We often hear that in order to wreak evil, we have to dehumanize the enemy--hence the political propaganda that painted the Japanese and Germans as inherently degraded races, fundamentally different from and less moral than ourselves. Zimbardo, however, makes an interesting point: in order to do evil, we also have to dehumanize ourselves. He points to research showing that warriors in tribes that kill, mutilate, and torture their opponents almost all change their appearance substantially before they go into battle. Tribes where the warriors go into battle in their day clothes, so to speak, are considerably gentler.
There are a lot of ways to depersonalize the relationship between attacker and victim. In experiments, people who are anonymous are more willing to administer aggressive treatment, such as electric shocks, to "victims". Another way is to disappear into the group. That's why there are firing squads, rather than a single bullet to the head. When you collectively commit atrocities, as the Germans did under the Nazi rule, it is easy not to think about what you are authorizing. The camps, after all, are very far away. And you are only one one-millionth of the decision to send Jews and Gypsies there.
Update One of the interesting things that I meant to mention, but didn't, is that there is one way of predicting which groups will succeed in Vernon Smith's cooperation experiments: the groups that talk to each other cooperate. The experiments are done on computers with a chat system. People who talk a lot, especially random chit chat, are much more likely to cooperate with each other.
I think Mal Reynolds said something to this effect on an episode of Firefly.
I'm not sure how he fits into this conversation, but General Butt-Naked of the Butt-Naked Brigade deserves mention.
Way back in Psych 101 (circa 1965) I seem to recall a study that role-played and simulated two truckers that had to get through a one-lane road in opposite directions. The scenarios progressed through neither had communication with the other nor any way to block the road through all permutations to where both had communication and blocking capability. In this particular experiment, as I recall, the best cooperation occurred in the first scenario -- no talk, no blocking. (The worst when only one had blocking regardless of communication).
"He points to research showing that warriors in tribes that kill, mutilate, and torture their opponents almost all change their appearance substantially before they go into battle. Tribes where the warriors go into battle in their day clothes, so to speak, are considerably gentler."
I believe the same may well apply to blog commenters who use pseudonyms rather than their real names; but, I could be wrong.
The same happens to internationalists when they're fixin' to kick some tribalist ass, in one of those "humanitarian interventions". Internationalists dehumanize themselves by claiming they care about strange people in faraway lands. That sounds pretty non-human to me.
Your update is interesting. There is a lot of experimental literature that demonstrates the positive role of communication on the ability of a group to cooperate. This literature generally emphasizes the importance of "ideal speech", rational communication etc.. That "chit chat" has a similar impact is news to me. Do you have a source for this?
This is just one of the many reasons why every organized armed force in the world has some sort of recognizable uniform they have in common with one another, as well as other 'group conforming' rituals, such as boot camps, odd/uniform hair cut regulations, saluting rituals, etc.
"He (Professor Zimbardo) points to research showing that warriors in tribes that kill, mutilate, and torture their opponents almost all change their appearance substantially before they go into battle."
I believe the same may well apply to Stanford professors before they go onto campus.