Wednesday, March 19, 7 :00 p.m.
E.P. Foster Library Topping Room, 651 E Main St
CUSCI Professor of Psychology Kevin Volkan discusses how ordinary people can engage in horrendous acts of cruelty through the Nazi example of “Einsatzgruppen,” paramilitary death squads responsible for mass killings of civilians.
Group psychology is applicable to any armed conflict. We expect soldiers to kill and be killed, but what about civilians and other non-combatants? In this talk Dr. Volkan will use the example of the Nazi ‘Einsatzgruppen’ as an instance of how relatively ordinary people engaged in horrendous acts of cruelty. Psychological insight from The Milgram and the Stanford Prison experiment will demonstrate how easy it is to get humans to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do.