Invitation to Psychology

374 ChapteR 10 Behavior in Social and Cultural Context

These paintings done during wartime poignantly illustrate one child’s effort to portray the horror of war and another’s

dream of peace. Can we learn to design a world in which conflicts and group differences, though inevitable, need not

lead to violence?

Taking Psychology With You

The compelling evidence for the banality of evil

is difficult for many people to accept. Clearly, some

people do stand out as being unusually heroic or

unusually sadistic. But in the social-psychological

view, evil does not result from aggressive instincts but

from the all-too-normal processes we have discussed

in this chapter, including ethnocentrism, obedience

to authority, conformity, groupthink, deindividuation,

stereotyping, and prejudice.

The good news is that when circumstances within

a nation change, societies can also change from being

warlike to being peaceful. Ethnocentrism and prejudice,

along with compassion, cooperation, and altruism, are

part of our human heritage, awaiting the conditions that

will awaken them. By identifying the conditions that

create the banality of evil, perhaps we can create other

conditions that foster the “banality of virtue”—everyday

acts of kindness, selflessness, and generosity.

bloodless hands. Americans and Canadians slaugh-

tered native peoples in North America, Turks slaugh-

tered Armenians, the Khmer Rouge slaughtered

millions of fellow Cambodians, the Spanish conquis-

tadors slaughtered native peoples in Mexico and South

America, Idi Amin waged a reign of terror against his

own people in Uganda,

the Japanese slaugh-

tered Koreans and

Chinese, Iraqis slaugh-

tered Kurds, despotic

political regimes in

Argentina and Chile

killed thousands of dissidents and rebels, the Hutu

in Rwanda murdered thousands of Tutsi, and in the

former Yugoslavia, Bosnian Serbs massacred thou-

sands of Bosnian Muslims in the name of “ethnic

cleansing.”

Thinking

CriTiCally

About “Evil” Cultures

Dealing With Cultural

Differences

A French salesman worked for a company
that was bought by Americans. When the
new American manager ordered him to step
up his sales within the next three months,
the employee quit in a huff, taking his cus-
tomers with him. Why? In France, it takes
years to develop customers; in family-owned
businesses, relationships with customers
may span generations. The American man-
ager wanted instant results, as Americans
often do, but the French salesman knew this

was impossible and quit. The American view

was, “He wasn’t up to the job and disloyal

besides, so he stole my customers.” The

French view was, “There is no point in ex-

plaining anything to a person who is so stu-

pid as to think you can acquire loyal custom-

ers in three months” (Hall & Hall, 1987).

Both men were committing the funda-

mental attribution error: assuming that the

other person’s behavior was due to his per-

sonality rather than the situation, in this

case one governed by cultural rules. Such

rules are not trivial and success in a global

economy depends on understanding them.

But you don’t have to go to another country

to encounter cultural differences; they are

right where you live.

If you find yourself getting angry over

something a person from another culture

is doing, use the skills of critical thinking

to find out whether your expectations and

perceptions of that person’s behavior are

appropriate. Take the time to examine your

assumptions and biases, consider other ex-

planations of the other person’s actions,

and avoid emotional reasoning. For example,

people who shake hands as a gesture of

friendship and courtesy are likely to feel

insulted if a person from a non-hand-shaking

culture refuses to do the same, unless they