Although people vary and people in varying circumstances (economic, cultural, etc.) vary even more, I’m wondering what research has been done on the mindset or psychological makeup of people engaged in acts most people (even in their own cultural, perhaps not their sub-culture) find horrendous. Examples: torturers, pimps of child beggars and child prostitutes, etc. Are these people different in any general way from others much like them that would not take up such careers?
I guess this is a rather broad question, so please focus on psychological studies of such people and not personal views on them, the ethics of judging them nor the famous studies on making lab participants “torture” people or play “jail cop” to “prisoners.”
Well, it seems that people can fall into roles very well, even when it’s not real. So I don’t expect they are fundamentally any different than you or me:
Whoops, maybe I should have read that part. But honestly, aren’t these ‘famous studies’ really a way of studying the mindset of ‘these people.’? That if you saw them in any other context, you wouldn’t blink twice, because they are, in fact, as far as we can tell, pretty ‘normal’ in any other aspect.
Without mentioning famous studies, this is reduced to a mere opinion, but I firmly believe that what makes people do things that YOU listed as reprehensible are just results of their environment. Not to say that the environment changes them, quite the opposite, what I’m saying is that whenever any normal person falls into the appropriate circumstance they play the role. Just look at Nazi germany, only a select few weren’t really indoctrinated.
I’m thinking there must be studies of peoples’ personality, not studies of the social psychological nature of going along with a lab experiment (which has some problems when generalizing to real torture, etc.). I hope the difference make sense.
I always figured it went with what Lindy said.
I recall reading about a torturer who would go home every day at noon from his “job” to make lunch for his mother.
Then there’s always the “I don’t want to but I have no choice/I have to do it” rationale.
Actually, this is the way we all would probably act, given our natural tendencies (survival instinct, selfishness, “me first”). It’s why mankind has established so many codes of acceptable conduct - we eventually realized that we would be better off suppressing our natural tendencies.
I don’t mean to hijack this thread, but consider this: just as YOU look at slave owners and ask “How could any decent human being possibly do that,” there are vegans who look at an ordinary family eating hamburgers and wonder “How could anyone do something so cruel?” And there are right-to-lifers who can’t fathom how manyone could do anything as horrible as having an abortion.
More than anything else, it comes down to this: meat-eaters just don’t think of animals the same way they think of human beings. Pro-abortion folks just don’t think of a fetus as a human being. And slave owners just didn’t regard a black African as a human being.
And once you believe that your “victim” is not human, you can pretty much do what you want without too much trouble from your conscience.
Specifying the limits varies with the person’s or society’s background, and could be called a matter of taste, except that taste is an individual matter and there is no reason for society to agree on whether broccoli tastes good or tastes bad. “There is no disputing about tastes.”
But morality requires some overall agreement so society can function.
Without standard limits, there would be endless quarrelling over what the rules should be for everything, as there is for abortion but not theft or murder or slavery, and people would never know when they could trust. And without these standards, a society may undermine itself to the point of destruction.
Uh-oh, this is moving from factual answers (studies about personality) and into philosophy and social controls. /hijack
I try not to buy Nike, because the shoes are made in sweatshops. But I have bought Nike products. I did keep going to McDonalds despite the dreadful conditions in which the Happy Meal toys were (are?) made. Etc.
If you do anything comparable (and since it’s virtually impossible to live entirely “ethically” in the west, you probably do), just ask yourself how you do it. Lots of people don’t know any better. Lots of people tell themselves that if there were anything really bad about it, the government (or someone) wouldn’t allow it. Lots of people, like me, simply try not to think about it, and when they are forced (either by their consciences or by social inertia) to make a choice, THEN they choose against buying the unethically-produced products.
It’s the same thing, only it’s distanced and then very carefully disguised as something else. Probably actual slave-owners don’t manage to “not think about it”, because it’s right next to them, but maybe some do. Probably most genuinely don’t care. Ordinary people, people like you and me, are capable of acts of tremendous ugliness, including Tuning Stuff Out.
Perhaps, but I’m guessing that some people in similar situations would not go along. It might depend on how you are socialized (e.g., slave owners’ kids thinking differently about it than non-slave owners’ kids in the same community), but if people are largely socialized in similar ways and aren’t forced to be cruel to avoid pain themselves (or other survival, me first instincts/rationalizations), why would one guy sign up for the torture detail and another not? Maybe it happens subtly, but I’m thinking that some people “get out of it” when they realize what their job is to be and the head goon zooms in on those potential staff that seem not to mind, or are easily turned to it.
Anyway, I guess this would take sustained psychological testing and study to know.
I think that desensitization plays a role as well. After ten years in the TV news business I can read information about horrible things and not bat an eye. I think it would be the same for the jobs or tasks mentioned above. Do it enough and it becomes routine. Also, some people have an innate sadism about them.
The studies you are looking for might be grouped under subjects like “sociopaths” or “sadism” or “effects of socialization” rather than “slave-takers”. Enslaving and mistreating a kid as per the cite in the OP would be a symptom of the pathology.
Yes there must be a difference between those who would and those who wouldn’t, whether it is in the brain’s wiring or in desensitization. And then what happens to a person that circumstances pressure into doing these acts, I wonder.