Ervin Staub (born June 13, 1938) is a professor of psychology, emeritus, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the founding director of the doctoral program on the psychology of peace and violence. [1] He is most known for his works on helping behavior and altruism, and on the psychology of mass violence and genocide. He was born in Hungary and received his Ph.D. from Stanford. He later taught at Harvard University. [2] He worked in many settings, both conducting research and applying his research and theory. He worked in schools to raise caring and non-violent children, and to promote active bystandership by students in response to bullying, in the Netherlands to improve Dutch-Muslim relations, in Rwanda, Burundi and the Congo to promote healing and reconciliation. [3] He has served as an expert witness, for example, at the Abu Ghraib trials, [4] lectured widely on topics related to his work in academic, public, and government settings in the U.S. and other countries, and is the recipient of numerous honors.
His most recent book is Overcoming evil: Genocide, violent conflict and terrorism. 2011. New York: Oxford University Press.
Evil, in a general sense, is defined by what it is not—the opposite or absence of good. It can be an extremely broad concept, although in everyday usage it is often more narrowly used to talk about profound wickedness and against common good. It is generally seen as taking multiple possible forms, such as the form of personal moral evil commonly associated with the word, or impersonal natural evil, and in religious thought, the form of the demonic or supernatural/eternal. While some religions, world views, and philosophies focus on "good versus evil", others deny evil's existence and usefulness in describing people.
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people — usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group — in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word γένος with the Latin suffix -caedo.
Mass killing is a concept which has been proposed by genocide scholars who wish to define incidents of non-combat killing which are perpetrated by a government or a state. A mass killing is commonly defined as the killing of group members without the intention to eliminate the whole group, or otherwise the killing of large numbers of people without a clear group membership.
In most contexts, the concept of good denotes the conduct that should be preferred when posed with a choice between possible actions. Good is generally considered to be the opposite of evil and is of interest in the study of ethics, morality, philosophy, and religion. The specific meaning and etymology of the term and its associated translations among ancient and contemporary languages show substantial variation in its inflection and meaning, depending on circumstances of place and history, or of philosophical or religious context.
Philip George Zimbardo is an American psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He became known for his 1971 Stanford prison experiment, which was later severely criticized for both ethical and scientific reasons. He has authored various introductory psychology textbooks for college students, and other notable works, including The Lucifer Effect, The Time Paradox, and The Time Cure. He is also the founder and president of the Heroic Imagination Project.
Robert Jay Lifton is an American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of wars and political violence, and for his theory of thought reform. He was an early proponent of the techniques of psychohistory.
Donald Black is a University Professor of the Social Sciences at the University of Virginia. Black received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan in 1968, and he taught at Yale and Harvard before moving to Virginia in 1985.
Religious violence covers phenomena where religion is either the subject or the object of violent behavior. All the religions of the world contain narratives, symbols, and metaphors of violence and war. Religious violence is violence that is motivated by, or in reaction to, religious precepts, texts, or the doctrines of a target or an attacker. It includes violence against religious institutions, people, objects, or events. Religious violence does not exclusively include acts which are committed by religious groups, instead, it includes acts which are committed against religious groups.
Like rational choice theory, conflict theory, or functionalism, pure sociology is a sociological paradigm — a strategy for explaining human behavior. Developed by Donald Black as an alternative to individualistic and social-psychological theories, pure sociology was initially used to explain variation in legal behavior. Since then, Black and other pure sociologists have used the strategy to explain terrorism, genocide, lynching, and other forms of conflict management as well as science, art, and religion.
The term cycle of violence refers to repeated and dangerous acts of violence as a cyclical pattern, associated with high emotions and doctrines of retribution or revenge. The pattern, or cycle, repeats and can happen many times during a relationship. Each phase may last a different length of time, and over time the level of violence may increase. The phrase has been increasingly widespread since first popularised in the 1970s.
Dr. James E. Waller is a Holocaust and Genocide Studies professor at Keene State College located in Keene, New Hampshire.
Leo Kuper was a South African sociologist specialising in the study of genocide.
David Charles Rapoport is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) who focuses on the study of terrorism.
Radicalization is the process by which an individual or a group comes to adopt increasingly radical views in opposition to a political, social, or religious status quo. The ideas of society at large shape the outcomes of radicalization; for example, radical movements can originate from a broad social consensus against progressive changes in society or from a broad desire for change in society. Radicalization can result in both violent and nonviolent action – academic literature focuses on radicalization into violent extremism (RVE) or radicalisation leading to acts of terrorism. Multiple separate pathways can promote the process of radicalization, which can be independent but are usually mutually reinforcing.
Daniel Bar-Tal is an Israeli academic, author and Branco Weiss Professor of Research in Child Development and Education at School of Education, Tel Aviv University.
Moral exclusion is a psychological process where members of a group view their own group and its norms as superior to others, belittling, marginalizing, excluding, even dehumanizing targeted groups. A distinction should be drawn between active exclusion and omission. The former requires intent and is a form of injustice, known as moral exclusion; while the latter is thoughtlessness. The targeted group is viewed as undeserving of morally mandated rights and protections. When conflict between groups escalates, the in-group/out-group bias between the groups heightens. Severe violence between groups can be either the antecedent or the outcome of moral exclusion. At its extreme it is a bidirectional phenomenon that defies precise origin.
Peace psychology is a subfield of psychology and peace research that deals with the psychological aspects of peace, conflict, violence, and war. Peace psychology can be characterized by four interconnected pillars: (1) research, (2) education, (3) practice, and (4) advocacy. The first pillar, research, is documented most extensively in this article.
The concept of toxic masculinity is used in academic and media discussions of masculinity to refer to certain cultural norms that are associated with harm to society and men themselves. Traditional stereotypes of men as socially dominant, along with related traits such as misogyny and homophobia, can be considered "toxic" due in part to their promotion of violence, including sexual assault and domestic violence. The socialization of boys in patriarchal societies often normalizes violence, such as in the saying "boys will be boys" about bullying and aggression.
In religion, ethics, philosophy, and psychology "good and evil" is a very common dichotomy. In cultures with Manichaean and Abrahamic religious influence, evil is perceived as the dualistic antagonistic opposite of good, in which good should prevail and evil should be defeated. In cultures with Buddhist spiritual influence, both good and evil are perceived as part of an antagonistic duality that itself must be overcome through achieving Śūnyatā meaning emptiness in the sense of recognition of good and evil being two opposing principles but not a reality, emptying the duality of them, and achieving a oneness.
The psychology of genocide attempts to explain genocide by means of psychology. Psychology of genocide aims to explain the preconditions of genocide and why some people become genocide perpetrators while others are bystanders or rescuers.