ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the perception of evil as a categorization judgment, based on a prototype, with extensive feedback loops and top-down influences. I suggest that the perception of evil consists of four salient features: extreme asymmetry between victim and perpetrator; a specific perceived attitude of the perpetrator towards the victim’s vulnerability; the observer’s inability to understand the perpetrator’s perspective; and insuperable differences between the observer and perpetrator’s judgment following the incident that shake the observer no less than the event itself. I then show that the perception of evil involves a cognitive bias: the observer is almost always mistaken in his or her attributions of a certain state of mind to the perpetrator. The philosophical and evolutionary significance of this bias is discussed, as well as suggestions for future testing of the prototype model of evil.
