Evil and the Instigation of Collective Violence

Abstract

Literature on the psychology of evil has tended to focus on the motivations of perpetrators of collective violence, but almost no work has examined the special role of instigators. This article examines some of the differences between instigators and perpetrators of collective violence with a focus on Osama bin Laden. Compared with perpetrators, instigators are more powerful and less interchangeable, and they tend to rely on some form of nationalism to rally support. The article also examines the attributional bases of evil and how differences of construal can contribute to an escalation of violence.

Full text

Evil and the Instigation of Collective Violence
David R. Mandel*
University of Victoria
Literature on the psychology of evil has tended to focus on the motivations of
perpetrators of collective violence, but almost no work has examined the special
role of instigators. This article examines some of the differences between instiga-
tors and perpetrators of collective violence with a focus on Osama bin Laden.
Compared with perpetrators, instigators are more powerful and less interchange-
able, and they tend to rely on some form of nationalism to rally support. The article
also examines the attributional bases of evil and how differences of construal can
contribute to an escalation of violence.
The September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States and the response
of the United States and its allies point to the need to critically examine the role of
instigators of collective violence. The growing conflict between the United States
and its allies and Islamic militant groups has been framed by both sides as a strug-
gle against the forces of evil by the forces of good. These overly simplistic
construals of “the other side as evil” and “our side as just” have contributed to an
escalation of international violence and threaten us with the possibility of a
long-term conflict. In this article, I examine the current conflict from a social psy-
chological perspective. I begin by considering the distinction between instigators
and perpetrators of collective violence, which has received little scholarly attention
until now. I examine briefly how Osama bin Laden, as a key instigator of terrorism
over the last decade, has used religious nationalism to rally support for his cause.
Finally, I examine how the leaders of both sides—bin Laden and President George
W. Bush—have used the notion of “good versus evil” to frame the present conflict
and why such labeling may be effective in rallying support for violent solutions.
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 2002, pp. 101–108
© 2002 The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to David R. Mandel, Department of
Psychology, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3050, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 3P5, Canada
[e-mail: dmandel@uvic.ca].

Instigators of Collective Violence
Collective violence is usually described as having three types of agents—
perpetrators, victims, and bystanders (Hilberg, 1995; Staub, 1989). Most social
psychological research on the topic of evil has tended to focus on how people
become socialized into a system of violence and come to function as perpetrators
(e.g., Baumeister, 1997; Darley, 1992; Miller, 1999; Staub, 1989). I have argued
recently, however, that a fourth type of agent—the instigator—is in dire need of
scholarly attention (see Mandel, in press). The function of instigators is not to carry
out the acts of violence themselves but to tune and transmit the messages that will
effectively motivate others to cause harm and to provide perpetrators with the req-
uisite resources for accomplishing their tasks.
Compared with perpetrators, instigators tend to have greater social influence
and a wider range of power. Whereas perpetrators may have access to weaponry
or other forms of low-grade power (Toffler, 1990), the power of instigators
often derives from control of wealth (medium-grade power) and information
(high-grade power), which usually provides the requisite conditions for control of
weaponry. Indeed, the power that the perpetrators derive in a system of collective
violence is usually granted directly or indirectly by the instigating elite, who also
have the power to disable perpetrators if they so choose and even redefine them as
the enemy, thus rendering them potential victims.
An important feature of instigators is that they act as catalysts of collective
violence, often by conveying a vision for a better life or by identifying a perceived
source of threat in times of social unrest. As Staub (1989) has noted, the social per-
ception by group members that they have faced difficult life conditions increases
the likelihood of collective violence as a solution to perceived problems. Unfortu-
nately, it is difficult to predict in advance which perceptions of difficult life condi-
tions will spawn violence and when such violence might be likely to erupt. Social
and political analysts should to pay much closer attention to the messages of fig-
ures who have the potential to influence mass opinion for, at present, we tend to
underestimate their ability to catalyze change and consolidate power in the pro-
cess. More generally, acute discontinuities in world history are seldom predicted
with any degree of accuracy.
Given their special role in catalyzing social change, instigators tend to be
perceived as agents that are less interchangeable than perpetrators. Hence, counter-
factual replays of history that undo wars, genocides, or terrorist acts by negating
preceding human actions may be more likely to focus on a single instigator than a
multitude of perpetrators. For example, the chance that the Holocaust would have
been averted if any one of its perpetrators had not existed appears to be dramati-
cally lower than if Hitler had not existed (Himmelfarb, 1984). Put differently, the
social influence of instigators and perpetrators is strongly asymmetric: Instigators
shape the thinking and guide the behavior of perpetrators, but perpetrators have rel-
atively little influence on the motives or plans of instigators.
102 Mandel

At present, the main instigator of terrorism by Islamic militants is Osama bin
Laden. Bin Laden is believed to be linked to the September 11 attacks and the cur-
rent military attacks in Afghanistan are aimed at destroying his terrorist network,
al-Qaida (“the base”), which funds and trains terrorists. On February 23, 1998, bin
Laden and his associates, under the banner of the World Islamic Front, issued a
statement that accused the United States and its allies of crimes against God and
Muslims: “All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear decla-
ration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims” (Federation of American Sci-
entists, 2001). The statement—apparently sanctioned by God—calls for a holy war
(jihad) against the United States and its allies:
On that basis, and in compliance with God’s order, we issue the following fatwa to all Mus-
lims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individ-
ual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it. . . .
We—with God’s help—call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be
rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wher-
ever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers
to launch the raid on Satan’s U.S. troops and the devil’s supporters allying with them, and to
displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson. (Federation of American
Scientists, 2001)
That bin Laden envisions himself as an instigator of collective violence was made
clear in a Time interview on December 23, 1998. When asked whether he was
responsible for the bomb attacks on two American embassies in Africa, bin Laden
stated in his reply, “Our job is to instigate and, by grace of God, we did that, and
certain people responded to this instigation” (PBS Frontline, 2001).
According to bin Laden, “hostility toward America is a religious duty, and we
hope to be rewarded for it by God.” (PBS Frontline, 2001). The reframing of calls
for violence as “duties” or “moral obligations” is a popular technique of instigators
to legitimize collective violence. By linking the perpetration of terrorism to a reli-
gious duty, bin Laden uses God as the ultimate authority. In effect, bin Laden has
claimed that if you fail to try to kill Americans, you have failed in your duty to God.
Such messages can instill powerful feelings of moral obligation to an ideal or cause.
For instance, Arendt (1965), in her famous report of the Adolf Eichmann trial,
examined how a strong sense of obedience to Hitler and his ideals served as an
important source of Eichmann’s diligence in overseeing the transport of Jews to
death camps during the Holocaust—so much so that Eichmann was willing to vio-
late orders by his superior, Heinrich Himmler, toward the end of the Holocaust to
stop transporting Jews to the death camps in order to follow what he believed was
the wish of the Führer (on the topic of obedience to authority as a basis for perpetra-
tion, cf. Mandel, 1998).
Evil and the Instigation of Collective Violence 103

Instigators as Propagators of Nationalism
Like other instigators of collective violence, bin Laden has garnered support
by using nationalism—in this case, religious nationalism—to incite hatred against
a “common enemy.” On the one hand, nationalism creates an egotistic sense of
ingroup cohesion by emphasizing the shared greatness of a people. According to
bin Laden, only Muslims—indeed only Muslims that follow his call to violence—
are worthy in God’s eyes. The message conveyed is that only compliant Muslims
are worthy of moral treatment. As several theorists (e.g., Bandura, 1999; Staub,
1990) have argued, moral exclusion or disengagement is an important precursor of
collective violence.
On the other hand, nationalism can exacerbate feelings of threat by pointing to
the nation’s precariousness, feelings of hatred by pointing to those deemed respon-
sible for its hardships and failures, and feelings of insult due to the belief that one’s
nation has not received the respect it deserves. As Isaiah Berlin noted long ago,
nationalism is often motivated by some form of collective humiliation (Berlin,
1991; see also Staub, 1989). Chirot (1994) has documented that, in case after case,
20th-century tyrannies have been characterized by a combination of perceived
national superiority coupled with perceived national threat and/or a collective
sense of insult from the outside world. The Nazi image of a German master race
threatened by an international Jewish plague illustrates the point. For bin Laden,
the U.S. military presence on Islamic holy land is an act of U.S. “Crusader” aggres-
sion. He has repeatedly mentioned the importance of destroying the myth of the
American superpower. For instance, in the aforementioned Time interview, bin
Laden stated, “I am confident that Muslims will be able to end the legend of the
so-called superpower that is America” (PBS Frontline, 2001).
Nationalism plays upon a fundamental aspect of human social cognition: the
tendency to categorize individuals into groups. Even when the basis of social cate-
gorization is trivial, people tend to discriminate in favor of ingroup members and
against outgroup members (Tajfel, 1981). Nationalism is particularly effective at
creating a strong sense of us versus them because nations (unlike states) tend to be
defined in terms of features that are of high personal and social importance, such as
ethnicity, race, religion, ideology, and language (Azzi, 1998). Consequently, the
nation may be perceived, and may in fact behave, not merely as an aggregate but as
a cohesive entity (Campbell, 1958).
In bin Laden’s case, the ingroup is “the Islamic nation or God’s children” (i.e.,
Muslims) and the outgroup, “God’s enemies” (i.e., non-Muslims, but especially
Jews and powerful Christians, like the Americans). In his August 23, 1996, “Decla-
ration of War Against the Americans Who Occupy the Land of the Two Holy
Mosques,” bin Laden called for “a guerilla war, where the sons of the nation, and
not the military forces, take part in it.” Bin Laden’s use of language is also aimed at
dehumanizing the citizens of the United States and its allied countries by labeling
them as “infidels” or “devil’s supporters” (PBS Frontline, 2001). This use of
104 Mandel

labeling is reminiscent of Hitler’s labeling of Jews as vermin, bacilli, and “kikes.”
As I examine in the next section, the response by the Bush administration has also
tended to vilify the other side, albeit with more qualification than bin Laden has
been willing to grant.
Vilification and the Attribution of Evil
The escalation of the conflict triggered by the September 11 attacks—the “war
on terrorism,” as it is being called—owes much to the attribution of evil by both
sides. The Bush administration has repeatedly couched the present conflict as one
between the forces of good and evil, much as bin Laden has done. For instance, in
his address to the nation on September 11, Bush repeatedly referred to evil: “Thou-
sands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror,” “Today, our
nation saw evil,” “The search is underway for those who are behind these evil
acts.” In the same address, Bush quoted Psalm 23: “Even though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me” (White House
Office of the Press Secretary, 2001b). The day after the terrorist attacks, Bush
stated, “This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil. But good will
prevail” (White House Office of the Press Secretary, 2001c). On September 26, in
another press release, Bush reiterated, “We must never forget this will be a long
struggle, that there are evil people in the world who hate America. And we won’t
relent” (White House Office of the Press Secretary, 2001d). At present, then, the
leaders of both sides of this conflict have presented it in simplistic terms as a
“struggle of good versus evil.” This totalistic portrayal, emphasizing an “us” and
“them,” can heighten social identification and outgroup derogation and steer peo-
ple toward supporting an escalation of violence. Consistent with this view, sup-
porters of the Persian Gulf war had, on average, significantly lower integrative
complexity scores than opponents (Mandel, Axelrod, & Lehman, 1993).
What is the function of vilifying the opposition in a conflict? Where, in fact, do
perceptions of evil come from? And what do people mean by the term evil?Inthe
medieval ages in Europe, evil was associated primarily with the religious belief
that because God was all-powerful and all-good, evil must be the result of the
Devil’s workings. This conclusion, as Zimbardo (1995) pointed out, provided the
intellectual scaffolding for the Inquisition of the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe.
Because it was believed that the Devil worked through lesser intermediaries, “the
hunt for evil focused on those marginalized people who looked or acted differently
from ordinary people” (p. 126). The victims of such attempts to purge evil suffered
greatly, and many lost their lives simply because they were believed to be “here-
tics.” We now know that the greatest acts of evil during that period were caused not
by those ostensible heretics but by those who believed with certainty that they were
acting in accordance with the word of God and were, therefore, on the side of righ-
teousness and against the side of evil.
Evil and the Instigation of Collective Violence 105

One critical feature of everyday notions of evil is that the actor intends to bring
about the events that lead to the victims’ loss (Darley, 1992). The more planning
and foresight that is required and applied in order to bring about a set of events that
will entail victimization, the more likely the actors are to be deemed evil. Acts that
unintentionally bring about victimization may be tragic, but they are unlikely to be
seen as evil by most people. Thus, if a bus driver were to kill his passengers because
he suffered a brain hemorrhage that caused him to lose control of the steering
wheel, I suspect that most would see it as tragic but not evil. If the crash had instead
been due to drunk driving but the driver had no intention to cause harm, then I sus-
pect most would find the event tragic and the driver legally and morally culpable,
but still not evil. However, if the driver decided to take his own life and take down
some others with him, then we would be getting closer to the type of acts that exem-
plify evil to many people.
Attributions of evil also tend to apply to a subset of cases of wrongdoing in
which the magnitude of the intentional acts have, as Darley (1992) put it, “a quality
of egregious excess, such as a murder gratuitously committed in the course of a
crime” (p. 201). The notion of excessive wrongdoing underlying the meaning of
evil can be specified more precisely in terms of two distinct connotations. First, an
act of wrongdoing may be perceived as excessive in an absolute manner. Generally
speaking, the greater the suffering and loss that is caused to a victim or group of
victims, the more likely the attribution of evil is to follow. The sheer magnitude of
calamity that the September 11 attacks represent to Americans is enough to prompt
the description of these events as evil.
There is a second sense, however, in which an act of wrongdoing may be per-
ceived as excessive in a relative manner. In this sense, the victims’ suffering and
loss seems disproportionately greater than the perpetrators’ satisfaction or gain. As
the perceived magnitude of this discrepancy increases, such that the victims’ col-
lective suffering and loss outweigh the perpetrators’ collective benefit, the more
likely it is that the acts or actors in question will be construed as evil. Baumeister
(1997; Baumeister & Campbell, 1999) referred to the perceived discrepancy
between perpetrators’ gains and victims’ losses as the magnitude gap. Attributions
of evil, Baumeister has argued, are much more likely to be made by victims than
perpetrators. Accordingly, the question of how perpetrators could bring them-
selves to perform enormously evil acts is often inappropriate, because perpetrators
often fail to see them as either enormous or evil.
When both parties involved in a conflict have the ability to retaliate, the asym-
metry in construals can lead to escalating violence. For instance, in his 1998 Time
interview, bin Laden stated in response to the question “What can the U.S. expect
from you now?” that “the Americans should expect reactions from the Muslim
world that are proportionate to the injustice they inflict” (PBS Frontline, 2001).
The “war on terrorism” currently being waged is similarly designed to, as Bush put
it, “hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts” (White House
106 Mandel

Office of the Press Secretary, 2001a), and although the continuing threat posed by
bin Laden is real and very serious, there is also a sense in which the United States is
seeking “equitable retribution.”
The magnitude gap experienced by surviving victims of collective violence may
violate their belief that the world is a just place (Lerner, 1980). Consistent with this
notion, Alford (1997) found that many of his participants who were asked to define
evil did so in terms of their own personal sense of impending doom or terror rather
than in terms of a violation of a moral principle. Magnitude gaps underlying attribu-
tions of evil may also instill feelings of public humiliation and trigger moral
outrage directed at the perpetrators or scapegoats. When the victims are a powerful
country with high self-regard, like the United States, the aggression may be likely to
trigger retaliation aimed at nationalistic self-repair. This thesis is consistent with
Baumeister, Smart, and Boden’s (1996) research showing that the propensity for
violence is greatest not among people with low self-esteem, but rather those with a
threatened sense of high self-esteem. More generally, the magnitude gap, which
underlies the attribution of evil, is an example of how groups with opposing interests
can have strongly divergent construals of the same stimulus, much as in Hastorf and
Cantril’s (1954) famous study of how Dartmouth and Princeton football fans con-
strued the same game in highly discrepant—and, in both cases, self-serving—ways.
Conclusion
Attributions of evil are a natural response to intentional attack, especially
when it is construed as unprovoked. But citizens and leaders alike ought to be cog-
nizant of the behavioral effects that such construals may have. We are in the midst
of an international conflict that has the potential to escalate, and we need to be on
guard against vilification, totalistic thinking, and hubristic responses that prompt
further violence at the same time that we guard ourselves against terrorism,
because both pose a real threat to our security and chances for prosperity.
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DAVID R. MANDEL is an Associate Professor of Psychology at University of
Victoria. His research focuses on the psychology of collective violence and on
topics in decision science such as choice, judgment, and rationality.
108 Mandel