Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND CORE CONCEPTS
- PART II THE ROOTS OF HELPING OTHER PEOPLE IN NEED IN CONTRAST TO PASSIVITY
- PART III HOW CHILDREN BECOME CARING AND HELPFUL RATHER THAN HOSTILE AND AGGRESSIVE
- PART IV THE ORIGINS OF GENOCIDE, MASS KILLING, AND OTHER COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE
- PART V THE AFTERMATH OF MASS VIOLENCE: TRAUMA, HEALING, PREVENTION, AND RECONCILIATION
- 33 Preventing Group Violence
- 34 Kosovo: The Need for Flexible Bystander Response
- 35 The Effects of Violence on Groups and Their Members
- 36 Healing, Reconciliation, and Forgiving after Genocide and Other Collective Violence
- 37 Healing, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Project Summary and Outcome, with Addendum on Other Projects
- 38 Further Avenues to Prevention
- 39 Commentary: Human Destructiveness and the Refugee Experience
- 40 A Vision of Holocaust Education in Holocaust Centers and Schools
- 41 Out of Hiding
- 42 Review of Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich
- 43 What Can We Learn from This Tragedy? A Reaction Days after September 11, 2001
- PART VI CREATING CARING, MORALLY INCLUSIVE, PEACEFUL SOCIETIES
- Appendix: What Are Your Values and Goals?
- Index
- References
35 - The Effects of Violence on Groups and Their Members
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND CORE CONCEPTS
- PART II THE ROOTS OF HELPING OTHER PEOPLE IN NEED IN CONTRAST TO PASSIVITY
- PART III HOW CHILDREN BECOME CARING AND HELPFUL RATHER THAN HOSTILE AND AGGRESSIVE
- PART IV THE ORIGINS OF GENOCIDE, MASS KILLING, AND OTHER COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE
- PART V THE AFTERMATH OF MASS VIOLENCE: TRAUMA, HEALING, PREVENTION, AND RECONCILIATION
- 33 Preventing Group Violence
- 34 Kosovo: The Need for Flexible Bystander Response
- 35 The Effects of Violence on Groups and Their Members
- 36 Healing, Reconciliation, and Forgiving after Genocide and Other Collective Violence
- 37 Healing, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Project Summary and Outcome, with Addendum on Other Projects
- 38 Further Avenues to Prevention
- 39 Commentary: Human Destructiveness and the Refugee Experience
- 40 A Vision of Holocaust Education in Holocaust Centers and Schools
- 41 Out of Hiding
- 42 Review of Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich
- 43 What Can We Learn from This Tragedy? A Reaction Days after September 11, 2001
- PART VI CREATING CARING, MORALLY INCLUSIVE, PEACEFUL SOCIETIES
- Appendix: What Are Your Values and Goals?
- Index
- References
Summary
Groups of people who have been victims of intense persecution, violence, mass killings, and genocide are deeply affected. This is true, of course, of individual survivors of mass killings or genocides, who were in camps or in territories where the violence occurred and who were personally targeted as victims. But it is also true of members of the victim group who were not in direct danger. They are also deeply affected by the persecution and the attempt to eliminate all or part of their group.
For most people, individual identity is deeply rooted in their group identity (Bar-Tal & Staub, 1997; Staub, 1997a), especially in the case of racial, ethnic, and even religious groups, with membership in the group often not experienced as a matter of choice. The deaths of many others belonging to the group, the knowledge that, except for circumstances (often accidental ones like geography), one would have been killed, and the effects of the genocide on the whole group have deep impact on individuals, ranging from survivor guilt, to devaluation of oneself and one's group, to insecurity and the perception of the world as hostile.
Past victimization affects people's assumptions about the world (Janoff-Bulman, 1992). It deeply frustrates basic human needs like the need for security, for a positive identity, for a sense of effectiveness and control, for positive connections to others, and for a usable, meaningful comprehension of reality, including one's own place and role in the world (Staub, 1989, 1996).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Psychology of Good and EvilWhy Children, Adults, and Groups Help and Harm Others, pp. 430 - 431Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003