Quando individui ordinari compiono atti "mostruosi". Relazioni tra banalità del male, obbedienza all'autorità, realizzazione della Shoah

Abstract

When Lay Individuals Perform “Monstrous” Acts. Relationship Between Banality of Evil, Obedience to Authority and the Shoah - Several studies on the perpetrators’ behaviours of social atrocities — for the most part by American social psychologists — argue that there is a closeness and interrelationship between the common constructs of Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil (1963) and those of Stanley Milgram’s obedience to authority (1974) even if they did not specify the details. Interested in studying previously neglected aspects of the so-called “psychology of evil”, this study aims to point out both i) the characteristics and possible relationships between these constructs and ii) the insights they provide into human functioning in the carrying out of a tragic event of human history as the Shoah. The results of the inductive analysis confirm that the constructs do converge, especially as regards events leading up to the destructive acts, the type of perpetrators involved and their lines of thought. Further research developments on destructive behaviors are discussed in the last part of this study.

Keywords

• Banality of Evil
• Obedience to Authority
• Shoah
• Hannah Arendt
• Stanley Milgram