...The Psychology of Genocide Of all of the monumental events in history, there is perhaps no incident as fascinating from a social psychology perspective as the Holocaust. An entire nation of people took part, to some degree, in an ideology of hatred and a policy of murder towards distinct ethnic groups. An estimated 13 million people were murdered as a result of these policies, 6 million of whom were Jewish, the most hated group of all. And all of this took place in one of the most advanced nations in the world! While the Holocaust was happening, the world was largely ignorant to what was going on. In the years following Germany’s defeat, however, the grisly details began to come to the surface. A Diary of a Young Girl was published in 1950, and is the diary of a girl named Anne Frank. Anne Frank along with her family hid from the Nazi’s during their occupation of Amsterdam. One of her protectors, Miep Gies, was later interviewed in the documentary Dear Kitty: Remembering Anne Frank. From these sources we can gather information on all the people involved, not just in Anne Franks case, but in occupied Holland as a whole. This information is rich in the concepts of social psychology, as we can study the victims, the perpetrators, the bystanders, and the rebels. In this paper, we will examine why everyone involved in Anne Franks hiding and death acted the way they did, and what may have motivated them to do so. The main perpetrators used persuasion and stereotyping to achieve...
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...In the year of 1933, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Nazis, who came to power in Germany, had the belief that the Jewish members of society were racially inferior. With this thought in mind, the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, organized what would be known as The Final Solution. In 1933, the European population consisted of over nine million Jewish members. By the end of the Holocaust in 1945, the German-Nazi Party “killed nearly two out of every three European Jews” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2016). During the years of the Holocaust, the Jews, and other groups persecuted by the Nazi’s such as homosexuals and the mentally challenged, were forced into concentration camps where they would either be deemed...
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...The experiment[edit] Milgram Experiment advertisement Three individuals were involved: the one running the experiment, the subject of the experiment (a volunteer), and a confederate pretending to be a volunteer. These three people fill three distinct roles: the Experimenter (an authoritative role), the professor (a role intended to obey the orders of the Experimenter), and the Learner (the recipient of stimulus from the Teacher). The subject and the actor both drew slips of paper to determine their roles, but unknown to the subject, both slips said "teacher". The actor would always claim to have drawn the slip that read "learner", thus guaranteeing that the subject would always be the "teacher". At this point, the "teacher" and "learner" were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. In one version of the experiment, the confederate was sure to mention to the participant that he had a heart condition.[1] The "teacher" was given an electric shock from the electro-shock generator as a sample of the shock that the "learner" would supposedly receive during the experiment. The "teacher" was then given a list of word pairs which he was to teach the learner. The teacher began by reading the list of word pairs to the learner. The teacher would then read the first word of each pair and read four possible answers. The learner would press a button to indicate his response. If the answer was incorrect, the teacher would administer a shock to...
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...to authority study conducted by Stanley Milgram is an example of how social influence can actually change the way an individual will behave regardless of personal belief in the presence of an authority figure in a hierarchical situation (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). The Milgram experiment measured obedience to an authority figure through electric shocks, which are given by study participants to another person upon directives given from whom the participants thought of as an authority figure. Milgram’s study showed how far people would go to obey orders from an authority figure. Obedience is the act of carrying out commands in compliance to authority (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). Information gathered from the web site for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2011), tells us that in World War II, Jewish slave laborers are recruited by Nazi’s, to help enforce Nazi laws in the Warsaw ghetto, and complete jobs unfitting for Nazi military, such as clearing the bodies of murdered Jews. Rather than an uprising, Jewish people selected were obedient and complied to avoid Nazi...
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...The events of the Holocaust and those of industrial animal slaughterhouses bear a multitude of bone chilling similarities. The most prominent being the presence of death on a large and mechanized scale. Through a post-humanist standpoint that rejects notions of anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism, the Holocaust and industrial slaughter houses are easily comparable and both instances of genocidal horror. A post-humanist view accepts that animals and humans have the same right to live a life free of suffering and murder, on the platform that they are sentient beings and cannot be placed on a moral hierarchy that positions them as less than the human species. This position also acknowledges the interconnectedness and similarities between...
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...example of how social influence can actually change the way an individual will behave regardless of personal belief in the presence of an authority figure in a hierarchical situation (Kowalski & Westen, 2009). The Milgram experiment measured obedience to an authority figure through electric shocks which were given by study participants to another person upon directives given from whom the participants thought of as an authority figure (Kowalski & Westen, 2009). Milgram’s study showed how far people would go to obey orders from an authority figure. Description Obedience is the act of carrying out commands in compliance to authority (Kowalski & Westen, 2009). Information gathered from the Web site for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2011) tells us that in World War II, Jewish slave laborers were recruited by Nazi’s...
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...to conduct an experiment in response to the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Milgram wanted to know if Germans under the rule of authority figures did exactly what they were instructed to do by those of higher power than them due to the fact that many of the explanations for the Nazi atrocities was simply that Nazi soldiers were following orders. After placing an ad in the New Haven Register for a learning experiment on the study of memory. According to Thomas Blass (2009), offering participants $4.50 and a paid bus fare for an hour of their time seemed to be the biggest factor that attracted people to the ad but several of the participants also agreed to be a part of the study to learn something about themselves, expand their curiosity about psychology, or because they were fascinated by memory and hoped to understand it better through an experiment like Milgram's. The subjects were introduced to a man in a lab coat who would administrate the experiment. Subjects were told they would be taking the role of a teacher in a learner/teacher circumstance where they would test the memory of a man through a series of vocabulary tests. For every wrong answer, the subject was instructed to inflict a shock on the "learner", with the power of the shocks ranging from 15 volts, which was rather harmless, to 450 volts...
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...Recent attacks on Israel can be easily compared to how the Holocaust began. The ethnic cleansing efforts of Adolf Hitler didn’t start out as a scheme for the destruction of an entire race, but simply, yet horrifically, many spontaneous murders aimed to encourage Jewish emigration. Israel has already given a vast majority of their land to Palestine, yet no matter how much land they have given, Palestinians keep pushing for more and more land. Thus, much like Hitler starting with the want to relocate Jews, is truly an awful plan to slowly take over land which the Jewish people are indigenous to. “A lie told often enough becomes truth.” - Vladimir Lenin Hitler managed to convince the majority of a nation that Jews were to blame for Germany’s problems. Palestinian propaganda, such as maps falsely advertises the idea of Israel taking their land.This propaganda has been shared and spread so vastly that true maps are almost impossible to find. Similarly, in Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, he discusses his formula for coercion such as stirring up people’s emotions. According to one of Hitler’s main inspirations, Gustave Le Bon (an author who was considered an authority on the psychology of crowds), when people form a group, their will as an individual is surrendered to what is perceived to be the will of the group. These individuals enter into a state where...
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...Psy/400 Social Psychology Social Psychology Definition Lauren Davis Marinela Dushmani November 2, 2015 Introduction The things the author will discuss and cover in this paper are; the definition of social psychology, a brief history background of social psychology. The way social psychology differs from clinical psychology, general psychology, and sociology. Also the role of research in social psychology will be discussed. Define Social Psychology Social Psychology is a discipline that uses scientific method “to understand and explain ones thoughts, feelings, and behavior that are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other human being” (Gordon Allport, 1985). The year social facilitation was introduced was 1800’s. After WW2 was when the research of social psychology began. The holocaust was what led the researchers to study the effects of social influence, conformity, and obedience. The US Government was interested to apply social psychology concepts to influence citizens. The Differences The way social psychology differs from Clinical Psychology, General Psychology, and Sociology are; Clinical Psychology is a branch of psychology that focuses on diagnosing and treating mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders. Some of these disorders are learning disabilities, substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. General Psychology is a term that refers to the entire science of psychology. Psychology is the study of mind and behavior...
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...The one likely known to many, however, is the Holocaust. This is likely because the grotesque event killed approximately two-thirds of all Jews living in Europe. But what would cause that? Surely a vast majority would disagree with these horrible action, let alone an action that would cause eleven million to die. Well, there are many psychological factors that may explain part of what caused this, including social hierarchy, human obedience, and groupthink. The result of these these phenomena gave heartbreaking psychological trauma to the victims. Firstly, it is important to note that there has always been a form of social hierarchy. In...
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...Psychology: 725-739 Social Psychology Notes: Prejudice is an unjustified or incorrect attitude (usually negative) towards an individual based solely on the individual’s membership of a social group. For example, a person may hold prejudiced views towards a certain race or gender etc. (e.g. sexist). A prejudiced Vs. Discrimination: A prejudiced person may not act on their attitude. Therefore, someone can be prejudiced towards a certain group but not discriminate against them. Also, prejudice includes all three components of an attitude (affective, behavioral and cognitive), whereas discrimination just involves behavior. Discrimination is the behavior or actions, usually negative, towards an individual or group of people, especially on the basis of sex/race/social class, etc. Examples: Racial discrimination, Age discrimination, Gender Discrimination A stereotype is a fixed, over generalized belief about a particular group or class of people. One advantage of a stereotype is that it enables us to respond rapidly to situations because we may have had a similar experience before. One disadvantage is that it makes us ignore differences between individuals; therefore we think things about people that might not be true (i.e. make generalizations). For example, a “hells angel” biker dresses in leather. Ingroup= us (people within the group that share a common interest.) Outgroup= them (people who are different and are not in their group) Ingroup-Bias...
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...Racism and Power A Formal Research Paper on Racism HSP-3UI-03 Jenna Yates 06/16/2014 -1- Introduction Over the generations, there have been horrific examples of racism around the globe. The holocaust, the slave trade and Apartheid in South Africa are all examples of appalling events throughout history that display racism. In addition to these extreme examples, racism exists on a smaller scale in peoples day to day lives. For example, there are people who face certain disadvantages, like being denied employment, denied an apartment or denied a friendship all because of their race. While there is definitely a movement to eradicate racist actions and beliefs, they still exist. Despite education and a history of horrible experiences with racism, it is still a huge issue in our culture and in our environment. This is so, because there is always a group who benefits from racism and it is hard to let this power and privileges go. Racism has been an effective tool for those in a position of power and privilege to maintain their status, income, recourses, the ability to make decisions, etc. Racism empowers some and disempowers others. Even though we have seen the down side of racism, it is something we continue to repeat from country to country and decade to decade because we know it works to maintain power. Despite all the advances society has seen in research, knowledge and technology, mankind has not been able to abolish racism. Therefore, in spite of our understanding...
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...Social Psychology PSY/400 Jamie Enright December, 3 2012 Leslie Binnix Social psychology is not a very old practice. In fact, it started after World War II. The unfortunate incident with the Holocaust made researchers want to study the effects of social influence, conformity and obedience because of how badly those groups of individuals were treated. Social psychology is the study of how we, as human beings relate to one another. It is the study of how we interact, how we think, and how feel towards actual individuals that are similar and those that are different from us as well. It makes us ask ourselves questions that we have wanted to know about ourselves. Individuals as a whole want to know other aspects or contributions that make them unique and by researching or studying other individuals, they are able to acquire that different perspective. It also helps one to see/view and affect another individual whether it is in a positive way or not. It also would show how different individuals’ attitudes or behaviors affect another depending on their environment. There are many different psychologies out there that deal with some of the same aspects as social psychology, however, there are really three different types of psychology that social psychology has a very close relation to. One of which is sociology. Sociology deals with people that are in large groups and/or people in different societies. The difference is social psychology has to do with how an...
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...to create or enforce one person's (or group's) power over another person (or group). Recently, I have learned the going-on of one of the most tragic events ever, The Shoah. Through this learning I have derived some profound insights into not only myself, but others. My World Geography class researched acts of the Holocaust and discussed them at length. These exercises changed me, forever. They provided an experience that was incredibly valuable in changing my view on a variety of things: the role of bystanders, empathy, the power of little things, and how to react. Therefore, studying the Holocaust has changed my view and reaction to bullying, which is now focused on both recognizing and stopping bullying. The first thing we discussed about the Holocaust was the string of continuous discriminatory acts against the Jews. It was a changing moment for me. Before then, I had supposed the Holocaust as a random act of sorts - an event without roots before it. I was wrong. I learned that bigotry against Jews had been happening for centuries. It started in 70 A.D. and continued building and building and building. This genealogy of Jewish hatred made me rethink how I viewed small acts of bullying within my own life. Now, instead of seeing a small act of bullying and ignoring it, I see that small act as a piece, a piece of a chain that was the continued abuse against a certain person or group. Recognition. It was like a switch flipped, I got it. The...
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...they cannot form their own independent countries, they would change their geographical locations. But there is no guarantee that both ethnic groups will solve their conflicts by moving in different parts of the region. Each ethnic group competes for power, authority, resources and political independence, which lead up to deep conflicts between ethnic groups and even dehumanization. Each ethnic conflict is associated with deep emotions such as hatred, bitterness, resentment, anger and aggression. Political leaders play a significant role in identifying ethnicities. Such leaders commit violent acts for the sake of their group and victimize their followers. There are also political extremists who are only self-concerned and tend to disregard others’ lives through horrific actions. According to political psychologists, extremists have a variety of personal characteristics. They are not mentally sick. They are insane and are capable of evil behavior because they do not have any empathy for anybody. In Milgram’s experiment on power of authority, personality does play a major role. The results showed the psychological patterns by proving that the only people who were obedient to authority were the ones who were high in authoritarianism. In addition to Milgram’s research, extremists would join groups rather than taking individual actions. Groups tend to be more social; violence is done willingly, easily and makes it possible by not taking on the...
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