Evil – All too Human?

I’m currently addicted to the Discovery Channel show Most Evil where Columbia University forensic scientist Michael Stone plots the most infamous serial killers and so called evil people on a 22 point Scale of Evil. I tried to plot several people I knew, former friends and such, but compared to John Wayne Gacy, the famous clown serial killer, or Jim Jones, the cult leader who ordered mass suicide of hundreds of people they looked far too gentle and meek.

Evil in human nature seems to be one of the more attractive subjects in psychology. We have been enlightened by the studies of Zimbardo, Milgram and Asch, showing for instance how good people can turn evil through pressures of conformity, obedience and other dispositional factors. While Michael Stone rated psychopathic tendencies and engaging in psychopathic behavior, free of remorse as being more evil, Alford’s interviews among several participants showed that the concept of evil was highly privatized. Even Alford was surprised to hear participants associate evil with scary dreams, feelings of fear and doom. Evil was described mostly as a threat or a feeling of obliteration of the self.

Interesting about the study is the use of two groups for participants: free informants and prison inmates. While both groups came to the similar conclusions regarding evil – such as Adolf Eichmann was not evil, the reasoning behind conclusions were dissimilar, at least on the surface. Free informants were likelier to answer that Eichmann was just part of the system, while prison inmates were more likely to use the Hobbesian argument that the world is a war of everyone against everyone else. On a deeper analysis, Alford came to conclude that both reasoning amounted to the same idea – that the idea that someone would be killed for not killing is only an extension of the Hobbesian idea. Alford comes to conclude that a basic understanding of evil needs to address these issues, disturbing as they may be.

22 Point Scale of Evil

Most Evil

Alford, C. F. (1997). A Political Psychology of Evil. Political Psychology

Photo: “the evil doll” by , c/o Flickr. Some Rights Reserved

The Complicated Nature of Collective Memory

Although Susan Sontag famously argued that “there is no such thing as collective memory,” a recent article by Roediger (2009) considers the burgeoning field of collective memory and a number of oral history and other cultural projects are forming to “preserve” such memories.

Memories themselves are tricky and many social psychological studies suggest that we use a sort of “backward reasoning” when we recall memories such that we recreate them in nuanced ways to fit our current life situation. The recall of memories isn’t as perfect as say, flipping through a photo album. This was probably Sontag’s point, as she argues, “all memory is individual, unreproducible — it dies with the person.”

If that is the case then, what are the value of studies aimed at capturing and documenting collective memories? Sontag is again helpful in suggesting that what can be crafted is collective “instruction” and an understanding of what is important to a group. We see this most often in the way iconic images are forever associated with historic events.

A critical reading of colletive memory, however, would suggest that such memories are created often to serve a dominant discourse, such as one of patriotism. The collective memory of one country engaged in a war is bound to differ from the collective memory of the other, and vice versa. Roediger (2009) suggests as much in his recent article for the European Journal of Social Psychology. Roediger, however, approaches the topic from a much more cognitive standpoint and investigates the concept of memories and social “contagion,” a word-choice he acknowledges as problematic as it implies the way others can “infect” our memories.

Perhaps the larger issue is how we want to understand collective memories and the function they serve. While the memories may differ from fact, or may be built from fact but interpreted differently, we have to decide if that is the overall point of understanding them or, if the subjective experience of these memories is what is more (or just as) important. Collective remembering, as a task, can serve important coping functions. A recent article explores how this is happening with a memorial for Flight 93. It is also important to consider whose stories are featured in presentations of collective memories. A simple cognitive psychological concept suddenly takes on political implications when we consider this, as shown by such efforts as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Roediger (2009). Reflections on intersections between cognitive psychology and social psychology: A personal reflection. European Journal of Social Psychology.

Flight 93 Memorial Visitors Creating ‘Collective Memory’ in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Sontag (2003). Regarding the Pain of Others.

How we are moral

In November 2009, the Philippine Commission on Elections issued a disqualification against an LGBT partylist group, accusing it of advocating immorality. This in turn, triggered an ‘I Am Not Immoral’ campaign by members of the LGBT community and supporters. The issue of morality, according to Steven Pinker pervades all aspects of our lives, and he refers to moral goodness, as ‘something that makes us feel worthy as human beings’. Morality has been deemed universal and yet culturally expressed. Pinker identifies five aspects of morality: harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity, acknowledging that each culture may choose to give more preference to any aspect over another.
Krebs (2008) looks into the evolutionary beginnings of morality and discusses adaptations in the brain brought on by both early and modern circumstances. These early circumstances have caused certain adaptations, decision making strategies, that are triggered in modern events that evoke familiarity of setting, such as the need for certain responses such as obedience, conformity or others. One also must understand the adaptive functions of morality in order to understand what it is. Using the evolutionary theory, morality is when an individual’s genetic self-interest is promoted through a genuine concern for the welfare of others.

Krebs (2008). Morality: An Evolutionary Account. Perspectives in Psychological Science

The Moral Instinct (Steven Pinker)

Gays legally deemed immoral and a danger to youth

Photo: “Innocence so suffocating, now she cannot move” by Samantha Rose Pollari, c/o Flickr. Some Rights Reserved

Are we really in a narcissism epidemic? The concerns about Generation Me.

According to psychological professor Jean M. Twenge, Generation Me describes anyone born in the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s — in the approaching 2010, this will mean people between the ages of 11 and 40. These are today’s young people, those who while remarkably diverse in many respects, share a unifying aspect: they are “unapologetically focused on the individual,” a trait inherited from their Boomer parents and fanned to extremes by the culture they engendered.

Is it true? Are we in a narcissism epidemic? Does the Generation Me really differ from their parents and grandparents? Social scientists have been interested in generational changes for decades. Questions about generational changes are of particular interest to psychologists who are interested in whether the broader sociocultural environment is linked with changes in personality attributes and attitudes. For example, Twenge (2008) has concluded that today’s young people have higher self-esteem, more inflated self views, higher levels of narcissism, and perhaps paradoxically, more misery than previous generations. Twenge has further tied these shifts in personality to shifts toward increased individualism and a focus on self-worth that she believes characterizes the culture of the United States in more recent decades. However, Donnellan and Trzesniewski’s (2009) most recent research led to suspicion about the strength of the evidence in support of Twenge’s broad ‘Generation Me’ claims. According to their opinions, there are two crucial issues about Twenge’s research on Generation Me: whether the evidence for generational differences is based on a sound methodology and how to best characterize the size of any generational differences. Instead they found more evidence for generational consistency than generational change in their studies and thus concluded that there are enough concerns to warrant caution and qualified statements about the evidence for ‘Generation Me.’

Based on these concerns, it might be better for social and personality psychologists to think carefully before drawing the blanket conclusion that today’s young people are much different from previous generations of youth. Whether today’s young people are more assertive, entitled, self-aggrandizement and miserable than ever before is still a question which deserves more research in the future.

Donnellan, M.B., & Trzesniewski, K.H. (2009). How Should We Study Generational ‘Changes’—Or Should We? A Critical Examination of the Evidence for ‘Generation Me’. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3,775 – 784.

Twenge, J.M. (2008). Generation Me, the Origins of Birth Cohort Differences in Personality Traits, and Cross-temporal Meta-analysis. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 1440-1454.

Will a new decade spell the end of Generation Me?

The myth of mental illness?

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the philosopher Foucault’s influential book ‘Madness and Civilization’. In discussing the development of the concept of ‘madness’ as a consequence of the scientific rationality of the Enlightenment, it suggests that ‘mental disorders’ should be viewed as a social construction rather than the medical condition they are typically seen as within contemporary Western society.

Indeed, this is the view proposed by the controversial psychiatrist Szasz, who argues that mental illness is a myth, and that such diagnosis and forcible treatment is predominantly a means of social control. Indeed, compulsory psychiatric hospitalisation has historically been used in this way to oppress dissidents by various regimes across the world.

Although it may seem counter-intuitive in the age of Prozac, ‘mental disorders’ are much less well defined ‘medical conditions’ than they may first appear. The ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association typically lists large number of symptoms for any given condition, and it is only necessary to present a small number of these in order to be diagnosed. Indeed, the difficulty in making such a diagnosis is illustrated by the classic psychological study of those being sane in insane places.

Furthermore, it can be seen that what constitutes a ‘mental disorder’ can vary both over time and culture. Perhaps obviously, drapetomania, the ‘disorder’ that caused black slaves to want to flee captivity, together with the woman specific ‘disorder’ of ‘female hysteria’, are not longer considered to be the problems they once were. Somewhat more surprisingly, however, is the fact that homosexuality was similarly regarded as a ‘mental disorder’ until as recently as the 1970s.

Conversely, ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ (PTSD) was only defined following the Vietnam war, and the new condition of ‘internet addiction’ is a potential candidate for the forthcoming 5th edition of the DSM. The consequences of redefining ‘normality’ in this manner can have a dramatic effect as to how people are categorised. For example, the historical figure Joan of Arc, in claiming to hear voices from God, would nowadays be regarded as suffering from schizophrenia, rather than being considered a divine messenger.

Furthermore, a culture-bound syndrome such as ‘koro’, or ‘genital retraction syndrome’ (GRS), which occurs in parts of Africa and south-east Asia and involves the belief that one’s external genitals are disappearing, may appear strange and somewhat unlikely to those used to Western ‘disorders’.

A more familiar condition such as depression, however, can only be regarded as a ‘disorder’ if happiness and contentment are thought to be ‘normal’. This is only a relatively recent expectation, with Freud himself concluding “that the intention that man should be ‘happy’ is not included in the plan of Creation”.

From a cynical standpoint, it can be seen that pharmaceutical companies clearly have a lot to gain from promoting particular constructions of ‘normality’, as illustrated by the development of ‘puppy Prozac’ to treat the previously unidentified condition of ‘separation anxiety’ occurring in pet dogs.

‘Madness and Civilisation 50th anniversary’ on ABC Radio National

Psychiatry and mental illness

Avdi, E. & Georgaca, E. (2009). Narrative and discursive approaches to the analysis of subjectivity in psychotherapy

Generation X, Y…Me?: Meanings, Methods, and Measurement of Narcissism

Narcissism is itself a slippery concept that psychologists have debated for years. How to define it and how to measure it have been looming questions as well as the extent to which a certain level of narcissism may be adaptive in a psychological sense. More recently, however, Twenge and colleagues have published volumes about the current narcissism “epidemic” plaguing those of us in our 20s and 30s.

According to Twenge, there are significant differences between “cohorts” (generations) in terms of narcissism, with young adults today having higher levels of self-esteem and narcissistic attitudes making them worthy of the “Generation Me” moniker. In a recent Social and Personality Psychology Compass article, however, Donnellan and colleagues argue otherwise. They present compelling evidence that the differences, if there are any, are only very slight. Additionally, they claim that any differences are not generalizable to the larger population because of the convenience sampling of college students. Further, they critique the notion of grouping generations of individuals under a larger umbrella that is only defined by a few questions on a scale.

Their critique raises important questions not only about method and measurement, but about the interconnection between social and personality psychology with “popular sentiment” and the way in which academic — ‘scientific’ — research is uniquely positioned to corroborate or complicate the reality which surrounds us.

Donnellan, M. B. & Trzesniewski K. H. (2009). How should we study generational ‘changes’ or should we? A critical examination of the evidence for ‘Generation Me’

Cubicle-phobia in the 21st century

There is nothing new about a concern for losing touch with nature. “When we get piled upon one another in large cities,” wrote Thomas Jefferson to Uriah Forest, “we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do there” (p. 479 in J.P. Boyd (Ed.) The papers of Thomas Jefferson). Cannibalism or not, Europe seems to be doing just fine.

Yet New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently took a break from Darfur and wrote two get-back-to-nature pieces. The first is a report on Richard Louv’s book detailing “nature-deficit disorder,” which along with obesity and autism is what Louv suggests will happen to kids who are stuck indoors. Kristof’s second piece describes “how to pry yourself and your family off the keyboard and venture into the wild.”

The implications of needing access to nature are rather unpleasant. Namely, those who recreate the most are white and middle- to upper-class – the same people who can both afford to hike and camp (“Try the ‘ultralight’ gear,” suggests Kristof), and who have the means and leisure to leave the city.

Nevertheless, some wilderness lovers both praise the essentialness of their experiences, and account for why they sleep under a tent while a guy in Philadelphia sleeps under an overpass. Attribution theory explains how people link the outcome of having access to nature (and others’ lack of access) to internal rather than external attributes. Kristof’s how-to guide is meant to give people the extra motivation for that trip to nature. And rather than because of structural conditions, Louv suggests a major reason children stay away from nature is fear.

Kristof’s how-to guide is said to be for readers who responded to the first article, “Camping in the woods sounds gloriously refreshing! But I wouldn’t know where to begin, and, ugh, what if I get eaten by a bear?”