogeneous immigration into one nation may
have brought ethnic issues to the surface sooner in the USA than elsewhere,”
Fiske suggests. She notes, though, that many of the theories that have been used
to account for racism are just as applicable to prejudice in European politics as
they are to the American case.
2
In fact, most of the theories we shall look at in
this chapter can be applied to any region of the world where significant racial
and ethnic differences exist within a particular state.
A dizzying number of psychological theories have been proposed to try to
explain racism and the development of racial tensions, and we cannot possibly
do justice to all of them here. We can, however, certainly sketch their broad
details. We have met some of these theories already in previous chapters, and
so will pass over them more quickly here (while making it clear, of course, how
they can be applied to racism as opposed to other things). Since intergroup
conflict takes many forms, the general theories we examined in the previous
chapter can also be utilized to explain racial discrimination. Additionally, there
exist more specific theories that have been developed to explain racism and
Chapter 14
prejudice in an exclusively U.S. context. Fiske notes that all of these theories
can be divided into what she calls individual-level and contextual-level theor-
ies, and broadly speaking these can be thought of as alternative terms for our
dispositionist and situationist approaches.
3
Like other political phenomena we
have discussed, racism may be the product of the beliefs or personalities of
particular individuals, or it may result from situational factors that encourage
or somehow otherwise fashion racist behavior.
What Explains Racism?
Authoritarian Personality Theory
Our discussion in Chapter 4 has probably left you with the impression that
the “authoritarian personality” died in the 1960s, felled like a great tree by the
powerful situationist axe of Stanley Milgram and others. But in recent years the
theory has made a comeback, principally through the work of Bob Altemeyer.
4
Altemeyer retains the basis of the “old” authoritarian personality theory associ-
ated with Theodore Adorno and his colleagues, but has sought to make it less
vague. Originally the theory highlighted nine personality traits that were sup-
posed to characterize right-wing authoritarians, but Altemeyer jettisoned
some of these and boiled the theory down to three “attitudinal clusters:”
authoritarian submission (meaning a strong tendency to submit to authority),
authoritarian aggression (hostility towards outgroups) and conventionalism
(denoting conformity with social norms and an unwillingness to challenge “the
way things are”). Altemeyer labeled this revised approach right-wing authori-
tarianism (RWA) and has developed an RWA scale designed to measure the
degree to which a given individual conforms to this characterization.
For Altemeyer, racism is best thought of quite simply as an attribute of this
personality category. RWAs exhibit a high degree of prejudice towards out-
groups of all kinds, including African-Americans and homosexuals. Right-wing
authoritarians
have plenty of “kick” in them. They are hostile toward so many minorities,
they seem to be equal opportunity bigots. But they do not usually realize
they are relatively egocentric. Nor do they want to find out [. . .] They are
relatively ready to help the government persecute almost any group you
can think of—including themselves!
5
In the movie Dirty Harry, for instance, fictional policeman Harry Callahan’s
colleagues describe him this way. Harry’s old partner, Frank De Georgio,
tells his new partner “that’s one thing about our Harry, he doesn’t play any
The Psychology of Racism 185
favorites. Harry hates everybody.” An extensive series of racial epithets follow
in the movie, but if Dirty Harry really “hates everybody” he would be just
the kind of “equal opportunity racist” Altemeyer has in mind, although in the
follow-up film (Magnum Force) it becomes clear that he is not in fact racist
(he has an Asian girlfriend and a black partner in that film, for instance, script
moves which may have been designed to defuse criticism of the racial overtones
in the original film).
In Altemeyer’s RWA theory we see another example of the point made in
Chapter 1 about the distinction between situationism and dispositionism.
Surely people become racist because of the environments and situations they
find themselves in, not because they were that way at birth. In this sense, we
noted, most theories are “situationist” at root, because people have to get their
dispositions from somewhere (the exception being evolutionary theories,
which argue that we are born with at least some innate dispositions rather
than being “blank slates”). Altemeyer argues that RWAs probably learn their
authoritarian beliefs in childhood—as, he suggests, do non-RWAs—but the
differences lie in the fact that non-RWAs are more self-aware and come to
moderate their early beliefs with experience, while RWAs do not.
6
Again
however, this is a dispositionist theory in the sense that while authoritarian
beliefs are learned, RWAs form dispositions which are in turn difficult to change
and may persist throughout their lives. While the more distant cause of their
behavior may have to do with situational factors, the immediate, or proximate
cause is dispositional.
While Altemeyer’s theory is now well known and has gained some
adherents, it has not been as widely accepted as other approaches. Apart
from some of the standard criticisms we have raised about simple personality
theories already, it also poses the question of why entire regions—presumably
populated by people with a variety of personality types—express especially
racist sentiments and/or practice discrimination. A classic example would be
the “Jim Crow” system of racial segregation which existed in the old South of
the United States.
Social Dominance Theory
As we saw in the previous chapter, Jim Sidanius is especially prominent in
arguing for the social dominance theory of intergroup relations.
7
Unlike the
previous approach, this is a general theory of intergroup relations, and as
such it can be used to understand various kinds of conflict other than the
nationalistic variety. Individuals who exhibit a high social dominance orienta-
tion (SDO) view their group as “different”—that is, superior to others—and
actively want their group to dominate society. As we have seen already, though
186 Bringing the Two Together
the theory is more complex than the preceding one, it is at its root personality-
based; more specifically, it distinguishes individuals by reference to their prefer-
ence for a high or low SDO. As mentioned before, according to the theory, low
status individuals can also buy into the “hierarchy-legitimating myths” of a
society to such a degree that they come to favor the high status outgroup.
8
Sidanius provides “Uncle Tomming” by blacks towards whites during the era of
racial segregation in the United States as the clearest example in recent times, a
tradition of deference by blacks towards whites.
9
Advocates of this approach have devoted considerable attention to racism in
particular. According to Felicia Pratto and her colleagues, SDO is strongly
related to anti-black racism, and a prejudice against minority groups in gene-
ral.
10
They argue that “the ideology of anti-Black racism has been instantiated
in personal acts of discrimination, but also in institutional discrimination against
African-Americans by banks, public transit authorities, schools, churches,
marriage laws, and the penal system.”
11
The theory says little about where the
“legitimating myths” come from or what their nature is beyond the claim that it
is perpetuated by the dominant ingroup or hierarchy, and its advocates claim
that it matters little where this ideology comes from or what specific form it
takes.
12
The theory therefore has little to say about the individual psychological
mechanisms that promote racist thinking, although its non-specific nature
allows it to be applied to a range of intergroup conflict situations.
Schema Theory/Stereotyping
An especially popular approach in recent years within the dispositionist camp
has been to trace racism to the way in which the human mind categorizes
information. One common reaction students have to hearing about schema
theory is to ask whether it can be applied to racial stereotypes. And the answer
I always give as a teacher is “indeed it can, and indeed it has been.” From a
schema theory perspective, it is possible that racial stereotyping arises in part
from people’s basic need to simplify reality and put people and things into
categories. As Fiske and Taylor noted in their classic book Social Cognition in
1984, “the view of stereotypes simply as part of the normal cognitive process
applied to people has become widespread. It contrasts sharply with the trad-
itional view of stereotypes as an irrational isolated phenomenon.”
13
Negative
schemas of minority groups or racial stereotypes seem to occur in part because
people draw illusory correlations between individuals and the wider group of
which they are seen to be a part. As Fiske and Taylor note,
majority-group members have relatively few contacts with minority-
group members, and negative behaviors are also relatively infrequent. It
The Psychology of Racism 187