ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates some of the conditions that affect people’s attitudes towards killing. The taking of human life has been a part of man’s history and evolution. The social control of killing, therefore, has been of great concern to social thinkers and has received increased popular attention since World War II and the Nuremberg trials. The act of killing has its roots in biological, psychological, and social determinants of such a complex nature that understanding through traditional individual psychology alone or any other particular branch of science is unlikely to be accomplished. To many people, the establishment of personal justifications that sanction killing seems to be of greater importance than is the “evilness” or “goodness” of killing per se. The strength and intensity with which the subjects stuck to their justifications were real. And so were their beliefs that mass killings can be justified.
