Evil is more than banal: situationism and the concept of evil,” Personality and social psychology review

Socialpsychology as a discipline has given relatively little attention to theproblem of evil in society, and those discussions in thisfield that do exist typically regard evil ac-tions as only varieties ofaggression without any characteristics that distinguish them from other forms of intentional mistreatment of others. Because of the field's situationistic perspective emphasizing the individual's susceptibility to thepower of the immediate situation, social psychologists generally view thefairly high levels of obedience to authority displayed in Milgram 's (1963, 1974) classic experiment as the paradigmatic example of evil behavior. For them, much evil is, in Arendt's (1963) well-known phrase, only "banal, " and Milgram 'sfindings are often viewed as illus-trating the "central dynamic " involved in the slaughter ofmillions ofJews and other "undesirables " in the Holocaust. This article holds that Milgram 's (1974) obedience research does not represent significantfeatures ofthe Holocaust, especially the sa-dism that occurred not infrequently, and disregards the vital difference between those who initiated the murderouspolicy and the others whofollowed their orders. Building on Darley 's (1992) earlier conjectures about thefeatures that ordinarypeople migh