Customer Reviews

Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing

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This work shows why explorations of the nature of human nature are not just the stuff of ivory towers. It adds an evolutionary psychology element to previous discussions of genocide with good effect. So one gets some of the ideas of Tooby, Cosmides, Sober and Wilson's "Unto others", Pinker, etc. in the picture. It is also well written and engages the reader emotionally. The evolutionary psychology, though, is only one fundamental factor among many. The author's point is to show all of the various factors that influence a potential actor in genocide, and the situational influences dealt with by social psychology loom large.

Nevertheless, there is an interesting lack of self-awareness of the use of a repeated concept. It is very common to refer to someone who commits an evil act as being inhuman. That dehumanizes the perpetrator. But as Mr. Waller so beautifully explains, it is well within ordinary human nature to have the potential to commit acts of extraordinary evil. So it may be evil, but it is not inhuman. Furthermore, the book explains that dehumanizing others is part of the process that can lead to genocide. In trying to characterize these evil acts, the author uses some of the same dehumanizing mental constructs that lead to such evil acts. Ironic, no?

But that is a minor point. It is quite customary to refer to evil acts as being inhuman. The book is excellent, if sobering.

Robert Waller has written an exceptional explanation of how every human is tempted and entrapped by situations, people, attitudes and personality traits that leads one to commit evil. It is these small acts of evil that can build, distract and cumulate in the horrors we see on the news and respond "not me!"

I have used Becoming Evil as an additional book in my Social Psychology class for three years and students always walk out talking about it. Other professors are constantly asking me to see this book saying students are talking about in their classes, in sororities/fraternities and other organizations. One student told me that after reading this book suddenly she understood how pledging a sorority should be changed. Another student wrote me from military training and said how he was beginning to understanding how easy it was to create a mindset of destruction and killing without looking back. One mother in my class told me that the book has deeply impacted how she parents her children.

I deeply believe this is an extremely valuable book. Very organized, easy to understand, and rooted in compelling real life examples of extraordinary evil committed by individuals that we begin to realize look, act and who were just like us.

I have had a hard time finding another book to use in my class that has touched students to the depth of Becoming Evil. I hope others find it equally soul touching and reflective.

The editorial reviews above and the publisher's description are accurate about the content. I want to add that this book is well worth reading. The author covers a great deal of research on the topic of man's inhumanity to man and presents the various theories and arguments with an elegance and precision that make this comprehensive book easy, and were it not for the subject matter, pleasurable to read. For anyone interested in the challenge of explaining violence in all its 20th century awfulness, this is an excellent place to start.

After buying this book and reading it myself, I loaned it to my brother and then gave it to my local library where I hope it will be read by many others.

Mr. Waller undertakes a difficult topic -- how it is that ordinary, moral, "law-abiding" human beings can change into perpetrators of genocide. The idea that something like this could happen to any one of us is frightening, indeed, but the best way to protect ourselves is to understand the process. Waller explains this clearly and helps us to understand that the Nazis and other genocidal groups were not insane or monstrous - they were normal people who had undergone a transformation which could occur to anyone in the "right" (i.e., "wrong") circumstances.

This book would be an important addition to libraries everywhere, and I also hope that it will be used in colleges, universities and even high schools.

I was always fascinated with the question of human cruelty and the history of genocides, and after researching review on Amazon.com, settled on this book by James Waller. I was 100% right. It's incredibly well-written. Very easy to read, written in clear language in short chapters. Thoroughly researched. James Waller references and examines all the works that have been written on this topic before. His conclusions are profound, and dare I say it, correct.

It's a flawless book. It brings together history and psychology in a language that is very relevant and easy to read on an very important subject. I'd recommend this to anyone without a hesitation. Not just educating, but also enjoyable.

I imagined that some parts of this book might be a bit dry. I was delightfully surprised, because I was attached to the pages the entire read. The author skillfully adds in actual accounts of atrocities to give each chapter a very personal feel.

It has been years from when I read this book and now. However, one thought from the book that still comes to my mind often is the "ancestral shadow" that was mentioned and developed. I do not remember if the author coined the term or just cited it, but it is very explanatory in thinking about world or personal events. I'll leave the discovering of that term to you.

It was a very interesting read that goes into the extremely personal side of atrocities. It was eye-opening and extremely readable for someone who does not usually read psychological or sociological books.

Genocide, despite universal horror of it, is still a regularly recurrent obscenity. Attributing it to evil is understandable, but how can it really be prevented? Could understanding its origins help?

James Waller, a psychologist from Washington, has made an profound contribution to this quest. He closely analyses the evidence of personality profiles and behaviours of the perpetrators of such atrocities, and makes startling discoveries.

Their personalities are within the normal range. Perhaps some slight skews [towards being overconfident, authoritative, somewhat stressed, not the most socially skilled, easily led], but nothing out of the ordinary.

It seems that extraordinary evil is most often perpetrated by unremarkable men and women.. Given the appropriate toxic blend of propoganda, moral rationalisation, cultural beliefs, manipulation,and peer pressure, any one of us could become a killer.
Deepseated `ingroup/outgroup' responses, susceptibility to authority, and a capacity for desensitisation and denial, can be mobilised to appalling effect.

The book is a powerful plea for humility. It ends with the hope that from acquiring greater understanding of the causes of genocidal behaviour, might be developed some ways of diminishing its terrifying reach .

As stated by the author, the central thesis of this challenging book is that it is ordinary people, like you and me, who commit extraordinary evil. The position is difficult to admit and to comprehend. Evil is a concept in all cultures and a common belief is that it is caused by a few extraordinary individuals--ghouls and blood fetish psychopaths. But history is loaded with examples of diabolical behavior committed by otherwise apparently normal individuals. How do we account for the fact that the 20th Century was the century of genocide? How do we account for the fact that the most inhumane behaviors occurred in "civilized" countries? If those who dropped prussic acid into the showers at Auschwitz were not Catholics and Protestants, they were most likely the sons and daughters of Catholics and Protestants. This from the land of Bach and Goethe. The relevant question is not, "How could they do that?" but rather,"What are the things lurking in my subconscious and in my culture that could motivate me to do that?" The self-righteous may recoil at the notion, yet they may be the most dangerous among us.

A Greek philosopher once remarked, "The unexamined life is not worth living." This book requires self-examination. It is not an easy read, but rather a text for those who don't mind leaning over the abyss and gazing into Dante's Inferno, knowing beforehand that, at times, you will be staring right into a mirror. It should be required reading in ethics classes and all programs in evolutionary psychology.

Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing

How Insanity Happens



As the title of his book suggests, James Waller believes mass murder is a process. In the past century, it has happened over and over again: Rwandan Hutus killed 800,000 Tutsis with machetes while the world stood by and watched; Bosnian Serbs exterminated Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina; at least 1.5 million Cambodians were killed in Pol Pot's concentration camps. And the Holocaust stands as history's greatest mass extermination. All of these activities require a willingness to obey authority; a level of cultural context, or differentiation between "us" and "them";
a degree of self-interest and self-preservation of the perpetrators; and an ability to create an emotional distance between perpetrator and victim.
It is the "ordinariness," or as Jewish sociologist Hannah Arendt says, "the Banality," of evil that is so puzzling. It means that the next mass murderer could be the guy next to us on the bus, across the street, in the next office cubicle ... or ourselves. In Southern California, a financial analyst whose business was failing methodically killed his wife, his mother in law, and his three children before killing himself. It made perfect sense to him at the time.
Understanding sociopathic behavior doesn't exonerate it, and demonizing the perpetrators doesn't help explain it. Waller has a compelling, easy to comprehend style and uses case studies to reinforce his points using examples from East Timor, Turkey, Cambodia, and Bosnia to illustrate his arguments.

Suggestions for further reading:
Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare
The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79, Third Edition
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics)

Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past

Wow, this is a deep, powerful book. I gave it five stars because it was very complete. The author started with his proposal that ordinary people can commit evil, introduces a model of what influences/causes extraordinary evil, and follows up on what can and should be done to ease (impossible to halt entirely) the spread of evil. Interspersed in every chapter is a harrowing account of genocide told by the perspective of the victims or eyewitnesses.

Although I generally agree with the author's belief that ordinary people can commit evil, I did take issue with some of the methodology/tests he used. For instance, he used the anaylsis of the Rorschach test used on the Nazi... even though that test is inherently faulty. Still, he did back it up with more concrete and intriguing evidence. His model was well researched and he backed up his outline with different accounts.

Another positive aspect of the book, is that it alerts you about how many acts of genocide and crimes against humanity go unpunished or even unacknowledged by the perpetrators and the world. Its very disappointing and frustrating as is the author's note that the situation is not getting better and evil will never be fully stopped. All in all, its a great book and its very sobering and sad. I think everyone should read it.