consequences of not taking responsbility

A population of people was destroyed because of two events of Scapegoating. Scapegoating is when a problem happens and people find it easier to blame someone else than to blame themselves. (Straker, 2009) The Jewish population was scapegoated by Germany for her economic dilemma. This could have been avoided had some other nations not scapegoated Germany for World War I.

Yes, Germany held a major role in starting the Great War, BUT Germany wasn’t the only country to fight. There were ten nations involved in the Great War, three of which fought alongside Germany. Yet, Germany was the only nation to be “attacked” in the Versailles Treaty as the sole country who caused all the trouble. They were made admit responsibility, return land, weaken their military, and pay reparations. (Trueman, 2009) None of the other nations involved had to follow these requirements. Germany saw herself as being squashed down. Germany was given little choice but to sign the treaty as they risked invasion by the allies if they refused. (Trueman, 2009) As a result, Germany was left virtually bankrupt.

Before and during World War II, Germany scapegoated the Jewish people, among others, for the economic problems. The German people refused to admit that their economic issues were consequences of THEIR involvement in World War I.

World War I left Germany devastated. Germany was left to pay war reparations in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles. Traditional trading could not be reinstated as those nations involved in trade with Germany had added protective tariffs to their home markets. ("The Impact of," 2004) Also, the German Mark had fallen so much in value that it made German exports cheap; causing issue because of the rising costs of raw materials. ("The Impact of," 2004) Inflation rose at a staggering rate in Germany.

Germans blamed their economic troubles on the loss of the war, but they refused to blame themselves for the loss. There were multiple scapegoats; the Kaiser, the new government, the communist, and the Jews. ("The Impact of," 2004) The Jews became the major scapegoat, suffering discrimination leading to the deaths of nearly 2 of every 3 Jews in Europe.

Had these events of scapegoating not occurred, two populations could’ve been spared devastation. The German population could’ve quickly recovered their economic status, people would not have been suffering hardships, and they would not have been looking for anyone to blame. The Jewish population would not have suffered the annihilation of their people in Europe.

References:

(2004, June 4). The Impact of the first world war on germany. Retrieved from http://www.schoolshistory.org.uk/ASLevel_History/week3_impactofwar.htm.

(Accessed 10 November, 2009).

Straker, D. (2009). Scapegoat Theory. Available from

<http://changingminds.org/students.htm>. (Accessed 10 November, 2009).

Trueman, C. (2009). The treaty of versailles. Retrieved from http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/treaty_of_versailles.htm.

(Accessed 10 November, 2009)

The Realistic Conflict Theory

The Realistic Conflict Theory is a theory within social psychology that believes that limited resources will lead to competition and will directly result in discrimination and stereotypes. The main experiment associated with the Realistic Conflict Theory is the Robbers Cave experiment in which two groups of boys who did not know each other were formed. The experiment proceeded in three phases:
1. In-group formation
2. Friction phase
3. Integration phase
The In-group phase involved the hierarchical formation within the group as the boys became more accustomed to each other. The Friction phase was where the two groups were made to compete in a series of ways including sports. It was found that hostility between the groups occurred just a few days after the Friction Phase had begun and was becoming so intense that the phase had to be ended early for safety. The third phase was an integration phase in which the two groups participated in activities in which they needed to cooperate with each other. The result of this was a decrease in hostile behavior as the two groups bonded. The Robbers Cave experiment demonstrates not only how different groups can polarize due to competition, but also that this polarization can be reversed.
There are many examples of resources polarizing communities including a study (1979-2002) in the Netherlands that showed the changing attitudes of the Dutch towards immigrants (Coenders, 2008). The results of the study showed that attitudes towards immigrants were more negative during high periods of immigration in which unemployment was higher which demonstrate the competition that results from the scarcity of resources (in this case jobs).
This competition over resources can also be found in The Congo as the Hutus and the Tutsis continue to fight over the oil and other natural resources. This conflict has been going on for decades and is another example of the Realistic Conflict Theory.
The Realistic Conflict Theory and the Robbers Cave Experiment imply that the polarization of groups over resources can be reversed; however, this has not been seen on a large scale. This could be because there are factors other than resources that cause the polarizations and also because of the length of time that the conflict has been going on. It is much more difficult for most people to forget decades or centuries of hatred than a few days such as with the Robbers Cave Experiment. By accepting the Realistic Conflict Theory it may be possible to resolve some conflicts by causing the two groups to cooperate and hoping a bond will form between the two that will lessen hostility. However, this may not be practical with large groups of hundreds of thousands of people and may only be feasible in small groups of no more than a few dozen or hundred.


Coenders, Marcel. (2008). More than Two decades of changing ethnic attitudes in the netherlands. Journal of social issues, (2), 269.

Mass Media Models... Save Lives?

Every day, we go through great lengths to save a life. Doctors work around the clock, performing surgeries in life or death situations. Soldiers put their lives on the line to protect our country. Firefighters leap into burning buildings to save a small child. Police walk into dangerous situations to save a small family from armed robbers.

You see the efforts that people go through to save lives. If people saw this on television, presented by a major celebrity, we would run with full support to defend the police, the firefighters, the doctors, and the soldiers.

Yet, when placed in the opposite light, our support disappears. The soldiers are shooting at innocents and enemies alike. The doctors make a fatal mistake. The firefighter fails to make it to the child but makes it out alive. The police cause the robbers to shoot the family.

Do we still support them after their failures? Some do, some don’t. People believe what they see.

Mass media models change our perception of life. If they were to change the way things are presented, they could effectively make change to the world. Instead of showing violent conflicts, they could show peace rallies. Instead of showing the innocents who are accidentally killed in war and blaming our soldiers, they could show the hardships and mental fatigue that our soldiers go through.

If we were to look at any recent war, there is so much mass media coverage that promotes patriotism and defending our country and working to save our soldiers. The Vietnam War had tons of mass media devoted to getting more troops out into the battlefield, and of course, since we believe what we see, we could do nothing but support or refuse to support, depending upon what side of the war we saw first. If we had seen the pictures and heard of the horrible events that happen to our soldiers, we probably would refuse to support more troops. If we had only seen the many people we were sending troops to try to save, we would probably support this action. These mass media models change everything.

These mass media models could save lives. If only we could put safety and goodness into the media, instead of violence and corruption, more people would fall into the lure of safety and goodness. This could save countless lives. Instead of showing teenagers that if they choose to be involved in gang violence that they’ll have family, show them that they can create family through friendships and to foster whatever relationships they already have at home. Instead of showing teen suicides on television, show teenagers dealing with their problems and coping in healthy ways.

According to the social impact theory, the likelihood that a person will respond to social influence will increase with strength, immediacy, and number. (changingminds.org, pg. 1). People often follow these mass media models because of the importance of the model, how close the problem is, and how many people are throwing the same message at a person. Bibb Latané has an article called the “Psychology of Social Impact” in which he describes some of the effects and the workings of the Social Impact Theory. In this article, he describes a study in which they set up psychology students to play campus newspaper editors and cover catastrophic events and decide how much coverage to give each event. (Latané, 348). The results showed that the three pieces of the social impact theory can cause strong effects upon people. The more the story was covered and made important, the closer the problem was to people, and how many people were involved with the problem increased the effects of the article.

To save a life, we need to change the way people see life. Using mass media models to change the way people see the world, we could potentially save lives. Less violence, less anger, and greater safety could help save many lives. I propose that mass media models be used by the government to promote safety, health, and general well-being.

Works Cited

Latané (1981), Latané and Wolf (1981), Tanford and Penrod (1984). "Social Impact Theory." Changing Minds. Web. 12 Oct. 2009. <http://changingminds.org>.

Latané, Bibb. "The Psychology of Social Impact." 36.4 (1981): 343-56. American Psychological Association, Inc. Web. 8 Dec. 2009. <http://dionysus.psych.wisc.edu/Lit/Articles/LataneB1981a.pdf>.

revolution (in america and the world)

It would be foolish to conduct a class on war without considering both the merits and setbacks of revolutionary warfare in it's various forms. Admittedly war is violent, and violence is often a bad thing. But in the following discourse i hope to decide that revolutionary war is (at least in theory) a good thing.

There are many things that can cause a revolution. On the whole revolutions are started because a nations people are discontent with some aspect of that nations administration (cognitive dissonance). for example in the revolutionary war, the people of the colonies felt that there rights had been denied them. this can affect anything from changes in government power, (as in The French Revolution) to the complete withdrawl of a nation from a political body (The American Revolution). In both cases The revolutionary parties are overthrowing their government due to a percieved and probably realistic threat to their individual freedoms. "men are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights...life liberty and the pursuit of happiness"

in this case the revolutionaries are morally and pragmatically justified. They are securing basic rights that have been denied them by their government. But what about the case of unfounded mutiny? lets take the constant power struggles in Africa as an example, each one lead by that years hottest revolutionary. These struggles are often based on racism, and greed (it's arguable that the American and french revolutions were the same thing ,simply with a better coat of paint, but lets pretend they were noble causes for the sake of arguement).
In the case of misdirected anger (due to say, economic trouble) people are easily swayed by a leader to direct that anger at a perceived oppressor. and the noble instinct to revolutionary war is turned into a weapon of terrorism, as can be seen in the Hutu/Tutsi conflicts in Rowanda which have causes a state of near constant war since 1965.

It seems then, that there are two types of revolutionary war, One having a relatively noble cause, and the other being little more than terrorism in the name of justice. don't get me wrong terrorism in the name of justice makes for a good movie (V for vendetta), but i question it's morality.

Social Identity

Throughout history, humanity has done some horrible things to each other. Things like mass executions, genocide, torture, and infanticide to name a few. With most governments and religions strictly prohibiting acts such as murder, rape, theft and arson. How, then, do governments justify such barbarism on a mass scale, and how do they maintain stability while supporting such a double standard? According to one prominent theory, the Social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1985),
a main enabler of such atrocities is a strong social identity.

To build a social identity, people are put into groups like American, Muslim, Catholic, Aryan, or even tall, short, popular, freak, goth, or nerd. Once a persons identity is tied to one of these groups, they are identified by the characteristics of the group. For example, if I were to say “Bill is a nerd” the first thing that would come to mind if Bill's name were to be brought up would probably be thick glasses, goofy clothes and a pocket protector. We thought of Bill as a nerd, rather than Bill as a person.

Once these social groups are formed, competition begins between groups. People compare the other groups, we desire to be part of a group that makes us different (special) and better than the other groups. Such desires, combined with the stereotyping of members of outsider groups, generates a great excuse to abuse outsiders.

Lets take a look at the crusades, a series of military campaigns instigated by the roman catholic church. Well, how can a church that preaches “THOU SHALL NOT KILL” sanction a series of wars that lasted for hundreds of years and resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people? Even if the leaders sought personal gain, they still had to convince the thousands of people under their command to support the campaigns and give their lives for the cause. So how did they do it? With a strong social identity, the church said “we are Christains what we are doing is right, they are Muslims, mongols, cathors, hussites”... terms that all ended up meaning heretic, evil, inhuman. They were allowed to be murdered without sin, because they were enemies of the holy roman empire and therefore not human.




Citations

Tajfel, H. & Turner, J. C. (1985) The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (2nd ed., pp. 7-24). Chicago: Nelson-Hall.

Social Norm Violation as a cause of war.

It is odd how easy people fall into habits. What is deemed usual and accepted is known to psychologists as social norms. People fall into the habit of accepting certain things as how they “should be”. When something that “should be” is changed, that is, when a social norm is violated people react negatively. As seen in multiple lab experiments <(Schreiber, Darren 2009), (Mary B. McPherson a; Patricia Kearney a; Timothy G. Plax a )> People tend to anger when a social norm violation occurs. This anger can be seen in both individuals and groups and can be on grounds as broad as religion or as simplistic as clothing color.

By looking back at such conflicts as the cold war and the Second World War, it is possible to see how the violation of social norms may cause escalation and increased tension in a war. The fight against the Japanese and the Germans during the Second World War was, according to much propaganda (http://www.vulture-bookz.de/imagebank/Propaganda/images/1942x~This_is_the_Enemy_US_%5B2%5D.jpg), a fight against communism. According to anti-communist campaign writers and artists, communism was the main threat to the U.S.A.’s democratic way of life, the main threat to the norm. As in the lab experiments, people gained a purely negative attitude to the people who broke the democratic norm of the time. This tension even went so far as to put Japanese Americans in camps so as to keep the norm safe. Communism was different, thus it was the enemy.

Social norm violation can also be attributed to the start of America’s involvement World War II. Because the Japanese saw America as different, and thus a threat, they made a preemptive strike at Pearl Harbor. America was in violation of the Japanese social norm, thus anger in Japan built against America. This anger inevitable caused the Japanese to violate a social norm of America, life, thus America fought back. Although a system where all countries have the same social norm is not possible, it is possible to look objectively at the differences between countries or groups of people to see where tension lies and how to properly deal with any aggression that may occur. By studying what makes social groups different and how they interact with other groups, it is possible to stall or even prevent another conflict from happening.

Recources
-(http://www.vulture-bookz.de/imagebank/Propaganda/images/1942x~This_is_the_Enemy_US_%5B2%5D.jpg),
- Schreiber, Darren. "Race and Norm Violation: A Functional Brain Imaging Study" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology, Classical Chinese Garden, Portland, Oregon USA, . 2009-05-24 http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p204555_index.html
- a Mary B. McPherson is an Assistant Professor, and Patricia Kearney and Timothy G. Plax are Professors of Communication Studies at California State University, Long Beach. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a713770975~db=all?tab=citations

Dehumanization through propaganda

Throughout history, politicians have used propaganda to dehumanize the enemy. By doing this, politicians trick their followers into believing that the enemy deserves to be killed, for they are portrayed in the propaganda as being murderers, rapists, or just plain scum. The result then is that the people are more willing to engage in war against the enemy since they have a firm belief that the enemy should be out-right eliminated.
For example, Hitler was able to gain widespread support for World War II by using the Jewish population as a scapegoat. He used propaganda to make them seem disgusting and different, making them the root of the German people’s troubles (Nazi Propaganda). Which as a result, created greater support from German citizens. Hitler used caricatures that represented Jews having huge noses, skinny, and just plain ugly. Of course, this was not a true representation of the Jewish population. However, when people would see these posters, they associated them with the Jewish community. As this association grew, so did the atmosphere of hate towards the Jews. Violence became more accepted towards Jews and soon came the Nuremberg Race Laws in 1935 which restricted the Jewish population from many normal activities (O’Brien). Then the movement by the Nazis to completely eliminate the Jewish population, by using concentration camps, that the German population was well aware of. All were supported because of the slow progression of using anti-Jewish propaganda that slowly turned the minds of the non-Jewish community into hating the Jews and agreeing with the Nazi regime that they were the root of Germany’s problems.
A modern day example is the dehumanizing of Saddam Hussein. We dubbed him “the new Hitler” after claims in 1988, that he was supposedly gassing his own people (Clark 1). Along with other claims of Saddam’s cruel acts towards his own people, the U.S. population began to view him as a murderer, a womanizer, and just an overall horrible being. One of the main reasons that President Bush gave for invading Iraq was the claim that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (Clark 1).The Bush administration was unable to articulate exactly why we were going to war, being the true reason was the “plans for U.S. domination and exploitation under its New World Order” (Clark 1). So, in demonizing Hussein, they were able to still gain support even without telling the U.S. exactly why we were going to war. Doing so lead the United States into believing that invading Iraq and driving Saddam out of power was the right thing to do. As a result of the U.S. population, being influenced by the demonization of Saddam Hussein through modern propaganda, supported the U.S. invading Iraq February 22, 1991 which became known as the Gulf War. To this day, we are still in Iraq, after a new invasion in 2003, even though Saddam Hussein is now dead.
Why do we dehumanize others? This is an easy answer. To help make it easier to hurt the “enemy”, it gives one a justification for killing, torturing, and hurting those they believe are bad. The theory that we must dehumanize others in order to aggress against them is called moral justification. Looking at moral justification it is seen that with it, “ people can see themselves (or one’s group) as having fought in the name of righteous ideologies or nationalistic imperatives.” (Cehajic-Clancy). It is clear that many people in this situation probably feel much cognitive dissonance. They know hurting people is wrong, but they know that these bad people must pay. So to make their cognitive dissonance disappear, they simply tell themselves that these people are far from human! They are animals who have committed horrible acts against others and deserve to pay. Cognitive dissonance occurs when two thoughts contradict one another. So, “ When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance. In the case of a discrepancy between attitudes and behavior, it is most likely that the attitude will change to accommodate the behavior.” (Cognitive Dissonance (L. Festinger) ).
When a leader uses dehumanization of the enemy, their country fall into a mindset of pure hate for the enemy. Thus, the people are far more willing, whether they know all the facts of why their country wishes to go to war, to back up their leaders. Propaganda clearly wins in ensnaring the minds of a population into believing the lies their leaders tell them about their enemy with the use of dehumanization.



"Nazi Propaganda". Holocaust Encyclopedia. October 3, 2009 /wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005274>.

O'Brien, Joseph. "Nazi Racial Legislation: The Nuremberg Laws". Information For
Students. October 3,2009 .

Clark, Ramsey. "Demonize to Colonize". Global research November 29, 2005.

Cehajic-Clancy, Sabina. "Dehumanization of the victims." Puls Demokratije. 30 June 2009. Puls Demokratije, Web. 10 Dec 2009. .

"Cognitive Dissonance (L. Festinger) ." Explorations in Learning & Instruction: The Theory Into Practice Database . Web. 10 Dec 2009. .