ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the personal-psychological and cultural sources of group violence—genocide and mass killing—with several examples but a focus on the Holocaust. It examines father-daughter incest, an individual behavior that is culturally widespread. And it examines heroic rescue of Jews during World War II. It presents personal (and social) goal theory as a common framework to explore the determinants of altruism and aggression. Difficult conditions of life in a society—economic problems, political conflict, and violence—give rise to needs for defense of the self-concept, comprehension, connection and hope. Certain cultural-societal characteristics create a predisposition for group violence: devaluation of a subgroup, strong respect for authority, and others. They lead to scapegoating, people adopting ideologies that identify enemies, and joining movements. Perpetrators and bystanders both change as the society turns against a victim group and then moves along a continuum of increasing destruction. Personal goal theory identifies types of motives, which are arranged in a hierarchy, and are frequently activated by environmental conditions. It considers ways that conflicts between motives and moral values are reduced, for example moral equilibration, and describes goal integration and fanaticism. Guided by the approach developed so far, the chapter examines father daughter incest: its cultural sources, the personality and needs of perpetrators, the family system, the conditions that activate motives and the evolution towards incest, the characteristics of the mother and her role as a bystander. The chapter analyzes heroic rescue in the same framework. It notes the values and motives of rescuers, their moral “inclusiveness,” the multiplicity of activating conditions and an evolution which often leads to intense commitment to helping.
