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Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty
Why is there evil, and what can scientific research tell us about the origins and persistence of evil behavior?
Considering evil from the unusual perspective of the perpetrator, Roy F. Baumeister asks, How do ordinary people find themselves beating their wives? Murdering rival gang members? Torturing political prisoners? Betraying their colleagues to the secret police? Why do cycles of revenge so often escalate?
Baumeister casts new light on these issues as he examines the gap between the victim's viewpoint and that of the perpetrator, and also the roots of evil behavior, from egotism and revenge to idealism and sadism. A fascinating study of one of humankind's oldest problems, Evil has profound implications for the way we conduct our lives and govern our society.
Considering evil from the unusual perspective of the perpetrator, Roy F. Baumeister asks, How do ordinary people find themselves beating their wives? Murdering rival gang members? Torturing political prisoners? Betraying their colleagues to the secret police? Why do cycles of revenge so often escalate?
Baumeister casts new light on these issues as he examines the gap between the victim's viewpoint and that of the perpetrator, and also the roots of evil behavior, from egotism and revenge to idealism and sadism. A fascinating study of one of humankind's oldest problems, Evil has profound implications for the way we conduct our lives and govern our society.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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4423 people want to read
About the author
Roy F. Baumeister
82 books460 followersDr. Roy F. Baumeister is Social Psychology Area Director and Francis Eppes Eminent Scholar at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. He is a social psychologist who is known for his work on the self, social rejection, belongingness, sexuality, self-control, self-esteem, self-defeating behaviors, motivation, and aggression. And enduring theme of his work is "why people do stupid things." He has authored over 300 publications and has written or co-written over 20 books.
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January 1, 2020Strong recommendation from
The Happiness Hypothesis
by Jonathan Haidt. In chapter four, “The Faults of Others”, Haidt explores hypocrisy as the result of our blindness to our own flaws and over-attention to those of others. One subheading is “The Myth of Pure Evil”, and Haidt draws extensively on Baumeister:
• •
While researching this book in relation to another matter, I googled that key phrase, “The Myth of Pure Evil”, and came across an excellent commentary on this book here. A key paragraph points out that most of what any one person sees as “evil” is undoubtedly being done by other people who think that same action is “good”:
One root of the startling discrepancy in people’s views of one another is that we are intrinsically a tribal species: we naturally cling to group identities and find it tragically easy to see “the other” as evil. So the next time you sit down to watch television and root for your favorite group of highly-paid professional athletes, employed by a profit-oriented corporation that has invoked a geographical location you are fond of, remember that people have historically killed each other — and called each other evil — for little more than the color of the uniforms and the name of their “team”.
The essayist also points out that, at least in America, the “popular paramilitary culture” is a factor in perpetuating and reinforcing this mythic view of evil. “In such depictions the ideal North American culture is pitched against a form of evil so pure that it can be conquered only by counterbalancing violence.”
When Reagan named the Soviet Union “the Evil Empire”, and George Bush named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as “the Axis of Evil”, he fed this myth. The Iranians aren’t people like you and me, wanting autonomy and international respect for the country they honor so deeply. No; they’re just evil. And if that’s true, then why not simply follow the popular saying within the American military, “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out”?
While that points to an important source of the recurring image of evil from the United States looking out at the rest of the world, what about the interior view? Well, just think of the imagery used by those who are “tough on crime”: Criminals are just evil. They aren’t like us. If you think they are, then you are apparently an agent of evil.
On a personal note, this is one source of personal dismay at popular entertainment. Far too much of it popularizes this myth of pure evil. (Including, sadly, even such wonderful stories as “Lord of the Rings”.) The Coen brothers, who I have revered since stumbling on “Blood Simple” when it first came out, committed this error in “No Country for Old Men” (although I suspect much of the blame belongs to the author of the novel, who certainly came across as misanthropic in The Road as well). The world they portrayed was starkly evil, much darker than the one we actually live in. As a horror story, it was gruesomely entertaining — and deservedly won those Oscars — but I’m sure people walked out of the theater a little more afraid of the strangers around them, a little less willing to trust in the basic goodness of human nature. A little more convinced in the myth, in the need to be “tough on crime”, and perhaps even to “stand tall” against others that aren’t like us, even if their differences are mostly superficial.
Baumeister is an extraordinary social psychologist, in part because in his search for truth he is unconcerned about political correctness. Sometimes evil falls out of a clear blue sky onto the head of an innocent victim, but most cases are much more complicated, and Baumeister is willing to violate the taboo against “blaming the victim” in order to understand what really happened.Haidt doesn’t cite Hannah Arendt, whose Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil set the stage for the de-mythologizing of evil, but I suspect Baumeister explores her contribution.
• •
While researching this book in relation to another matter, I googled that key phrase, “The Myth of Pure Evil”, and came across an excellent commentary on this book here. A key paragraph points out that most of what any one person sees as “evil” is undoubtedly being done by other people who think that same action is “good”:
A natural bias towards empathy has resulted in an almost universal identification of evil from the victim’s perspective. This book produces many examples of events which if one sets out to be even-handed cease to appear intrinsically evil. Few if any perpetrators ever do an “evil” deed without good reason — from their viewpoint. Very, very few groups or individuals “name themselves in positive affirmation of evil … Most of them regard themselves as good people who are trying to defend themselves and their group against the forces of evil”.
One root of the startling discrepancy in people’s views of one another is that we are intrinsically a tribal species: we naturally cling to group identities and find it tragically easy to see “the other” as evil. So the next time you sit down to watch television and root for your favorite group of highly-paid professional athletes, employed by a profit-oriented corporation that has invoked a geographical location you are fond of, remember that people have historically killed each other — and called each other evil — for little more than the color of the uniforms and the name of their “team”.
The essayist also points out that, at least in America, the “popular paramilitary culture” is a factor in perpetuating and reinforcing this mythic view of evil. “In such depictions the ideal North American culture is pitched against a form of evil so pure that it can be conquered only by counterbalancing violence.”
When Reagan named the Soviet Union “the Evil Empire”, and George Bush named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as “the Axis of Evil”, he fed this myth. The Iranians aren’t people like you and me, wanting autonomy and international respect for the country they honor so deeply. No; they’re just evil. And if that’s true, then why not simply follow the popular saying within the American military, “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out”?
While that points to an important source of the recurring image of evil from the United States looking out at the rest of the world, what about the interior view? Well, just think of the imagery used by those who are “tough on crime”: Criminals are just evil. They aren’t like us. If you think they are, then you are apparently an agent of evil.
On a personal note, this is one source of personal dismay at popular entertainment. Far too much of it popularizes this myth of pure evil. (Including, sadly, even such wonderful stories as “Lord of the Rings”.) The Coen brothers, who I have revered since stumbling on “Blood Simple” when it first came out, committed this error in “No Country for Old Men” (although I suspect much of the blame belongs to the author of the novel, who certainly came across as misanthropic in The Road as well). The world they portrayed was starkly evil, much darker than the one we actually live in. As a horror story, it was gruesomely entertaining — and deservedly won those Oscars — but I’m sure people walked out of the theater a little more afraid of the strangers around them, a little less willing to trust in the basic goodness of human nature. A little more convinced in the myth, in the need to be “tough on crime”, and perhaps even to “stand tall” against others that aren’t like us, even if their differences are mostly superficial.
July 29, 2019
A book that takes a unique perspective in its attempts to understand evil. Consider our normal every day responses to evil and injustice on the evening news: shock and moral outrage. While these are perfectly understandable reactions, this book contends they cloud the issue when it comes to understanding human evil. The author argues that if we want to understand human evil, we have to lay aside our natural responses and look at these situations not from the perspective of the victims but instead from the perspective of the perpetrators. Not being a psychologist, I am willing to be corrected on this, but what the author seems to be talking about is cognitive (though definitely not affective) empathy. I myself came to think of it as 'the Screwtape method.' Just as C.S. Lewis sought to understand how demons work in the lives of human beings by writing a fictional account told from the perspective of a demon, this book seeks to understand human evil by looking at it from the perspective of the perpetrators of evil. To us the magnitude of these acts is great, to the evil doer they are – as Hannah Arendt would have it – banal. Since this could be considered a controversial approach, perhaps it is best to let the author speak for himself on this point:
'To understand perpetrators, it will be necessary to grasp what these crimes and other acts mean to them – which often entails seeing the acts as relatively minor, meaningless, or trivial. If this book tries to do its job of understanding the perpetrators, it will inevitably seem insensitive to the sufferings of the victim, at least at times. Indeed, many works on evil use a vivid, passionate prose style to drive home the enormity of the crimes. But the very enormity of the crime is itself a victim's appraisal, not a perpetrator's. Perpetrators favor a detached, minimalist style, and to understand their mental processes it is essential to lean toward that style, too.
This discrepancy compounded my own personal struggle to write this book. I am a research psychologist and a university professor, and so my main task in this book is to understand the causal processes that produce evil actions. I am also a human being, however, and it is difficult to avoid reactions of shock, outrage, and repugnance at many of the heinous acts that I had to study. As a moral being, I want to protest and condemn these crimes in their full horror, but as a research scientist I often felt it necessary to try and understand how small and casual these acts were to the perpetrators.
Eventually, I concluded that appreciating the victim's perspective is essential for a moral evaluation of such acts – but it is ruinous for a causal understanding of them. The main goal of this book is psychological understanding, not moral analysis. It will be necessary for me to tune out the overwhelmingly powerful victim's perspective to understand the perpetrators, and it will be necessary for you, the reader, as well. This is a technique to aid understanding, and we must not allow it to lead to moral insensitivity. I do not want to make apologies or offer excuses for people who commit terrible actions. I do want to understand them, however, and so it is necessary to understand the excuses, rationalizations, and ambiguities that mark their state of mind.'
All of the examples the author uses to illustrate his points are drawn from real life incidents, his reason being that fictional portrayals of evil often descend into caricature and do not lend themselves well to being illustrative of evil as it occurs in real life. He spends a chapter debunking the myth of pure evil – the idea that evil is carried out as the end in itself – and another demonstrating how evil as it is portrayed in the media is often at odds with evil as it confronts us in the real world. The author classifies evil behaviour based on four possible root causes:
1/ Instrumental evil: This type of evil is usually motivated by some sort of material gain. Though the end may not necessarily be evil, the means by which the end is pursued are. Robbery is a typical example of this type of evil.
2/ Egotistical evil: This type of evil is usually caused by threats to the favourable self-image of a person with unusually high but unstable self-esteem. Violence is provoked by a threat to the ego - disrespect, an attack on your honour, insulting or humiliating someone – and is directed towards the source of the threat. Contrary to the current consensus that bullies behave the way they do because they have low self-esteem, the author places them instead in this category.
3/ Idealistic evil: This is probably the most disheartening type of evil since the root cause is not mere human selfishness but instead what the perpetrators consider to be the highest good. Religiously motivated violence is the most obvious example here, though political ideals have also resulted in widespread bloodshed.
4/ Sadistic evil: This is evil caused by individuals who derive pleasure from inflicting harm on others. This is believed to be the least common form of evil and the author speculates that it is an acquired taste. He notes that a fair number of serial killers testify that they started down that path while in active combat zones; it was only when they were put in a position where they had to kill people that they discovered they enjoyed doing so.
The latter portions of the book illuminate the mechanisms that shepherd ordinary people down the road to great evil and the different ways that people rationalize their actions and deal with their guilt. Group and individual evil are compared and other factors – culture, poverty, biology, etc. - are considered. One question the book asks is the opposite of the one that is usually posed in books of this nature; instead of asking why there is so much evil in the world, the author wonders why there isn't more evil in the world than there is. After all, most of the root factors – lust, greed, egotism, idealistic principles, etc. - are things at work in every single one of us to one degree or another. One possible answer is the erosion of restraints, whether societal or individual: 'The immediate, proximal cause of violence is the collapse of these inner restraining forces. This point is crucial, because it means most of our efforts to understand violence are looking at the question the wrong way. To produce violence, it is not necessary to promote it actively. All that is necessary is to stop restraining or preventing it.' Yet this is not the entire picture either. The final chapter of the book examines the interminable nature/nurture debate. His conclusions could be summarized as follows: 'A satisfactory understanding of human aggression is likely to invoke both nature and culture.' The author then uses this as a springboard to consider national and global trends in terms of the four different root causes of evil behaviour and speculates where the world might be headed.
An apt metaphor for the human fascination with our darker side might be to compare it with the fascination one might have with a live Tyrannosaurus Rex. At a thousand metres away with a barrier between the two of us, it is fascinating. Close enough that its shadow is blocking out the sunlight and that fascination is replaced with fear. Yet there are good reasons to examine topics like this:
'The deeper questions here are more than a matter of fashion and parsimony in scientific explanation. The deeper questions are ones that are familiar to most thoughtful people: Are human beings basically good or evil? Are certain human beings basically evil? Should parents blame their own mistakes when their children grow up to become rapists, killers, or swindlers? Do genes dictate violent, criminal behaviour, and if so, is the liberal ideal of rehabilitation merely a foolish, idle fantasy? Can society be redesigned so everyone can live together in peace and harmony? Not all of these questions can be answered with total confidence based on the currently available research evidence, but the material covered in this book provides a basis for proposing some tentative answers.'
Though I rated the two previous books on the psychology of evil I have read highly, both of them tried to explain human evil by reducing it to a single factor. This treatment is far more ambitious in its scope. It is safe to say this book is simultaneously one of the best and the worst books I have ever read; good because of the writing style and the comprehensive treatment, bad because of the many less than pleasant examples that are woven throughout the text.
'To understand perpetrators, it will be necessary to grasp what these crimes and other acts mean to them – which often entails seeing the acts as relatively minor, meaningless, or trivial. If this book tries to do its job of understanding the perpetrators, it will inevitably seem insensitive to the sufferings of the victim, at least at times. Indeed, many works on evil use a vivid, passionate prose style to drive home the enormity of the crimes. But the very enormity of the crime is itself a victim's appraisal, not a perpetrator's. Perpetrators favor a detached, minimalist style, and to understand their mental processes it is essential to lean toward that style, too.
This discrepancy compounded my own personal struggle to write this book. I am a research psychologist and a university professor, and so my main task in this book is to understand the causal processes that produce evil actions. I am also a human being, however, and it is difficult to avoid reactions of shock, outrage, and repugnance at many of the heinous acts that I had to study. As a moral being, I want to protest and condemn these crimes in their full horror, but as a research scientist I often felt it necessary to try and understand how small and casual these acts were to the perpetrators.
Eventually, I concluded that appreciating the victim's perspective is essential for a moral evaluation of such acts – but it is ruinous for a causal understanding of them. The main goal of this book is psychological understanding, not moral analysis. It will be necessary for me to tune out the overwhelmingly powerful victim's perspective to understand the perpetrators, and it will be necessary for you, the reader, as well. This is a technique to aid understanding, and we must not allow it to lead to moral insensitivity. I do not want to make apologies or offer excuses for people who commit terrible actions. I do want to understand them, however, and so it is necessary to understand the excuses, rationalizations, and ambiguities that mark their state of mind.'
All of the examples the author uses to illustrate his points are drawn from real life incidents, his reason being that fictional portrayals of evil often descend into caricature and do not lend themselves well to being illustrative of evil as it occurs in real life. He spends a chapter debunking the myth of pure evil – the idea that evil is carried out as the end in itself – and another demonstrating how evil as it is portrayed in the media is often at odds with evil as it confronts us in the real world. The author classifies evil behaviour based on four possible root causes:
1/ Instrumental evil: This type of evil is usually motivated by some sort of material gain. Though the end may not necessarily be evil, the means by which the end is pursued are. Robbery is a typical example of this type of evil.
2/ Egotistical evil: This type of evil is usually caused by threats to the favourable self-image of a person with unusually high but unstable self-esteem. Violence is provoked by a threat to the ego - disrespect, an attack on your honour, insulting or humiliating someone – and is directed towards the source of the threat. Contrary to the current consensus that bullies behave the way they do because they have low self-esteem, the author places them instead in this category.
3/ Idealistic evil: This is probably the most disheartening type of evil since the root cause is not mere human selfishness but instead what the perpetrators consider to be the highest good. Religiously motivated violence is the most obvious example here, though political ideals have also resulted in widespread bloodshed.
4/ Sadistic evil: This is evil caused by individuals who derive pleasure from inflicting harm on others. This is believed to be the least common form of evil and the author speculates that it is an acquired taste. He notes that a fair number of serial killers testify that they started down that path while in active combat zones; it was only when they were put in a position where they had to kill people that they discovered they enjoyed doing so.
The latter portions of the book illuminate the mechanisms that shepherd ordinary people down the road to great evil and the different ways that people rationalize their actions and deal with their guilt. Group and individual evil are compared and other factors – culture, poverty, biology, etc. - are considered. One question the book asks is the opposite of the one that is usually posed in books of this nature; instead of asking why there is so much evil in the world, the author wonders why there isn't more evil in the world than there is. After all, most of the root factors – lust, greed, egotism, idealistic principles, etc. - are things at work in every single one of us to one degree or another. One possible answer is the erosion of restraints, whether societal or individual: 'The immediate, proximal cause of violence is the collapse of these inner restraining forces. This point is crucial, because it means most of our efforts to understand violence are looking at the question the wrong way. To produce violence, it is not necessary to promote it actively. All that is necessary is to stop restraining or preventing it.' Yet this is not the entire picture either. The final chapter of the book examines the interminable nature/nurture debate. His conclusions could be summarized as follows: 'A satisfactory understanding of human aggression is likely to invoke both nature and culture.' The author then uses this as a springboard to consider national and global trends in terms of the four different root causes of evil behaviour and speculates where the world might be headed.
An apt metaphor for the human fascination with our darker side might be to compare it with the fascination one might have with a live Tyrannosaurus Rex. At a thousand metres away with a barrier between the two of us, it is fascinating. Close enough that its shadow is blocking out the sunlight and that fascination is replaced with fear. Yet there are good reasons to examine topics like this:
'The deeper questions here are more than a matter of fashion and parsimony in scientific explanation. The deeper questions are ones that are familiar to most thoughtful people: Are human beings basically good or evil? Are certain human beings basically evil? Should parents blame their own mistakes when their children grow up to become rapists, killers, or swindlers? Do genes dictate violent, criminal behaviour, and if so, is the liberal ideal of rehabilitation merely a foolish, idle fantasy? Can society be redesigned so everyone can live together in peace and harmony? Not all of these questions can be answered with total confidence based on the currently available research evidence, but the material covered in this book provides a basis for proposing some tentative answers.'
Though I rated the two previous books on the psychology of evil I have read highly, both of them tried to explain human evil by reducing it to a single factor. This treatment is far more ambitious in its scope. It is safe to say this book is simultaneously one of the best and the worst books I have ever read; good because of the writing style and the comprehensive treatment, bad because of the many less than pleasant examples that are woven throughout the text.
July 30, 2020
This was a fascinating read! Author decided to kill the myth of pure evil and show evil from not only victim side, but from perpetrator too. It's difficult, dirty and fascinating, to see evil-doer reasoning. But not also that - by removing the myth of pure evil, the author shows how everybody, how good people, can do evil things.
It shows human nature and behaviour naked and I think it may be a hard read for some people.
It shows human nature and behaviour naked and I think it may be a hard read for some people.
September 17, 2022
"Why is there evil? The question has bedeviled humanity for centuries. If there were a single, simple answer, we probably would have had it long ago..."
Evil was an interesting read, but I felt that the final product was too long, and lacked cohesive formatting. A large chunk of the book could have been edited out, for the sake of brevity and clarity...
Author Roy F. Baumeister is a social psychologist who is known for his work on the self, social rejection, belongingness, sexuality and sex differences, self-control, self-esteem, self-defeating behaviors, motivation, aggression, consciousness, and free will.
Roy F. Baumeister:
Roy Baumeister is one of the leading social psychologists of the modern day. This is my second from the author, after his 2019 book The Power of Bad, which I really enjoyed.
Baumeister writes with an engaging style here, for the most part, and this one should have no trouble holding the reader's attention, despite its long length.
Baumeister lays out the aim of the book early on:
Interestingly enough, Baumeister mentions that those who commit violence against others have a common perception that they are the victims somehow. He cites several interviews with serial killers and other violent criminals, saying that they all felt that they were not actually morally wrong and/or evil in committing their crimes. They all had somehow managed to justify their horrific acts. For example, he cites the case study of a man who kidnapped, raped, and murdered multiple women. When he was interviewed after he was caught, he rationalized his crimes by telling the police that he was actually quite kind to the women while he kidnapped them, that they probably enjoyed the sex they had with him anyhow, and finally; he was actually very compassionate, because he did not make the women suffer long, painful deaths when he finally did kill them...
Baumeister also talks about the myth of "pure evil." That is evil for the sake of evil, with no other end goal. Baumeister says that this type of evil almost never exists. Instead, the perpetrators of the evil all use their evil acts as a justified means to an end, and place their acts within that rubric.
Further to the above point, many of history's most evil figures acted out their evil out of a misguided sense of doing good. Baumeister says:
In the book's conclusion, Baumeister drops this quote about "blank slate" theorists and human nature:
However, despite the book containing an incredible amount of interesting content, and as mentioned at the start of this review, I felt that the book was too long. The PDF version I have clocked in at a hefty ~550 pages, and the converted audiobook; ~18 hours. A large chunk could have been edited out without any overall loss to the final product, IMHO.
As well; I was just not a fan of the formatting of the book. Baumeister jumps around far too often here, going off on tangents quite frequently. The book lacks flow. The Nazis, Stalin, and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge are mentioned numerous times in the book, across many different chapters - as are culture, the media, and serial killers. IMHO, the writing should have been reformatted, with a premium placed on narrative continuity...
Some more of what is covered in these pages includes:
• Historically evil regimes and their crimes against humanity; Nazi Germany. Stalin's Russia. Cambodia's Khmer Rouge. Mao's Communists and his Cultural Revolution.
• Evil in the movies.
• Sadism and masochism; torture.
• The topic of race in crime; the media's role in stoking racial hatred.
• The evil depiction of the enemy in war. Dehumanizing a group of people to facilitate their destruction.
• Terrorism.
• Organized crime; The Mafia.
• Governmental tyranny.
• Revenge; ego.
• The theory of violent people having low self-esteem; psychopaths.
• The social contagion of pathological groupthink. "Us/them" dichotomies.
• The role of bystanders in violent acts.
Baumeister ties a knot in the writing (finally) with this quote, that summarizes the research he did for the book. I've covered it with a spoiler, for the sake of this review's clarity:
***********************
Evil was a good coverage of the topic. There were quite a lot of interesting thoughts and analyses here by Baumeister throughout.
However, the overall presentation should have had a complete reformatting, as well as a more rigorous editing, to improve the final product, IMHO.
I would still recommend it to anyone interested.
3.5 stars.
Evil was an interesting read, but I felt that the final product was too long, and lacked cohesive formatting. A large chunk of the book could have been edited out, for the sake of brevity and clarity...
Author Roy F. Baumeister is a social psychologist who is known for his work on the self, social rejection, belongingness, sexuality and sex differences, self-control, self-esteem, self-defeating behaviors, motivation, aggression, consciousness, and free will.
Roy F. Baumeister:
Roy Baumeister is one of the leading social psychologists of the modern day. This is my second from the author, after his 2019 book The Power of Bad, which I really enjoyed.
Baumeister writes with an engaging style here, for the most part, and this one should have no trouble holding the reader's attention, despite its long length.
Baumeister lays out the aim of the book early on:
"Many written works have dealt with the question of why evil exists in theological terms; these works tend to emphasize the possible function of evil in the cosmos and the divine reason for permitting it to exist.
This book will try to give a causal answer. The mode of explanation will not be theological or moral but scientific—more precisely, I will use the approach of social science. I will not try to defend or justify the existence of evil but merely to explain how it happens to come into the world."
Interestingly enough, Baumeister mentions that those who commit violence against others have a common perception that they are the victims somehow. He cites several interviews with serial killers and other violent criminals, saying that they all felt that they were not actually morally wrong and/or evil in committing their crimes. They all had somehow managed to justify their horrific acts. For example, he cites the case study of a man who kidnapped, raped, and murdered multiple women. When he was interviewed after he was caught, he rationalized his crimes by telling the police that he was actually quite kind to the women while he kidnapped them, that they probably enjoyed the sex they had with him anyhow, and finally; he was actually very compassionate, because he did not make the women suffer long, painful deaths when he finally did kill them...
Baumeister also talks about the myth of "pure evil." That is evil for the sake of evil, with no other end goal. Baumeister says that this type of evil almost never exists. Instead, the perpetrators of the evil all use their evil acts as a justified means to an end, and place their acts within that rubric.
Further to the above point, many of history's most evil figures acted out their evil out of a misguided sense of doing good. Baumeister says:
“It’s always the good men who do the most harm in the world,” Henry Adams said with reference to Robert E. Lee. The point is overstated—it would require quite a stretch to define Saddam Hussein or Idi Amin, let alone Hitler or Stalin, as good men. Yet there is an important kernel of truth in the statement. Good men with lofty principles and admirable intentions have occasionally done a great deal of harm. Many of the greatest crimes, atrocities, and calamities of history were deliberately perpetrated by people who honestly and sincerely wanted to do something good..."
In the book's conclusion, Baumeister drops this quote about "blank slate" theorists and human nature:
"Some years ago, at a professional conference, I had the opportunity to speak to a prominent social psychologist whose work I had long admired, and he told me a story that has been for me a lasting image of the disappointment with theories about socialization and aggression. Like many progressive California academics, he and his wife had resolved to bring up their children surrounded only by healthy, socially desirable values, and this meant that their boys would receive no toy guns. The boys did not complain much about not having such playthings. They simply pretended that the toys they did have were guns. The turning point for the parents came when they found one of their boys chasing the other through the house, holding the remains of his peanut-butterand-jelly sandwich, from which he had taken carefully planned bites to sculpt it into the shape of a pistol. He was pointing the gunshaped remnant of sandwich at his brother and making loud shooting noises. At this point, his parents were more upset by the peanut butter and jelly that was dripping onto their expensive white carpet than about their dwindling faith in the chances of raising androgynous, pacifist sons by surrounding them with educational playthings, and so they gave in and bought the kids some toy guns.
Those parents were hardly alone in the disappointment they must have felt when they broke down and bought their sons a shooting toy. Human nature has not generally proved as pliable as the tabula rasa theorists have hoped. Hundreds of experimental utopian communes have broken down amid undone chores and minor bickering or, in some cases, have led to large-scale mass murder."
However, despite the book containing an incredible amount of interesting content, and as mentioned at the start of this review, I felt that the book was too long. The PDF version I have clocked in at a hefty ~550 pages, and the converted audiobook; ~18 hours. A large chunk could have been edited out without any overall loss to the final product, IMHO.
As well; I was just not a fan of the formatting of the book. Baumeister jumps around far too often here, going off on tangents quite frequently. The book lacks flow. The Nazis, Stalin, and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge are mentioned numerous times in the book, across many different chapters - as are culture, the media, and serial killers. IMHO, the writing should have been reformatted, with a premium placed on narrative continuity...
Some more of what is covered in these pages includes:
• Historically evil regimes and their crimes against humanity; Nazi Germany. Stalin's Russia. Cambodia's Khmer Rouge. Mao's Communists and his Cultural Revolution.
• Evil in the movies.
• Sadism and masochism; torture.
• The topic of race in crime; the media's role in stoking racial hatred.
• The evil depiction of the enemy in war. Dehumanizing a group of people to facilitate their destruction.
• Terrorism.
• Organized crime; The Mafia.
• Governmental tyranny.
• Revenge; ego.
• The theory of violent people having low self-esteem; psychopaths.
• The social contagion of pathological groupthink. "Us/them" dichotomies.
• The role of bystanders in violent acts.
Baumeister ties a knot in the writing (finally) with this quote, that summarizes the research he did for the book. I've covered it with a spoiler, for the sake of this review's clarity:
***********************
Evil was a good coverage of the topic. There were quite a lot of interesting thoughts and analyses here by Baumeister throughout.
However, the overall presentation should have had a complete reformatting, as well as a more rigorous editing, to improve the final product, IMHO.
I would still recommend it to anyone interested.
3.5 stars.
April 21, 2016
Do you want to get inside the mind of a serial killer or an executioner? You need go no further than your own mind. Well, you have to go a little further, but not much. Turns out people who do evil things are a lot like you and me.
Have you ever noticed when arguing with a spouse that you’re always right–until you’ve had a few quiet moments to think about the part you played in flooding the basement? Have you noticed too that when you drink the argument about how well the basement was cleaned after the flood gets more heated than it really needs to be ( you’ve been harboring the grudge about the ruined Christmas ornaments for a week now).
The first time we had to execute a rooster my husband sent me indoors because my crying was a distraction. The next time a rooster punctured my leg with his filthy spur when we had no health coverage I quite happily ordered him dead (and he was my favorite rooster).
Imagine a post-Civil War scene down south. A group of bored young veterans on the losing side of the war with no job prospects and stung egos get together for drinks. Someone comes up with the idea to dress up like ghosts to spook the newly freed and uneducated ex-slaves in their neighborhood. Just a boyhood prank, is all. They scare a black man the first time and off he runs, but the next time they do it the man is wise to their humor and waves them off with a laugh. The game is no longer fun. Putting a little fear into a man who used to be subordinate but now is equal was fun (and each young man is holding a grudge against the powers that be and the freed slaves). The mission becomes to scare the black man–a little more and a little more. Each time the black man sees through their pranks–they raise the stakes.
Are you that person in a group who stands up when everyone else is going down a bad path? Are you the person who jumps in the swollen spring river to save the young boy from drowning when everyone else waits to see who will get wet. Twice in my life I’ve witnessed someone drowning and both times I watched as if in a dream as someone else jumped in.
In Rwanda a mother of six participated in the clubbing to death of a group of neighborhood children because she thought it would put them out of their misery. A man responsible for killing Jewish children in WWII rationalized his job in the same way.
Why aren’t there more serial killers? The difference between “normal” people and evil doers comes down to a few key things: self-discipline, a sense of being responsible for one’s actions and feelings of guilt (which for normal people kick in often before they even contemplate doing something evil). People who tend to say, “I couldn’t help it” or “It’s because society made me do it” or:
“Guilt? It’s this mechanism we use to control people. It’s an illusion. It’s a kind of social control mechanism–and it’s very unhealthy. It does terrible things to our bodies. And there are much better ways to control our behavior than . . . guilt.”
we need to worry about. The last quote comes from Ted Bundy–the serial killer.
The drugs made me do it, my genes made me do it, this country made me do it . . . I couldn’t help eating all those cookies! But here’s the thing: in order to kill someone with a gun you must think about getting a gun. You must walk towards the gun using the legs you make move, and you must pull the trigger. The gun doesn’t magically cling to you, take over your fingers and shoot someone.
An early 20th century study showed that most soldiers shot above the heads of their enemies. This was a problem to be solved. Another interesting study showed that playing video games did make for more short-term aggression in players, but only people who were already tending toward evil actually used gaming as an excuse for bad actions. Most people play video games and DON’T kill their cats.
Remember when your mother warned you about the slippery slope toward evil? Remember Jesus saying something about cleaning out one demon but letting 7 more in? Evil seems to be like that.The first kill is the toughest–but then the sirens and hand cuffs don’t arrive. Life stays pretty much the same. So you kill again.
Don’t think this book is a thoroughly depressing read. On the contrary if you like gallows humor you’ll love this book. I did. But it is scary how close to evil I can become.
Have you ever noticed when arguing with a spouse that you’re always right–until you’ve had a few quiet moments to think about the part you played in flooding the basement? Have you noticed too that when you drink the argument about how well the basement was cleaned after the flood gets more heated than it really needs to be ( you’ve been harboring the grudge about the ruined Christmas ornaments for a week now).
The first time we had to execute a rooster my husband sent me indoors because my crying was a distraction. The next time a rooster punctured my leg with his filthy spur when we had no health coverage I quite happily ordered him dead (and he was my favorite rooster).
Imagine a post-Civil War scene down south. A group of bored young veterans on the losing side of the war with no job prospects and stung egos get together for drinks. Someone comes up with the idea to dress up like ghosts to spook the newly freed and uneducated ex-slaves in their neighborhood. Just a boyhood prank, is all. They scare a black man the first time and off he runs, but the next time they do it the man is wise to their humor and waves them off with a laugh. The game is no longer fun. Putting a little fear into a man who used to be subordinate but now is equal was fun (and each young man is holding a grudge against the powers that be and the freed slaves). The mission becomes to scare the black man–a little more and a little more. Each time the black man sees through their pranks–they raise the stakes.
Are you that person in a group who stands up when everyone else is going down a bad path? Are you the person who jumps in the swollen spring river to save the young boy from drowning when everyone else waits to see who will get wet. Twice in my life I’ve witnessed someone drowning and both times I watched as if in a dream as someone else jumped in.
In Rwanda a mother of six participated in the clubbing to death of a group of neighborhood children because she thought it would put them out of their misery. A man responsible for killing Jewish children in WWII rationalized his job in the same way.
Why aren’t there more serial killers? The difference between “normal” people and evil doers comes down to a few key things: self-discipline, a sense of being responsible for one’s actions and feelings of guilt (which for normal people kick in often before they even contemplate doing something evil). People who tend to say, “I couldn’t help it” or “It’s because society made me do it” or:
“Guilt? It’s this mechanism we use to control people. It’s an illusion. It’s a kind of social control mechanism–and it’s very unhealthy. It does terrible things to our bodies. And there are much better ways to control our behavior than . . . guilt.”
we need to worry about. The last quote comes from Ted Bundy–the serial killer.
The drugs made me do it, my genes made me do it, this country made me do it . . . I couldn’t help eating all those cookies! But here’s the thing: in order to kill someone with a gun you must think about getting a gun. You must walk towards the gun using the legs you make move, and you must pull the trigger. The gun doesn’t magically cling to you, take over your fingers and shoot someone.
An early 20th century study showed that most soldiers shot above the heads of their enemies. This was a problem to be solved. Another interesting study showed that playing video games did make for more short-term aggression in players, but only people who were already tending toward evil actually used gaming as an excuse for bad actions. Most people play video games and DON’T kill their cats.
Remember when your mother warned you about the slippery slope toward evil? Remember Jesus saying something about cleaning out one demon but letting 7 more in? Evil seems to be like that.The first kill is the toughest–but then the sirens and hand cuffs don’t arrive. Life stays pretty much the same. So you kill again.
Don’t think this book is a thoroughly depressing read. On the contrary if you like gallows humor you’ll love this book. I did. But it is scary how close to evil I can become.
January 19, 2018
A very readable blend of data from social psychology and anthropology, presenting a viewpoint of evil and violence from the perspective of the perpetrator, not the victim. If one wants to understand how perpetrators view themselves, this is among the very best places to start. Particularly valuable is Baumeister’s chapter that establishes that criminally violent individuals usually have high (albeit brittle) self-esteem rather than popular psychology’s common fantasy that their self-esteem is low. One place I do find him deficient is that he doesn’t adequately consider violence as ecstasy (“impact” takes you out of yourself). The closest he comes is in his discussion of sadism – taking pleasure in causing harm – but this is, in fact, quite different. To some degree, then, Baumeister does not, in my opinion, fully grasp how violence can be a passionate experience--and that if one is successful in "getting beyond love and grief," and is not over concerned about physical harm, it can be an enormously attractive experience. In other words, there is evil focused on the destruction of someone else, for whatever ends one has. There is evil enacted out of revenge motives, that in some sense the perpetrator feels (or constructs) justification for what he/she does. But there is violence in which the victim, whether passive or fighting back, is an instrument or avenue to the perpetrators own ecstasy.
May 31, 2009
I will say my biggest complaint first so I can just get it out in the open: it's not as good as "The Lucifer Effect" - if given the choice of the two, I will go for Zimbardo's book every time. However, this is still a good book and a good companion to Zimbardo's book.
It is older than The Lucifer Effect (being written in 1997), so there wasn't much on the question and ethics of the conflicts happening right now. Although it does discuss several other situations from the obvious reign of Hitler and Stalin to the warfare happening between gangs to the characters depicted in cartoons.
One of my favorite parts was when Baumeister touched on horror films and explored its relationship to crime. Baumeister had several instances he discussed, but after a while, it felt like the same stories were explored again and again, becoming stale after a while. Some of the studies or instances he should have gone more in depth with (e.g. Kitty Genovese, the study when the Psych students became mental patients for an experiment), he only briefly touched on. I liked his study of guilt and how it is healthy for a society.
Bottom line: I learned a lot, but I don't know how much will actually stick. The Lucifer Effect seemed more hands-on, while this seemed like a lecture.
It is older than The Lucifer Effect (being written in 1997), so there wasn't much on the question and ethics of the conflicts happening right now. Although it does discuss several other situations from the obvious reign of Hitler and Stalin to the warfare happening between gangs to the characters depicted in cartoons.
One of my favorite parts was when Baumeister touched on horror films and explored its relationship to crime. Baumeister had several instances he discussed, but after a while, it felt like the same stories were explored again and again, becoming stale after a while. Some of the studies or instances he should have gone more in depth with (e.g. Kitty Genovese, the study when the Psych students became mental patients for an experiment), he only briefly touched on. I liked his study of guilt and how it is healthy for a society.
Bottom line: I learned a lot, but I don't know how much will actually stick. The Lucifer Effect seemed more hands-on, while this seemed like a lecture.
July 16, 2019
Evil is in the eyes of the beholder, and it's relative to the circumstances. Baumeister looks evil through the eyes of the perpetrator to understand what leads to violence and other horrendous acts which cause suffering to others. He writes that to understand evil and cruelty, we need to abandon the notion that evil acts are one-sided and that the perpetrator is this mythical evil with inherited badness. He goes on explaining that circumstances affect our actions, and also, that nothing is unilateral. Victims aren't as blame-free as we or themselves think which doesn't mean that they deserve what they got but to understand why evil things happen we need to abandon our biases towards the perpetrators and victims. He writes: "Why then, is there evil: crime, violence, oppression, cruelty, and the rest? As we have seen, there is no single or simple answer. Evil does not exist in terms of solitary actions by solitary individuals. Perpetrators and victims—and in many cases, bystanders or observers, too—are necessary to the vast majority of evil acts. Evil is socially enacted and constructed. It does not reside in our genes or in our soul, but in the way we relate to other people."
Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty is a good book. It goes over the basic causes of evil in the individual and national level. The four major root causes are material gain (money and power), threatened egotism (high self-esteem), idealism (the end justifies the means), and pursuing sadistic pleasure (don't worry this is darn rare). Now you might think what point there is to read the book if I revealed the reasons for evil. The importance of the book is in the explanations, examples, and the studies mentioned. Baumeister goes over what leads to what and why. His argumentation is good, however, the examples left me horrified at times, especially with the chapters handling sadistic tendencies. His first example blew me away, but I won't reveal it here as it's something which will stop you when you start to read and make you think evil from a different perspective. If you are interested in human nature and what we all are capable of doing, then read this book. It's slow to read and leans heavily on research, but that is a good thing. So it should be.
I leave you with one more quote: "We are past the point at which an explanation in terms of either innate nature or socializing culture can completely explain what is known about human aggression. Both extreme views are untenable. Violence and aggression cannot be fully explained by pointing simply to instincts or heredity. It is clear that much aggression is learned and that most is specific to particular situations. Nature does not program most mammals to kill one another, and the awesome carnage of the twentieth century suggests that the process of civilizing the human animal has, if anything, increased in rates of violent crime and similar indices of evil also suggests that culture plays a powerful role. A sobering look at some other facts also makes in implausible to chalk up all human violence up to culture and socialization. Social structures can increase or decrease violence and other evils within certain limits, but no one has come close to eliminating it. Contrary to some idealistic fantasies, children do not need to be taught to hate and prejudice: They are all too ready to pick on the one kid who is different or to reject the children in the other group."
All hope is not lost. Baumeister suggests that key to decreased violence is a culture which teaches self-control. But he notes that we will have a rocky future ahead with overpopulation, the rise of idealism, and rise of egoism. Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty isn't a feel-good book, but it's necessary for understanding why violence and cruelty continue existing in our societies.
P.S. Sorry about the lecture-kind book review, I found the message of the book too relevant to be ignored with the current trends in the world.
Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty is a good book. It goes over the basic causes of evil in the individual and national level. The four major root causes are material gain (money and power), threatened egotism (high self-esteem), idealism (the end justifies the means), and pursuing sadistic pleasure (don't worry this is darn rare). Now you might think what point there is to read the book if I revealed the reasons for evil. The importance of the book is in the explanations, examples, and the studies mentioned. Baumeister goes over what leads to what and why. His argumentation is good, however, the examples left me horrified at times, especially with the chapters handling sadistic tendencies. His first example blew me away, but I won't reveal it here as it's something which will stop you when you start to read and make you think evil from a different perspective. If you are interested in human nature and what we all are capable of doing, then read this book. It's slow to read and leans heavily on research, but that is a good thing. So it should be.
I leave you with one more quote: "We are past the point at which an explanation in terms of either innate nature or socializing culture can completely explain what is known about human aggression. Both extreme views are untenable. Violence and aggression cannot be fully explained by pointing simply to instincts or heredity. It is clear that much aggression is learned and that most is specific to particular situations. Nature does not program most mammals to kill one another, and the awesome carnage of the twentieth century suggests that the process of civilizing the human animal has, if anything, increased in rates of violent crime and similar indices of evil also suggests that culture plays a powerful role. A sobering look at some other facts also makes in implausible to chalk up all human violence up to culture and socialization. Social structures can increase or decrease violence and other evils within certain limits, but no one has come close to eliminating it. Contrary to some idealistic fantasies, children do not need to be taught to hate and prejudice: They are all too ready to pick on the one kid who is different or to reject the children in the other group."
All hope is not lost. Baumeister suggests that key to decreased violence is a culture which teaches self-control. But he notes that we will have a rocky future ahead with overpopulation, the rise of idealism, and rise of egoism. Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty isn't a feel-good book, but it's necessary for understanding why violence and cruelty continue existing in our societies.
P.S. Sorry about the lecture-kind book review, I found the message of the book too relevant to be ignored with the current trends in the world.
June 12, 2020
His beginning explanation over "evil being in the eye of the beholder", seems ridiculous to me. As humans we have constructed imagined realities . Which means at this point in time we know what to consider Evil. And what not. You cant just tell me that a perpetrator believed he innocently did nothing wrong raping someone. At this point in time, as I said, its common knowledge that rape indeed is evil. It doesn't rely on the perspective of the person. That is why jail exist, along with other reasons, in the first place. To get these evil doers and convert there harmful actions into the norm, the good.
I believe highkey actions of evil should be considered, and the rest is surely trivial by comparison. No point in even discussing the minor incidents like accidentally eating someones chips. Come on now.
Also, "Fair guesses" arent facts.
I looked up the date publication which was in 1999 but some information is outdated by now. Best not to believe statistics from 1994 (as he quoted) when we are currently in 2020.
Additionally, there is no talk of consciousness. The act of free-will in making decisions must be considered and dissected.
Some of the information are clearly defense mechanisms as well (ex. perpetrators become victims)
There are so many . Exceptions. Honestly speaking, I understand there will always be, but I prefer to read things that are way more concrete than these seesaw concepts.
He says one of the reasons that can lead to violence is high self-esteem, once thats violated it leads to evil. Not low self-esteem. But if you think about it if someones ego gets hurt they become violent that means in reality its low self-esteem and the person might use high self-esteem to mask the low self esteem for whatever reason they decide.
Humans are complex and so one must also take into consideration the abstract mental process not only behavior .
Yet I firmly believe that a person of true high self-esteem doesnt concern themselves with the comments of others because they know their worth.
I wish he would have organized his thoughts more clearly because reading this book seemed redundant.
The only reason I gave this a two star instead of one star is because I was able to nit pick knowledge that I was unaware of before.
I believe highkey actions of evil should be considered, and the rest is surely trivial by comparison. No point in even discussing the minor incidents like accidentally eating someones chips. Come on now.
Also, "Fair guesses" arent facts.
I looked up the date publication which was in 1999 but some information is outdated by now. Best not to believe statistics from 1994 (as he quoted) when we are currently in 2020.
Additionally, there is no talk of consciousness. The act of free-will in making decisions must be considered and dissected.
Some of the information are clearly defense mechanisms as well (ex. perpetrators become victims)
There are so many . Exceptions. Honestly speaking, I understand there will always be, but I prefer to read things that are way more concrete than these seesaw concepts.
He says one of the reasons that can lead to violence is high self-esteem, once thats violated it leads to evil. Not low self-esteem. But if you think about it if someones ego gets hurt they become violent that means in reality its low self-esteem and the person might use high self-esteem to mask the low self esteem for whatever reason they decide.
Humans are complex and so one must also take into consideration the abstract mental process not only behavior .
Yet I firmly believe that a person of true high self-esteem doesnt concern themselves with the comments of others because they know their worth.
I wish he would have organized his thoughts more clearly because reading this book seemed redundant.
The only reason I gave this a two star instead of one star is because I was able to nit pick knowledge that I was unaware of before.
April 28, 2016
I could barely get through 50 pages of this naive book. The foreword was written by a colleague who said that the author's work "complimented" his own. On page 53, this sentence occurs: "Two versions prevail in the victims' accounts, and in fact the two are probably."
Hypothetical perpetrator/victim accounts, such as a woman buying a diet Coke and some chips at the airport. When she sits down at the only available seat, the malevolent-looking man across from her starts eating chips from her bag. She later discovers a full bag of chips in her purse at the check-in. So she was eating from HIS bag of chips. How likely a scenario is that? It's probably.
Maybe it gets better, since it's gotten so many stars, but I wasn't willing to take that chance.
Hypothetical perpetrator/victim accounts, such as a woman buying a diet Coke and some chips at the airport. When she sits down at the only available seat, the malevolent-looking man across from her starts eating chips from her bag. She later discovers a full bag of chips in her purse at the check-in. So she was eating from HIS bag of chips. How likely a scenario is that? It's probably.
Maybe it gets better, since it's gotten so many stars, but I wasn't willing to take that chance.
July 1, 2018
This was a very good book, even if Baumeister tends to repeat himself. He drives home the point that to really understand evil (defined as the infliction of harm in a way that disrupts friendly, orderly, comprehensible existence), we must temporarily suspend our empathy with the victim. This permits us to appreciate the extent to which evil depends on context, and makes us realize that most people, given the circumstances, would be complicit in evil.
Baumeister starts off exploring the "myth of pure evil" (explaining how it muddies our picture of genuine evil), then explores the main causes of evil, and finishes with ways in which evil is restrained or spreads.
Below are some quotes:
"To produce violence, it is not necessary to promote it actively. All that is necessary is to stop restraining and preventing it. Once the restraints are removed, there are plenty of reasons for people to strike out at each other."
"There are four major root causes of evil ... The first root cause of evil is the simple desire for material gain, such as money or power. ... The second root of evil is threatened egotism. Villains, bullies, criminals, killers, and other evildoers have high self-esteem, contrary to the comfortable fiction that has recently spread through American culture. ... The third root of evil is idealism. When people believe firmly that they are on the side of the good and are working to make the world a better place, they often feel justified in using strong measures against the seemingly evil forces that oppose them. ... The fourth root cause of evil is the pursuit of sadistic pleasure. This root is responsible for a much smaller proportion of the world's evil than the others...."
"...sadistic pleasure is genuine, unusual, acquired only gradually, and responsible for only a minority of evil. ...only about 5 or 6 percent of perpetrators actually get enjoyment out of inflicting harm."
"...regardless of the root causes of violence, the immediate cause is often a breakdown of self-control."
"The concept of an irresistible impulse is somewhat misleading, because most violent behavior is not truly the result of irresistible impulses. People allow themselves to lose control. And they do so in part because they learn to regard certain impulses as irresistible. ... Since the legal system has often given lighter penalties to people who commit crimes in the heat of passion, it is hardly surprising that people often claim that their actions were provoked. ... To me, 'irresistible' means that you would do it even if someone were aiming a gun at you and forbidding you to do it; and indeed people will eventually lie down or urinate despite such a threat. But such cases are rare and exceptional. There are very few other impulses that are truly irresistible."
"Unfortunately, America's legal system and therapeutic culture often seem to support the view that perpetrators should be forgiven if they were victims. ... A more appropriate response would be to pity the abuser for what she suffered during her own childhood—but condemn her own abusive actions nonetheless."
"It is appealing but misleading to sort history into perpetrators and victims. Often there are more bystanders present than either perpetrators or victims, and the bystanders have the power to alter the outcome, whether they realize it or not."
"Bystanders do have a responsibility to protest evil, because it will grow unchecked if they do not."
"Ironically, the very effort to tolerate and value diversity constitutes a license to hate those who disagree. One of the core paradoxes in the recent social evolution in the United States is how the broad desire to overcome prejudice and ethnic antagonisms has resulted in a society that seems more fragmented and prejudiced than ever."
"...observers think that other people do things because of the kind of people they are and for other internal reasons, but [perpetrators] see their own actions as responding to the situation."
"It is difficult and perhaps impossible to understand any human phenomenon at the same time that one is condemning it. ... It is a mistake to let moral condemnation interfere with trying to understand—but it would be a bigger mistake to let that understanding, once it has been attained, interfere with moral condemnation."
Baumeister starts off exploring the "myth of pure evil" (explaining how it muddies our picture of genuine evil), then explores the main causes of evil, and finishes with ways in which evil is restrained or spreads.
Below are some quotes:
"To produce violence, it is not necessary to promote it actively. All that is necessary is to stop restraining and preventing it. Once the restraints are removed, there are plenty of reasons for people to strike out at each other."
"There are four major root causes of evil ... The first root cause of evil is the simple desire for material gain, such as money or power. ... The second root of evil is threatened egotism. Villains, bullies, criminals, killers, and other evildoers have high self-esteem, contrary to the comfortable fiction that has recently spread through American culture. ... The third root of evil is idealism. When people believe firmly that they are on the side of the good and are working to make the world a better place, they often feel justified in using strong measures against the seemingly evil forces that oppose them. ... The fourth root cause of evil is the pursuit of sadistic pleasure. This root is responsible for a much smaller proportion of the world's evil than the others...."
"...sadistic pleasure is genuine, unusual, acquired only gradually, and responsible for only a minority of evil. ...only about 5 or 6 percent of perpetrators actually get enjoyment out of inflicting harm."
"...regardless of the root causes of violence, the immediate cause is often a breakdown of self-control."
"The concept of an irresistible impulse is somewhat misleading, because most violent behavior is not truly the result of irresistible impulses. People allow themselves to lose control. And they do so in part because they learn to regard certain impulses as irresistible. ... Since the legal system has often given lighter penalties to people who commit crimes in the heat of passion, it is hardly surprising that people often claim that their actions were provoked. ... To me, 'irresistible' means that you would do it even if someone were aiming a gun at you and forbidding you to do it; and indeed people will eventually lie down or urinate despite such a threat. But such cases are rare and exceptional. There are very few other impulses that are truly irresistible."
"Unfortunately, America's legal system and therapeutic culture often seem to support the view that perpetrators should be forgiven if they were victims. ... A more appropriate response would be to pity the abuser for what she suffered during her own childhood—but condemn her own abusive actions nonetheless."
"It is appealing but misleading to sort history into perpetrators and victims. Often there are more bystanders present than either perpetrators or victims, and the bystanders have the power to alter the outcome, whether they realize it or not."
"Bystanders do have a responsibility to protest evil, because it will grow unchecked if they do not."
"Ironically, the very effort to tolerate and value diversity constitutes a license to hate those who disagree. One of the core paradoxes in the recent social evolution in the United States is how the broad desire to overcome prejudice and ethnic antagonisms has resulted in a society that seems more fragmented and prejudiced than ever."
"...observers think that other people do things because of the kind of people they are and for other internal reasons, but [perpetrators] see their own actions as responding to the situation."
"It is difficult and perhaps impossible to understand any human phenomenon at the same time that one is condemning it. ... It is a mistake to let moral condemnation interfere with trying to understand—but it would be a bigger mistake to let that understanding, once it has been attained, interfere with moral condemnation."
August 24, 2018
Evil isn’t as black and white as most people assume. That’s the controversial thesis of psychologist Roy Baumeister, author of more than 20 books. This fascinating 400-page tome challenges conventional wisdom with a number of surprising contentions:
* Ordinary people who aren’t deranged sociopaths are capable of committing many acts of evil.
* Low self-esteem does not account for violence; it’s more likely to come from individuals with high self-esteem who feel their self-image threatened or insulted.
* Victims as well as perpetrators present biased accounts of what occurred.
* Guilt is good for society because it “deters people from committing evil, criminal acts and makes them treat those they care about well.”
To understand why people inflict violence and cruelty, it’s instructive to compare the viewpoints of victims and perpetrators. Baumeister conducted an ingenious experiment by having subjects write two essays – one about an actual event in which they were the victims of some wrongful act, and the other about an event in which someone else felt victimized by the essayist. Researchers compared the victim and perpetrator essays and found common themes.
As victims, subjects tended to see things in stark, black-and-white terms of right versus wrong, while as perpetrators they saw more gray, more moral ambiguity, citing provocation or other extenuating circumstances and minimizing the harm they caused. As victims. they ascribed the worst intentions to their perps, describing the wrongdoing as either without any reason or due to deliberate maliciousness. By contrast, the same people had a much different viewpoint when they were the perps, describing their actions as a somewhat if not fully justified response given the circumstances.
To test whether victims are more accurate than perps, researchers had students randomly assigned as either victims or perps in a crime they read about. They then had to recount what happened in their own words. “Victims and perpetrators distorted the facts to an equal degree.” Victims tended to make the harm seem worse than it was, while perps tended to minimize the harm.
“It’s not safe to take the victim’s story as objective truth,” Baumeister writes, which is a startling assertion in the current #MeToo era. Neither the victim nor the perp is objective in describing what actually happened.
Research reveals that violence often emerges from a cycle of events in which both sides acted aggressively or dangerously. In other words, both sides may be to blame for reciprocal actions immediately preceding violence. “Such cases of mutual provocation and aggression appear to be more the norm than the exception.”
This ambiguity is also found in domestic violence among adults, where there is reciprocal, mutual causation in most cases, writes Baumeister. Mutual aggression was the norm in the landmark studies of martial violence conducted by Murray Straus. Large-scale aggression also follows the pattern of mutual, escalating provocations. Most often, history records the outbreak of violence followed a series of threats, ultimatums, and other provocations.
So who is to blame? In the infamous Lorena Bobbit case, she severed her husband’s penis, but accused him of earlier domestic violence. Both were acquitted in court. “Our cultural tendency to see good guys and bad guys…may make us unable to see the common reality in which both sides are in the wrong.”
Such black-and-white thinking doesn’t allow for understandable reasons for the actions of the other. Nor does it recognize any wrongdoing by one’s own side. But it justifies your side’s aggression and sacrifices, as well as mistreatment of the evil enemy. During WWII, for instance, it was common for American troops in the Pacific theatre to desecrate enemy corpses, sometimes taking grisly battlefield trophies.
Do idealistic goals justify using evil means to achieve those goals? In other words, do the ends justify the means? Many noble causes in history have resorted to torture and mayhem. The reason is that when people believe their cause is right and just, it’s natural to assume those who oppose that cause are wrong and hateful people who deserve whatever suffering can be inflicted upon them. True believers refuse to concede any legitimacy to opponents because that would undermine the goodness of their side. The Crusades, for instance, espoused idealistic goals, but resorted to frequent atrocities. Terrorists and torturers are usually true believers in their respective causes. Their lofty goals are used to justify any acts of cruelty and murder. The Old Testament justifies genocide as divine will.
Baumeister suggests that resorting to murder and mayhem tends to undermine high ideals. How good can they be, after all, if achieving them requires the slaughter of children? “In the long run, the ends often fail to justify the means, and instead the means tend to contaminate the ends.” Evil means tend to have unforeseen backlashes and side effects that weaken the idealistic goals.
A current example of the ends justifying the means is the conservative embrace of Donald Trump. Many conservatives and evangelicals recognize he’s a chronic liar and adulterer, which they found intolerable in President Clinton. They nonetheless overlook these character flaws in Trump because of the ends he can accomplish, such as tax cuts and nominating pro-life justices. Time will tell whether such dubious means will contaminate those ends.
Baumeister makes one error in stating that violence has been increasing, citing the world wars as evidence. “Civilization has thus far failed to reduce violence.” Stephen Pinker has demonstrated conclusively in two recent books that the death rate from wars and violence has steadily declined over the centuries. Writing in 1999, Baumeister predicted a rising American crime rate, but the violent crime rate has since declined.
Despite those minor caveats, Evil is an informative book that comprehensively addresses the topic, and does so in a way that challenges popular perception. The stereotype of absolute evil does account for some violent incidents, “but more often violence is a result of mutual, escalating provocations and grievances.” ###
* Ordinary people who aren’t deranged sociopaths are capable of committing many acts of evil.
* Low self-esteem does not account for violence; it’s more likely to come from individuals with high self-esteem who feel their self-image threatened or insulted.
* Victims as well as perpetrators present biased accounts of what occurred.
* Guilt is good for society because it “deters people from committing evil, criminal acts and makes them treat those they care about well.”
To understand why people inflict violence and cruelty, it’s instructive to compare the viewpoints of victims and perpetrators. Baumeister conducted an ingenious experiment by having subjects write two essays – one about an actual event in which they were the victims of some wrongful act, and the other about an event in which someone else felt victimized by the essayist. Researchers compared the victim and perpetrator essays and found common themes.
As victims, subjects tended to see things in stark, black-and-white terms of right versus wrong, while as perpetrators they saw more gray, more moral ambiguity, citing provocation or other extenuating circumstances and minimizing the harm they caused. As victims. they ascribed the worst intentions to their perps, describing the wrongdoing as either without any reason or due to deliberate maliciousness. By contrast, the same people had a much different viewpoint when they were the perps, describing their actions as a somewhat if not fully justified response given the circumstances.
To test whether victims are more accurate than perps, researchers had students randomly assigned as either victims or perps in a crime they read about. They then had to recount what happened in their own words. “Victims and perpetrators distorted the facts to an equal degree.” Victims tended to make the harm seem worse than it was, while perps tended to minimize the harm.
“It’s not safe to take the victim’s story as objective truth,” Baumeister writes, which is a startling assertion in the current #MeToo era. Neither the victim nor the perp is objective in describing what actually happened.
Research reveals that violence often emerges from a cycle of events in which both sides acted aggressively or dangerously. In other words, both sides may be to blame for reciprocal actions immediately preceding violence. “Such cases of mutual provocation and aggression appear to be more the norm than the exception.”
This ambiguity is also found in domestic violence among adults, where there is reciprocal, mutual causation in most cases, writes Baumeister. Mutual aggression was the norm in the landmark studies of martial violence conducted by Murray Straus. Large-scale aggression also follows the pattern of mutual, escalating provocations. Most often, history records the outbreak of violence followed a series of threats, ultimatums, and other provocations.
So who is to blame? In the infamous Lorena Bobbit case, she severed her husband’s penis, but accused him of earlier domestic violence. Both were acquitted in court. “Our cultural tendency to see good guys and bad guys…may make us unable to see the common reality in which both sides are in the wrong.”
Such black-and-white thinking doesn’t allow for understandable reasons for the actions of the other. Nor does it recognize any wrongdoing by one’s own side. But it justifies your side’s aggression and sacrifices, as well as mistreatment of the evil enemy. During WWII, for instance, it was common for American troops in the Pacific theatre to desecrate enemy corpses, sometimes taking grisly battlefield trophies.
Do idealistic goals justify using evil means to achieve those goals? In other words, do the ends justify the means? Many noble causes in history have resorted to torture and mayhem. The reason is that when people believe their cause is right and just, it’s natural to assume those who oppose that cause are wrong and hateful people who deserve whatever suffering can be inflicted upon them. True believers refuse to concede any legitimacy to opponents because that would undermine the goodness of their side. The Crusades, for instance, espoused idealistic goals, but resorted to frequent atrocities. Terrorists and torturers are usually true believers in their respective causes. Their lofty goals are used to justify any acts of cruelty and murder. The Old Testament justifies genocide as divine will.
Baumeister suggests that resorting to murder and mayhem tends to undermine high ideals. How good can they be, after all, if achieving them requires the slaughter of children? “In the long run, the ends often fail to justify the means, and instead the means tend to contaminate the ends.” Evil means tend to have unforeseen backlashes and side effects that weaken the idealistic goals.
A current example of the ends justifying the means is the conservative embrace of Donald Trump. Many conservatives and evangelicals recognize he’s a chronic liar and adulterer, which they found intolerable in President Clinton. They nonetheless overlook these character flaws in Trump because of the ends he can accomplish, such as tax cuts and nominating pro-life justices. Time will tell whether such dubious means will contaminate those ends.
Baumeister makes one error in stating that violence has been increasing, citing the world wars as evidence. “Civilization has thus far failed to reduce violence.” Stephen Pinker has demonstrated conclusively in two recent books that the death rate from wars and violence has steadily declined over the centuries. Writing in 1999, Baumeister predicted a rising American crime rate, but the violent crime rate has since declined.
Despite those minor caveats, Evil is an informative book that comprehensively addresses the topic, and does so in a way that challenges popular perception. The stereotype of absolute evil does account for some violent incidents, “but more often violence is a result of mutual, escalating provocations and grievances.” ###
February 2, 2019
Extremely well-researched and informational; a must-read for anyone intending to understand how to move forward and advocate for intelligent policy in a world that many see as increasingly dangerous and dark...
February 17, 2020
Why is he going in circles? Because he has nothing to say. Just some musings and navel gazing. And his proof: legends, fairy tales, just like the illiterate goat herders of the desert millennia ago, this guy can believe it all and than imagine an explanation to this fantasy. So yes, one can talk about evil and cruelty: this guy has a comfy life out of taxpayer money instead of telling the same stories in front of a tin cup in any of the many subway stations all over America.
May 19, 2013
If you want to see many reasons why people do bad things, read Evil. If you want to see many examples why people do evil things, read Evil. I don't know if reading Evil will keep you from becoming evil, but it's worth the price.
November 22, 2021
I’ve honestly been meaning to read this book for years. I’ve heard it reference numerous times when I read books about psychopaths or evil, and more specifically, Baumeister’s work around “the myth of pure evil” is referenced even more. I absolutely loved this book, and I wish I could convince as many people as possible to read it. The idea that people are “evil” leads to a lot of issues in our world, and Roy Baumeister does an amazing job discussing the science, psychology, and facts around what we perceive as evil. Often times, evil isn’t what we think it is, and we neglect that most people who do “evil” things believe that they’re doing something righteous or for the right reason. The book discusses covers terrible things that happened in different wars, serial killers, everyday violence, and so much more. By reading this book, you’ll have a better understanding of the world and realize that everything isn’t so black and white because pure evil isn’t real or what you think it is.
May 29, 2021
Evil.
It’s a word that gets tossed about a lot, defined more or less by what the person using it considers terribly wrong and/or immoral. It’s also dismissed as a logical way of looking at deeds that harm others by some who prefer to find social or psychological explanations—or who prefer the idea some people aren’t like the rest of us. Still others just apply it to anyone they don’t like.
Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty was written in 1997, right around the time the term “superpredators” was coined as part of the effort by the current President and his predecessor Bill Clinton that ended in the US having the highest number of people incarcerated in the world. When I first realized how little I understood current events, it was one of the first books I bought to expand my knowledge base. It was the constant labeling of Donald Trump and anyone who supported him as “evil” that led me to finish reading it.
“Most people who perpetrate evil do not see what they are doing as evil,” Dr. Baumgartner notes on the first page of chapter 1. Indeed, he goes on to suggest, if it weren’t for their victims’ suffering, evil might not even be a social construct.
In what follows, he provides a compelling amount of evidence that even sociopaths aren’t “born evil”, although they may be more susceptible to doing evil deeds for reasons of their personal psychology. In essence, he says, it’s the deeds that are evil, because they cause suffering. But can the case be made that those who intentionally choose to cause suffering are themselves evil?
Violence perpetrated on others, he writes, boils down to a lack of self-control. That self-control is why all of us don’t do evil things. Yet given the proper circumstances, even those who have excellent self-control may lose it—and cause harm.
This is an important book not just because it provides a cogent and well-supported argument that adds a needed level to sanity in a culture that increasingly labels people permanently “evil” for a single misdeed decades in their past. It’s also presented in a way that doesn’t require a degree in clinical psychology to understand. For those reasons I recommend anyone struggling to make sense of why we seem to live in a world full of genocide and mass shootings and police brutality find a copy as soon as possible.
It’s a word that gets tossed about a lot, defined more or less by what the person using it considers terribly wrong and/or immoral. It’s also dismissed as a logical way of looking at deeds that harm others by some who prefer to find social or psychological explanations—or who prefer the idea some people aren’t like the rest of us. Still others just apply it to anyone they don’t like.
Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty was written in 1997, right around the time the term “superpredators” was coined as part of the effort by the current President and his predecessor Bill Clinton that ended in the US having the highest number of people incarcerated in the world. When I first realized how little I understood current events, it was one of the first books I bought to expand my knowledge base. It was the constant labeling of Donald Trump and anyone who supported him as “evil” that led me to finish reading it.
“Most people who perpetrate evil do not see what they are doing as evil,” Dr. Baumgartner notes on the first page of chapter 1. Indeed, he goes on to suggest, if it weren’t for their victims’ suffering, evil might not even be a social construct.
In what follows, he provides a compelling amount of evidence that even sociopaths aren’t “born evil”, although they may be more susceptible to doing evil deeds for reasons of their personal psychology. In essence, he says, it’s the deeds that are evil, because they cause suffering. But can the case be made that those who intentionally choose to cause suffering are themselves evil?
Violence perpetrated on others, he writes, boils down to a lack of self-control. That self-control is why all of us don’t do evil things. Yet given the proper circumstances, even those who have excellent self-control may lose it—and cause harm.
This is an important book not just because it provides a cogent and well-supported argument that adds a needed level to sanity in a culture that increasingly labels people permanently “evil” for a single misdeed decades in their past. It’s also presented in a way that doesn’t require a degree in clinical psychology to understand. For those reasons I recommend anyone struggling to make sense of why we seem to live in a world full of genocide and mass shootings and police brutality find a copy as soon as possible.
December 10, 2020
This book blew my mind after it had been prepared by my reading The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West and The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. The thing about this book... It's about the psychology of why people commit evil acts, sure, but that's not the remarkable part. What's so important about is that it explores the psychology of why it's difficult for us to understand why people commit evil acts. We can read about all the reasons and nod intelligently - we can even read about the "banality of evil" (which in the usually used sense is explored here much more than in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil) - and then, when faced with an actual act, we go right back to the psychological biases that make us imagine that evildoers are inherently evil and victims are always innocent. Or, alternatively, if it is ourselves or our side committing the evil, we'll belittle it because, well, we're not evil, so what we did couldn't have been evil. Most people wouldn't admit to holding such ridiculous premisses, but our unconscious minds force them upon us anyway.
These biases are incredibly powerful. Now that I've had my eyes opened by this book, in conjunction with those other two I mentioned earlier which prepared me to really understand it, I see how the myth of pure evil (as Baumeister calls it) guides people's thinking about evil for most of the time, and how it had me, too, blinded when I was thinking about the psychology of evil before. Yet rising above the biases is very important, and this book is the best way I know of doing that... though the biases are so insidious that just reading it once may not suffice. There's a reason I mention reading two other books first. It was a gradual process.
These biases are incredibly powerful. Now that I've had my eyes opened by this book, in conjunction with those other two I mentioned earlier which prepared me to really understand it, I see how the myth of pure evil (as Baumeister calls it) guides people's thinking about evil for most of the time, and how it had me, too, blinded when I was thinking about the psychology of evil before. Yet rising above the biases is very important, and this book is the best way I know of doing that... though the biases are so insidious that just reading it once may not suffice. There's a reason I mention reading two other books first. It was a gradual process.
to-keep-reference
August 31, 2018Baumeister examined evil from the perspective of both victim and perpetrator. When taking the perpetrators perspective, he found that people who do things we see as evil, from spousal abuse all the way to genocide, rarely think they are doing anything wrong. They almost always see themselves as responding to attacks and provocations in ways that are justified. They often think that they themselves are victims. But, of course, you can see right through this tactic; you are good at understanding the biases that others use to protect their self-esteem. The disturbing part is that Baumeister shows us our own distortions as victims, and as righteous advocates of victims. Almost everywhere Baumeister looked in the research literature, he found that victims often shared some of the blame. Most murders result from an escalating cycle of provocation and retaliation; often, the corpse could just as easily have been the murderer. In half of all domestic disputes, both sides used violence. Baumeister points out that, even in instances of obvious police brutality, such as the infamous videotaped beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1991, there is usually much more to the story than is shown on the news. (News programs gain viewers by satisfying peoples need to believe that evil stalks the land.)
The Happiness Hypothesis Pág.74
The Happiness Hypothesis Pág.74
March 16, 2013
Heavy read, super interesting- evil and society's perceptions of 'pure evil' throughout history.
April 19, 2014
An interesting and insightful read I did for my Psychology of Evil course. Would definitely recommend for anyone interested in learning about reasons behind evil.
July 11, 2018
Some vaguely interesting points, but incredibly badly written.
March 25, 2022
An exceptional, fair, and balanced work. So many great insights. Must read!
November 3, 2024
An interesting book, if philosophically dated, Evil tells the story of how people perceive, engage in, and justify acts that most would consider evil. There is a specific focus on the minds of perpetrators, avoiding the thoughts of victims in order to understand causes moreso than results. Baumeister's examples more than his conclusions make this a worthwhile study.
Yes, times and ideas of evil have changed significantly since 1997 when this book was published. Some of the stories seem mundane today, and there is a specific discussion of how the US is safer because there is very little gun violence compared to other nations, which I suspect was untrue then as it is drastically untrue now. It gives one insight into an nearly extinct vision of what constitutes recognition of the problems plauging civilization at the end of the twentieth century.
The primary examples used are obvious, universal studies of awfulness that are no less relevent today. There are deep discussions of the justifications tyrants, tortureers and butchers use to claim that genocide was necessary, and a particularly fascinating insight into the horrible cliche of "just following orders." In fact it seems that most of the people engaged in mass slaughter slowly grow to accept it after being horrified, or even refusing to engage at first. They tell themselves stories about how they killed children after killing their parents because "I was saving them from a hopeless future. How could a small child survive without their parents?" There are a lot of such transitions of moral safety in transforming one's ideas on goodness and morality into the benefits their acts of savagry can have, usually dwindled down to a false cry of patriotic loyalty.
A very good book on its subject, printed by an aloof academic press (apparently), and filled with misplacements, out of sequence pages, and some sloppy editing. Worth your time if you are interested in the subject from the perspective of psychology, sociology, and the philosophy of human behavior.
Yes, times and ideas of evil have changed significantly since 1997 when this book was published. Some of the stories seem mundane today, and there is a specific discussion of how the US is safer because there is very little gun violence compared to other nations, which I suspect was untrue then as it is drastically untrue now. It gives one insight into an nearly extinct vision of what constitutes recognition of the problems plauging civilization at the end of the twentieth century.
The primary examples used are obvious, universal studies of awfulness that are no less relevent today. There are deep discussions of the justifications tyrants, tortureers and butchers use to claim that genocide was necessary, and a particularly fascinating insight into the horrible cliche of "just following orders." In fact it seems that most of the people engaged in mass slaughter slowly grow to accept it after being horrified, or even refusing to engage at first. They tell themselves stories about how they killed children after killing their parents because "I was saving them from a hopeless future. How could a small child survive without their parents?" There are a lot of such transitions of moral safety in transforming one's ideas on goodness and morality into the benefits their acts of savagry can have, usually dwindled down to a false cry of patriotic loyalty.
A very good book on its subject, printed by an aloof academic press (apparently), and filled with misplacements, out of sequence pages, and some sloppy editing. Worth your time if you are interested in the subject from the perspective of psychology, sociology, and the philosophy of human behavior.
January 12, 2025
This book offers a well-developed (per 1999) social psychology perspective on violence, or what the author defines as "evil"—the infliction of violence and the creation of chaos, as I interpreted it. It's challenging to provide a rationalization, justification, or even deep insight into why certain criminal acts, genocides, and injustices occur, but Baumeister does an excellent job (although in some ways controversial and perhaps not always entirely believable) of approaching the topic from the lens of social and behavioral science.
While I may not have agreed with all of the historical characterizations presented (some personal biases seemed evident, especially in the portrayal of so-called "idealists," which appeared to include religious/Christian people in a broader sense—though this definition may not be entirely fitting, since it would have to refer to individuals who prioritize visionary work or ideals over some more practical considerations).
I don't disagree with his rationalization on how idealist groups can (and do) overlook those practical considerations, though (and psychologically speaking it makes perfect sense). I simply think the terms in that respect were not well-defined and were too broadly encompassing.
As an American social psychologist however, he will have a tendency to characterize historical events from the American and western perspective, which does not always characterize or record history accurately (and will often socialize people into believing horribly misinformed perspectives and rationalizations). Examples include justification for the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, French revolution, etc.
America's anti-religious and anti-restraint social state affects the way in which these events are presented, subsequently affecting the way they may be approached, even if scientific research (non-ambiguously credible) is used as a lens for interpretation.
I still found the book highly informative and gained valuable insights from it. A great winter break read, and worth my time too!
While I may not have agreed with all of the historical characterizations presented (some personal biases seemed evident, especially in the portrayal of so-called "idealists," which appeared to include religious/Christian people in a broader sense—though this definition may not be entirely fitting, since it would have to refer to individuals who prioritize visionary work or ideals over some more practical considerations).
I don't disagree with his rationalization on how idealist groups can (and do) overlook those practical considerations, though (and psychologically speaking it makes perfect sense). I simply think the terms in that respect were not well-defined and were too broadly encompassing.
As an American social psychologist however, he will have a tendency to characterize historical events from the American and western perspective, which does not always characterize or record history accurately (and will often socialize people into believing horribly misinformed perspectives and rationalizations). Examples include justification for the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, French revolution, etc.
America's anti-religious and anti-restraint social state affects the way in which these events are presented, subsequently affecting the way they may be approached, even if scientific research (non-ambiguously credible) is used as a lens for interpretation.
I still found the book highly informative and gained valuable insights from it. A great winter break read, and worth my time too!
February 12, 2020
Came highly recommended by a friend. Mostly I found myself nodding along; it largely confirms my thoughts on how humans probably work, with one important exception: he makes a big distinction between those with strong self-confidence but who feel threatened when challenged, and those who actually have a weak self-image. We often talk about those who lash out at others when challenged (as a certain U.S. president does) in terms of someone who deep inside is insecure, but Baumeister here says that isn't so, it's really a separate category.
Most of what he says here seems good, and is generally supported with links to research documents, but I'm not sure he has sexual violence right yet.
I did find myself highlighting a fair number of points and statements here.
His primary macro examples are the obvious twentieth-century ones: the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge, the Cultural Revolution, Stalin's purges.
His discussion of how Turkey pushed the boundaries again and again until it managed to commit genocide on the Armenians is insightful. I also learned quite a bit about how the Nazis organized the Holocaust to minimize individuals' sense of both responsibility and ability to alter the outcome.
I did feel like, based on the way the Cultural Revolution was repeatedly invoked, that Baumeister actually knows little about (recent) Chinese history; the first rounds of intense starvation were due to the Great Leap Forward, and of course enforcement of rigid ideological purity began as soon at the Chinese Communist Party was founded.
Overall, recommended.
Most of what he says here seems good, and is generally supported with links to research documents, but I'm not sure he has sexual violence right yet.
I did find myself highlighting a fair number of points and statements here.
His primary macro examples are the obvious twentieth-century ones: the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge, the Cultural Revolution, Stalin's purges.
His discussion of how Turkey pushed the boundaries again and again until it managed to commit genocide on the Armenians is insightful. I also learned quite a bit about how the Nazis organized the Holocaust to minimize individuals' sense of both responsibility and ability to alter the outcome.
I did feel like, based on the way the Cultural Revolution was repeatedly invoked, that Baumeister actually knows little about (recent) Chinese history; the first rounds of intense starvation were due to the Great Leap Forward, and of course enforcement of rigid ideological purity began as soon at the Chinese Communist Party was founded.
Overall, recommended.
November 19, 2021
While parts of this book are outdated it remains a very important and insightful look into human nature, culture, and violence. Throughout his work, Baumeister makes a distinction between what we know as "the myth of pure evil" and how evil actually occurs. How we think and talk about evil rarely matches up with how evil is actually carried out. Usually we think of evil in terms of victims and perpetrators, but this leaves out the responsibility of bystanders. It also brings up how evildoers don't view their actions as evil, they always have a justifiable reason (to them).
This is a work of sociology, but is very readable with lots of world examples. It covers a lot of comprehensive ground and gives a great deal of thought to nuance. The scope and scale that are covered in this book are very important. This might be one of the most important books I have read in the name of research.
That being said, I had a few misgivings about this book. First, there is one sentence about how testosterone is tied to aggression. Not only does the meta analysis not support this, the studies that do claim high testosterone is connected to aggression were conducted with biases and done on male prisoners. This wasn't discussed at length, and at the time this was written this was highly accepted as true, but nonetheless it bothered me. Secondly, Baumeister goes out of his was to not use the term racism or sexism. Maybe this was on purpose, as to not bring in the perspective of the victim (which he was attempting to avoid) but it was still annoying.
This is a work of sociology, but is very readable with lots of world examples. It covers a lot of comprehensive ground and gives a great deal of thought to nuance. The scope and scale that are covered in this book are very important. This might be one of the most important books I have read in the name of research.
That being said, I had a few misgivings about this book. First, there is one sentence about how testosterone is tied to aggression. Not only does the meta analysis not support this, the studies that do claim high testosterone is connected to aggression were conducted with biases and done on male prisoners. This wasn't discussed at length, and at the time this was written this was highly accepted as true, but nonetheless it bothered me. Secondly, Baumeister goes out of his was to not use the term racism or sexism. Maybe this was on purpose, as to not bring in the perspective of the victim (which he was attempting to avoid) but it was still annoying.
March 13, 2021
"When future centuries say that the twentieth was the age of supreme evil, they will be referring not only to death camps and world wars, but also to the selfish, reckless consumption of energy and the destructive pollution of the air and water."
I picked up this book after reading the The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, since the author recommends it when he refers to the 'Myth of Pure Evil'. This 'myth' is quickly dispelled by the author of Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty.
What I find most compelling about the book is that Evil is viewed from the perspective of the perpetrator, instead of the victim. This creates a matter of fact depiction of evil, which some might find disturbing (e.g. "One could even suggest that it is wasteful (from a practical point of view) to kill a pretty woman without raping her first.")
The book seems to be primarily aimed at Americans, as an often-recurring theme in the book is racial segregation and violence. In that sense, it would have been more interesting if the author tried to include a wider range of evils.
November 19, 2022
Fascinating, fascinating, fascinating. And disturbing. I've never read a book like it.
Things I learned:
- Most evil people are normal people.
- Most people who commit evil acts do not consider themselves or their actions as evil. Though victims surely consider them as evil. Reminds me a bit of Kahneman's "fundamental attribution error." Baumeister calls this the "magnitude gap." Essentially, the evil act is not that big of a deal for the aggressor (usually an act that is over in seconds or minutes) but a huge deal for the victim (long-term trauma)
- Baumeister's view is that a lack of self-control is the main cause of evil acts.
- Too MUCH self-esteem is usually at play, not low self-esteem.
- We can become desensitized to violence over time. What once was upsetting can become no big deal when repeated. He cites examples of torturers whose job was traumatic at first but lost its traumatic impact as they continued harming people.
- Baumeister draws parallels between drinking/smoking and harm infliction. At first the experience is unsavory but eventually people grow hungry for the experience. They derive pleasure from it.
Four Roots of Evil:
- Means to an end (instrumental evil) - lust, greed, or ambition
- Egotism and revenge - often responding to threats to self-esteem
- Idealism & utopian goals - think of evil in the name of religion or for nationalistic causes
- Sadism/fun - accounts for small fraction of evil acts
Things I learned:
- Most evil people are normal people.
- Most people who commit evil acts do not consider themselves or their actions as evil. Though victims surely consider them as evil. Reminds me a bit of Kahneman's "fundamental attribution error." Baumeister calls this the "magnitude gap." Essentially, the evil act is not that big of a deal for the aggressor (usually an act that is over in seconds or minutes) but a huge deal for the victim (long-term trauma)
- Baumeister's view is that a lack of self-control is the main cause of evil acts.
- Too MUCH self-esteem is usually at play, not low self-esteem.
- We can become desensitized to violence over time. What once was upsetting can become no big deal when repeated. He cites examples of torturers whose job was traumatic at first but lost its traumatic impact as they continued harming people.
- Baumeister draws parallels between drinking/smoking and harm infliction. At first the experience is unsavory but eventually people grow hungry for the experience. They derive pleasure from it.
Four Roots of Evil:
- Means to an end (instrumental evil) - lust, greed, or ambition
- Egotism and revenge - often responding to threats to self-esteem
- Idealism & utopian goals - think of evil in the name of religion or for nationalistic causes
- Sadism/fun - accounts for small fraction of evil acts
August 28, 2022
Some interesting ideas in the book, more specifically on how the route to creating evil actions is through a sort of normalization or lifting of restrictions, permission to those who might be inhibited or feel guilt, otherwise. Also, the breakdown of "the myth of pure evil" is quite good.
A weak spot is that the author sometimes relies too much on research from the pseudoscientific field of criminal profiling to back some of his theories, or even the use of Hares' work on psychopathy, which might not be too reliable a construct, especially when building ambitious theories of evil. The biggest example of this is the mention of violent media and violence in real life, where he insinuates that slasher films inspire actual killers, without considering that it might be the other way around: slasher films are sometimes inspired by real-life killers. This is probably the case, given the flimsy evidence in studies of mass media and violence. Although he is right in claiming that violent media may attract a certain kind of person, the audience, overall, is likely too broad to make some of the correlations he makes. Another quibble is when he mentions that dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was necessary to defeat evil when historical evidence seems to reveal that the atomic bombs did not need to be dropped. The firebombing beforehand had dealt significant damage (more than the bombs) and Japan would have folded, without having to be nuked. It shows that there is still some nuance missing in some of the books claims.
A weak spot is that the author sometimes relies too much on research from the pseudoscientific field of criminal profiling to back some of his theories, or even the use of Hares' work on psychopathy, which might not be too reliable a construct, especially when building ambitious theories of evil. The biggest example of this is the mention of violent media and violence in real life, where he insinuates that slasher films inspire actual killers, without considering that it might be the other way around: slasher films are sometimes inspired by real-life killers. This is probably the case, given the flimsy evidence in studies of mass media and violence. Although he is right in claiming that violent media may attract a certain kind of person, the audience, overall, is likely too broad to make some of the correlations he makes. Another quibble is when he mentions that dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was necessary to defeat evil when historical evidence seems to reveal that the atomic bombs did not need to be dropped. The firebombing beforehand had dealt significant damage (more than the bombs) and Japan would have folded, without having to be nuked. It shows that there is still some nuance missing in some of the books claims.
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