Selective Psychopathy: How Psychologically Normal People Commit Instrumental Planned Violence and Participate in Genocides and Mass Murder

Psychopathy and Its Relation to Mass Murder and Genocide

While pathological or clinical psychopaths make up only one percent of the general population, their presence in positions of leadership in nations throughout recorded history has resulted in the worst periods of massive conflicts and aggression resulting in wars of aggression, genocides, and ethnic cleansing campaigns, particularly in states with autocratic rulers. In the 20th Century, more than 60 million needless deaths occurred as a result of the actions of such psychopathic autocrats. Studies have shown a prevalence of between 3% and 21% of CEOs and other corporate high-level executives with psychopathic traits.[1]

Pathological or clinical psychopathy is generally determined clinically through use of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised. (PCL-R).[2] The PCL-R contains two parts, a semi-structured interview and a review of the subject's records and history. The second part is completing a 20-item symptom rating scale with each item given a score of 0, 1, or 2 based on the degree to which the item applies to the subject tested. The scores are added up to create a rank of zero to 40. Anyone who scores 30 and above, as tested by a licensed and trained psychological or behavioral clinician, is probably a clinical psychopath. The checklist contains the following factors:

? glib and superficial charm

? grandiose (exaggeratedly high) estimation of self

? need for stimulation

? pathological lying

? cunning and manipulativeness

? lack of remorse or guilt

? shallow affect (superficial emotional responsiveness)

? callousness and lack of empathy

? parasitic lifestyle

? poor behavioral controls

? sexual promiscuity

? early behavior problems

? lack of realistic long-term goals

? impulsivity

? irresponsibility

? failure to accept responsibility for own actions

? many short-term marital relationships

? juvenile delinquency

? revocation of conditional release

? criminal versatility

It is obvious that a person scoring strongly in a majority of these traits holding the top position in an autocratic regime could bring about wars of aggression and genocidal campaigns. 

Such psychopathic leaders cannot survive and carry out their campaigns of terror and aggression without the support of an inner circle of enablers who are either pathological or clinical psychopaths themselves or, as this paper hypothesizes, “selective psychopaths” who are defined as psychologically normal individuals who have been induced to treat a particular individual or out-group as an existential threat worthy of hatred and mistreatment. In the case of organized campaigns of violence occurring in instances such as war and genocide, the individual is induced exogenously by the leader and instruments of government or organizational control.  The leader must also convince the general population to be at least indifferent to the plight of the out-group and create a critical mass of active support in the general population for the aggression against the out-group up to and including, in extreme cases, the group’s annihilation.

In history’s most extreme example of planned, organized and instrumental murder, the Nazi government of Germany orchestrated the systemic murder of more than six million mostly Jews during World War Two in a campaign of genocide known as the Holocaust. The tens of thousands of people, including police, soldiers, militias, and government bureaucrats, were required to carry out the Holocaust, the vast majority of whom were not mentally ill. Yet these individuals were able to take part in the Holocaust aware of the ultimate fate of the victims. Ervin Straub, professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in his book The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, observes,

"Evil that arises out of ordinary thinking and is committed by ordinary people is the norm, not the exception….Great evil arises out of ordinary psychological processes that evolve, usually with a progression along the continuum of destruction….The most kind of the most brutal actions can appear reasonable and justified to people, depending on their perspective."[3]  

A striking example of how ordinary non-psychopathic people took part in the Holocaust is documented in the book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning[4]. In June 1942, twenty battalions of about 500 men each were sent into Poland by Germany to help secure the newly occupied territories and carry out the “final solution.” Browning conducted extensive research of one such battalion, Reserve Police Battalion 101. These men came from the Order Police, Germany’s civilian police forces at the municipal and regional levels. These men, according to Browning,

"…the vast majority were from the Hamburg area. About 63 percent were of working-class background , but a few were skilled laborers. The majority of them held typical Hamburg working-class jobs: dock workers and truck drivers were most numerous, but there were also many warehouse and construction workers, machine operators, seamen, and waiters. About 35 percent were lower-middle class, virtually all of them white-collar workers. Among rank and file policeman, about 25 percent were [Nazi] Party members in 1942….The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were from the lower orders of German society….Moist came from Hamburg, by reputation one of the least nazified cities in Germany, and the majority came from a social class that had been anti-Nazi in its political culture. These men would not seem to have been a very promising group from which to recruit mass murderers on behalf of the Nazi vision of racial utopia free from Jews."

These men, responsible for the gruesome executions of hundreds of thousands of victims, mostly carried out by standing directly behind them and shooting them in the base of the skull, represented ordinary men whom, at most, 2 percent would have been pathological psychopaths.

In the book The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, distinguished professor emeritus of psychiatry and psychology at the City University of New York, the author interviewed 28 former Nazi doctors, including five who worked in death camps. In his summation of the character of these doctors, who took part in gas chamber selections, performed grotesque experiments on living prisoners, and supervised the administration of the Zyklon B hydrogen cyanide pellets, Lifton states they were, “Neither brilliant nor stupid, neither inherently evil nor particularly ethically insensitive, they were by no means the demonic figures--sadistic, fanatic, lusting to kill--people have often thought them to be.”  Lifton describes the process by which these doctors were able to carry on normal healthy lives outside of the functions as physicians carrying out the Nazi Holocaust:

"Was the doubling of Nazi doctors an antisocial “character disorder”? Not in the classical sense, in that the process tended to be more a form of adaptation than a lifelong pattern. But doubling can include elements considered characteristic of “sociopathic” character impairment [italics added]: these include a disorder of feeling (swings between numbing and rage), pathological avoidance of a sense of guilt, and resort to violence to overcome “masked depression” (related to repressed guilt and numbing) and maintain a sense of vitality.24 Similarly, in both situations, destructive or even murderous behavior may cover over feared disintegration of the self.

The disorder in the type of doubling I have described is more focused and temporary and occurs as part of a larger institutional structure which encourages or even demands it. In that sense, Nazi doctors’ behavior resembles that of certain terrorists — and members of the Mafia, of “death squads” organized by dictators, or even of delinquent gangs. In all these situations, profound ideological, family, ethnic, and sometimes age-specific ties help shape criminal behavior. Doubling may well be an important psychological mechanism for individuals living within any criminal subculture: the Mafia of “death squad” chief who coldly orders (or himself carries out) the murder of a rival while remaining a loving husband, father, and churchgoer. The doubling is adaptive to the extreme conditions created by the subculture, but additional influences, some of which can begin early in life, always contribute to the process. That, too, was the case with the Nazi doctors."[5]

Adolf Eichmann, considered an architect of the Holocaust for his role in the mass deportations of Jews in Eastern Europe during World War II to extermination camps, was tried before an Israeli court in Jerusalem in 1961 for crimes against humanity and crimes against the Jewish people. Attending his trial as a reporter for the New Yorker was the political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt.[6] Expecting to find Eichmann a monstrous incarnation of evil she instead found a man whom she referred to as the embodiment of the “banality of evil”, a man who was “terribly and terrifyingly normal.” Arendt portrayed Eichmann as a dutiful bureaucrat of shallow intellect who abdicated his conscience in furtherance of improving his career. Eichmann himself declared at his trial he abdicated his conscience in obedience to the leader principle (Fuhrerprinzip). Eichmann was examined by six psychologists who found no evidence of abnormal personality [italics added] including one psychologist who found his attitude towards his family and friends as “highly desirable.”

An example of an apparent psychologically normal person who took part in mass murder was SS-Obersturmfuhrer (1st Lieutenant) Karl Kretschmer who was a member of the German SS Einsatzgruppen serving in Russia during the fall of 1942. Einsatzgruppen were SS killing squads sent into Eastern European territories captured by the German Army to “liquidate” Jews, Romany, and Communist political operatives. There were four Einsatzgruppen units created, each composed of 600 to 1000 men who were mostly from the Waffen-SS (the military arm of the SS) and German police forces. Each of these units (lettered “A, B, C, and D”) was specifically directed to follow the advancing German Wehrmacht (Army) into Eastern Europe and Russia.  About one and a half million mostly Jews were murdered mostly in the Ukraine and the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania by or under the direction of the Einsatzgruppen. The vast majority of these murders were committed by lining up victims in front of mass graves and shooting the victims, either by being machine gunned down or individually shot in the neck at the base of the skull. A series of letters home from Kretschmer to his wife and children reveals the personality and psychological state of a psychologically ordinary man involved in carrying out the daily mass murder as part of the Holocaust.[7]

No. 6 Sunday, 27 September 1942

My dear Soska,

…. How I’d like to be with you all. What you see here makes you either brutal or sentimental. I am no longer in the area of Stalingrad but further north in the middle of the front…. After my experiences in Russia, my lovely home means more to me than anything else in the world….

As I said, I am in a very gloomy mood. I must pull myself out of it. The sight of the dead (including women and children) is not very cheering. But we are fighting this war for the survival or non-survival of our people…. As the war is in our opinion a Jewish war, the Jew is the first to feel it. Here in Russia, wherever the German soldier is, no Jew remains. You can imagine that at first I needed some time to get to grips with this. Please do not talk to Frau Kern about this….

Buy is not the right word, the money is worth nothing, we barter. We happen to be in possession of old clothes, which are very much sought after. We can get everything here. The clothes belonged to people who are no longer alive today. So you don’t need to send me any clothing or the like. We have got enough here to last us for a year. Please could you get hold of some salt for me – the white Kaisers-Kaffe type in packets….

Take care of the children for me

With longing and love

In my heart,

your Karl

[Date not known]

Even if the end result is that the people here die of hunger, we will still take food for ourselves. But it need not go that far. That would only be if the worst came to the worst. We have got to appear to be tough here or else we will lose the war. There is no room for pity of any kind. Our women and children back home could not expect any mercy or pity if the enemy got the upper hand. For that reason we are mopping up where necessary but otherwise the Russians are willing, simple and obedient. There are no Jews here anymore.

Kursk, 15.10.1942

No. 11

Beloved wife, dear children, 

…. I have already told you about the shooting – that I could not say ‘no’ here either. But they’ve more or less said they’ve finally found a good chap to run the administrative side of things. The last one was by all accounts a coward. That’s the way people are judged here. But you can trust your Daddy. He thinks about you all the time and is not shooting immoderately. So that’s our life.

I hope the package for Wurzel will get there in time for his birthday. It would make me very happy.

Lots of kisses and greetings for the children

For their dear mummy a long deep kiss

You are my everything

Your Papa.

O.U., 19 October 1942

Dear Mutti, dear children,

…. Anyway you need not worry that we are living badly here. We have to eat and drink well because of the nature of our work, as I have described to you in detail. Otherwise we would crack up. You Papa will be very careful and strike the right balance. It’s not very pleasant stuff. I would far rather sleep….

Are the children still behaving? Is Muckerle working hard at school? Has Volkmar stopped wetting his bed? He’ll soon be a big man and should not be doing a thing like that anymore. And how about washing hands and brushing teeth? You know how important it is not to be sloppy. Dagi too should now become accustomed to sitting properly at table and not put her elbows on the table….

If it weren’t for the stupid thoughts about what we are doing in this country, the Einsatz here would be wonderful, since it has put me in a position where I can support you all very well. Since, as I already wrote to you, I consider the last Einsatz to be justified and indeed approve of the consequences it had, the phrase: ‘stupid thoughts’ is not strictly accurate. Rather it is a weakness not to be able to stand the sight of dead people; the best way of overcoming it is to do it more often. Then it becomes a habit…. For the more one thinks about the whole business the more one comes to the conclusion that it’s the only thing we can do to safeguard unconditionally the security of our people and our future. I do not therefore want to think and write about it any further. I would only make your heart heavy needlessly. We men here at the front will win through. Our faith in the Fuhrer fulfills us and gives us the strength to carry out our difficult and thankless task….

Selective Psychopathy

Kretschmer was a committed member of the Einsatzgruppen who, on a daily basis, committed mass murder of innocent men, women, and children, yet, after reading his letters, one may become somewhat ambivalent about his evilness. Just as we are ambivalent, so was Kretschmer about his activities in Russia. But for his participation in the “final solution”, Kretschmer comes across as a normal family man who displays traits we consider admirable in terms of his care and concern for the well-being of his family. Kretschmer faithfully sends parcels home of food and even sweets and rubber balls for his children. He misses his family and wishes to be home again with them. He struggles with the nature of his unpleasant work and does not want to burden his wife with his gloom. Kretschmer, like Eichmann, is not a pathological psychopath, and probably did not hate Jews but accepted their devalued out-group status, like Eichmann as well. However, in none of his letters is there an expression of empathy or compassion for his victims and he actually blamed the victims for their own demise. Kretschmer is just one of tens of thousands who actively took part in the Holocaust who stifled empathy and normal inhibitions of harming others through a process of selective psychopathy.

The Holocaust would not have been possible without the participation of tens of thousands of psychologically normal people who abandoned their moral principles with regard to Jews and other groups deemed to be untermenschen, or sub-human. The presence of an existential crisis, in this case created artificially by falsely accusing and maligning Jews and others as a threat to the German people and eventually by the war, led to the need to annihilate the threat in the minds of a sufficient number of Germans and collaborators of other nations. Once the affective and cognitive functions of the minds of these individuals were in agreement as to the source of the threat and the need to eliminate the threat, it is hypothesized that the neurochemistry of their brains reconfigured their brains to mimic the structure and function of the brain of a pathological psychopath with regard to Jews and others classified as sub-human.   

Selective psychopathy may occur in individuals without the influence of external forces. In people who are not pathological psychopaths, it is hypothesized that violence against a particular individual or group may be justified by endogenously, or internally, induced selective psychopathy based the individual’s life experiences. Examples of such endogenously induced selective psychopathy include domestic violence, workplace violence, and murder. In extreme cases, this selective psychopathy can lead to the carrying out of “active shooter” attacks by “lone wolves” resulting in mass murder. The presence of other forms of mental illness, such as clinical depression, schizophrenia, paranoia, and delusional psychosis, can render the individual more prone to selective psychopathy, as perception of reality, feelings of being mistreated, and impulse control are affected. Despite the presence of non-pathological psychopathic mental illness, such as clinical depression, schizophrenia, paranoia, and delusional psychosis, planned murders in such incidents as workplace violence or active shooter invariably involve the murders serving rational, in the mind of the actor, purpose to address a perceived existential threat. It is hypothesized that even in instrumental planned murders committed by persons suffering from mental illness, other than pathological psychopathy, selective psychopathy is required for the person to complete the act. 

An example of an individual who suffered mental illness, but not pathological psychopathy, who committed mass murder was Seung-Hui Cho who perpetrated the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16, 2007 in which 32 were killed and 17 injured. Cho, a student at Virginia Tech, was diagnosed with anxiety disorder, selective mutism, and major depressive disorder. On the day of the shooting he sent a DVD to NBC News which contained video clips, photographs, and a manifesto explaining the reasons for his actions.  In the videos Cho said:

I didn't have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled. But no, I will no longer run. If not for me, for my children, for my brothers and sisters that you fucked; I did it for them... When the time came, I did it. I had to... You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today, but you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off.

You sadistic snobs. I may be nothing but a piece of dogshit. You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul, and torched my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and defenseless people.

Do you know what it feels to be spit on your face and have trash shoved down your throat? Do you know what it feels like to dig your own grave? Do you know what it feels like to have your throat slashed from ear to ear? Do you know what it feels like to be torched alive? Do you know what it feels like to be humiliated and be impaled upon on a cross? And left to bleed to death for your amusement? You have never felt a single ounce of pain your whole life. Did you want to inject as much misery in our lives as you can just because you can? You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn't enough. Your Vodka and Cognac weren't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.

You just loved to crucify me. You loved inducing cancer in my head, terrorizing my heart, and raping my soul all this time.

When the time came, I did it... I had to.

The above quotes and other statements in the materials mailed to NBC News clearly evidence mental illness including signs of delusional disorder, most clearly in statements indicating paranoia and delusions of grandeur. Despite his mental illness Cho exhibited the signs of rationalized instrumental violence just as person who did not suffer from mental illness, just as SS-Obersturmfuhrer Karl Kretschmer did while taking part in murder during the Holocaust.  He engaged in binary Us versus Them thinking with the “Us” being himself and the “weak and defenseless people.” He had identified an existential threat to himself and his in-group as being attacked in explicit terms by the “Them,” the “sadistic snobs.” He rationalizes his actions as needed to defend “my children, for my brothers and sisters…. I did it for them.” He even shifts responsibility for his actions onto the those who he believes hurt him: “You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours.”

Even in the most disturbed minds, deliberate planned killing requires a reason, specifically a perceived existential threat to the actor and/or his or her in-group and the killing necessary to alleviate the threat. In such cases where the individual is not already a pathological psychopath, it is hypothesized selective psychopathy towards the target will take hold limiting the normal psychological inhibitions against killing or harming another.

Reactive Versus Instrumental Violence

“Two subtypes of aggression have been identified in humans: the controlled-instrumental subtype and the reactive-impulsive subtype. Instrumental aggression…is highly seen in psychopathy (von Borries, Volman, de Brujin, Bulten, Verkes, & Roelofs, 2012).”[8] J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D., a clinical professor of psychiatry at University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, and faculty, the San Diego Psychoanalytic Center, writes an act of violence

committed by a psychopath…illustrates a particular mode of violence, predatory violence, which is planned, purposeful, and emotionless…. There is another mode of violence which is impulsive, reactive, and emotional. In the research it is referred to as affective violence, and is both more common, and in a sense less dangerous than predatory violence. The provenance of the study of affective violence reaches back into the animal research of the first half of the twentieth century [citation omitted], while the study of predatory violence originated twenty years later [citation omitted]. Both modes of violence are now considered anatomically and neurochemically distinctive.[9]

Reactive violence is a product of the emotional center of the brain, the limbic system, and specifically a response to the emotions anger or fear. It is not planned and, by definition, a reaction to a stimulus. It generally lasts only moments.  The stronger the provocative stimulus, the more likely a violent reaction will result. The strength and type of reaction is mediated by the prefrontal cortex so the better the neuronal connections between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system, most importantly, the amygdala, and the more mature the prefrontal cortex is, specifically the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the less likely violence will occur. Reactive violence is less dangerous because it is not planned and is spontaneous and, with proper approaches, can usually be deescalated.

Instrumental violence is purposeful and requires preparation or planning. It is a product of the cognitive functions of the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex. Although the need for planned violence is triggered by the emotional brain, once accepted by the cognitive brain, the cognitive brain stays in control. To engage the prefrontal cortex into planning violence requires a rationalization and objective. Once engaged, and the person begins to carry out the violence, it is under the control of the prefrontal cortex and not an emotional process, despite the strong interconnectedness of the emotional and cognitive areas of the brain.  Although the prefrontal cortex mediates emotions, when engaged in purposeful deadly action, it is not controlled by emotions. This accounts for the unemotional nature and detached affect of persons engaged actively in instrumental violence.  

The particular brain system – affective or cognitive – controlling the violence controls the behaviors, physiological responses, and psychological state of the actor. While instrumental violence is generally “cold,” reactive violence is “hot” lasting only seconds or moments, involving activation of the autonomic nervous system and reduction on cognitive functions. The most dangerous kind of violence is instrumental as time to plan and target victims allows for larger number of potential victims using the deadliest methods available. Moreover, because the violence has been rationalized as a response to an existential threat, the person is committed to carrying out the act and can rarely be talked out of the act (assuming someone is aware of the plan).  It is the ability of pathological psychopaths to engage in instrumental violence without the restraint and inhibition functions of normal brains that makes them so dangerous.  

The Brain Anatomy of a Pathological Psychopath

Research has shown that there are anatomical differences in the brain structure of pathological psychopaths involving brain structures involved in emotion, pain, reward, guilt, empathy, impulse control, and high functioning cognition. A 2017 study involving fMRI scans on 20 state prison inmates diagnosed as psychopaths by researchers at the University of Wisconsin- Madison “showed that psychopaths have reduced connections between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), the part of the brain responsible for sentiments such as empathy and guilt, and the amygdala, which mediates fear and anxiety[10].”

A study of 86 psychopathic subjects conducted in 2009 found significant reduction in amygdala volume. “Findings support prior hypotheses of amygdala deficits in individuals with psychopathy and indicate that amygdala abnormalities contribute to emotional and behavioral symptoms of psychopathy[11].”  The amygdala is considered to be one of the most important components in the neural circuitry of emotional processing.

Researchers based at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry conducted brain scans using fMRI of 44 violent adult offenders in Britain. “The results showed that the psychopaths' brains had significantly less grey matter in the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and temporal poles than the brains of the non-psychopathic offenders and non-offenders. These areas of the brain are important for understanding other people's emotions and intentions, and are activated when people think about moral behavior, the researchers said. Damage to these areas is linked with a lack of empathy, a poor response to fear and distress and a lack of self-conscious emotions such as guilt or embarrassment.[12]”

The Hypothesis: Psychologically Normal People Are Able to Take Part in Mass Murder and Genocide Through the Process of Selective Psychopathy

It is hypothesized that, given sufficient inducement that a person or group is to be hated and presents an existential threat, a non-psychopathic, psychologically normal person can treat the person or group as a pathological psychopath would treat their target of aggression and that this treatment results from neurological changes to the brain that mimic the organic anatomical features of the brain of a pathological psychopath. Whether exogenously or endogenously induced, the greater the perceived severity and immediacy of the existential threat, the stronger the effect of mimicking the structural architecture of the brain of a pathological psychopath. The perception of the existential threat is subject to and can be exaggerated by forms of mental illness such as schizophrenia, paranoia, and delusional psychosis.  

Specifically, it is hypothesized that inhibitory neurotransmitters and hormones suppress activity in key areas of the brain, such as the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), involved in empathy, guilt, impulse control, pain, fear, and moral behavior in relation to thoughts and actions regarding the person or group subject to the selective psychopathy.  Such neurotransmitters and hormones have already been shown to exist. For example, the neurotransmitters dopamine and GABA have been shown to inhibit the spontaneous activity of most prefrontal cortical neurons[13] and the hormone testosterone decreases activity in the prefrontal cortex and its functional coupling to the amygdala[14]. The inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA serves to inhibit the fear activation function of the amygdala.[15]

Proposed Research  

In order to test the hypothesis that selective psychopathy facilitates the participation of psychologically normal people in mass murder and genocide, research is suggested involving the fMRI brain scans and psychophysical measures of autonomic nervous system arousal (heart rate, blood pressure, respirations, and galvanic skin response) of subjects with strong political, religious, or ideological views making choices or completing tasks while being primed (subliminal perception) or in consideration (conscious perception) of members of the same and opposing political, religious, or ideological group. Control testing would involve the use of subjects without any viewpoint of only a minimal strength viewpoint of the particular political, religious or ideological belief being tested.  

Example Test

Test subjects: Far right wing (RW) conservative and far left wing (LW) liberal political views.

Subjects will be screened for extreme political views on either end of the political spectrum and control subjects will be screened for moderate political views.

Test subjects and control subjects will be exposed to affectively neutral stimuli such as images and/or videos of fields and skies to establish a baseline of neural activity in key brain areas associated with pathological psychopathy. This will be followed by either priming with images associated with the opposing group (subliminal effect) or overt (consciously perceived) images/videos of the subjects’ affiliated group (RW-RW, LW-LW) and opposing group (RW-LW, LW-RW). The images presented overtly will presented in two situations: (1) member(s) of the group engaged in giving a speech or engaged in a rally; and (2) member(s) of the group being verbally or physically assaulted.

In the priming tests, the subjects will be instructed to complete a cognitively simple and cognitively difficult task following the subliminal presentation of the image.

In the overt image/video tests, the subjects will be presented with Likert scale questions concerning their attitude or impression of the image/video. For example, following a video clip of a speech by an affiliated political member (RW-RW or LW-LW), the subject will respond to the question:

             I __________________ with the content of the speech.

·               Strongly agree

·               Agree

·               Neither agree nor disagree

·               Disagree

·               Strongly disagree

In the subliminal presentation tests, the purpose is to determine whether, on an unconscious level, the hypothetical selective psychopathy inhibition of brain areas associated with affective evaluation occur in relation to strongly opposed groups perceived as an existential threat and whether reduced emotional arousal consistent with the emotionally dissociated state of instrumental violence occurs based on unconscious stimuli.  The same determinations are sought on the overt presentation tests but under conditions of conscious awareness of the stimuli.

A question arises as to whether people of strong opposing political beliefs in this country can, when confronted with the opposing group, generate the perceived existential threat required to evoke the hypothetical selective psychopathy. In addition to the above testing example, a stronger opposing group, such as individuals who are have been in actual hostilities with the opposing group, may be required.  

Conclusions

Instrumental violence, which is planned and purposeful, involves the highest cognitive functioning of the brain and is the type of violence rationalized in wars of aggression, genocides, ethnic cleansing campaigns, pogroms, and mass murder. Reactive violence, a result of our emotional response to provocation, results in psychological and physical harm frequently in the lives of most people but its harm is minuscule when compared to the harm caused by instrumental violence. 

The greatest harm to humanity from human aggression has occurred due to psychopathic leaders who have engaged their nations or organizations in wars of aggression, genocides, ethnic cleansing campaigns, pogroms, and other forms of mass murder. These forms of instrumental violence would not be possible without a dedicated core of followers who have adopted the rationale for destruction of the leader creating a critical mass of adherents needed to engage the nation or organization in the campaign of aggression.

As the Holocaust example has shown, the vast majority of these adherents are psychologically normal individuals who have been induced by the leader and the instruments of government to believe the targets of the aggression are an existential threat and their annihilation is the only way to protect the nation or organization. Once the rational is accepted, it is hypothesized a state of selective psychopathy towards the targets of aggression occurs in which the structural anatomy and functions of a pathological psychopath are created in the brains of the adherents through the neurochemistry of inhibitory neurotransmitters and hormones. This selective psychopathy inhibits the normal restraints on harming and killing others facilitating the adherents to take part in the various forms of instrumental violence such as wars of aggression and genocidal campaigns.

Research as described in this paper will show if this hypothesis of selective psychopathy is valid. If the hypothesis is valid then we can potentially develop tools to prevent wars of aggression, genocides, ethnic cleansing campaigns, pogroms, and other forms of mass murder through early identification of the attempts to wrongfully rationalize aggression and early identification of selective psychopathy in members of societies and organizations towards the group wrongfully targeted. To be able to identify and prevent selective psychopathy in members of nations and organizations eliminates the necessary core of adherents required to carry out the most devastating and destructive forms of human aggression.  

Author contact: [email protected]

[1] https://www.psychology.org.au/news/media_releases/13September2016/Brooks/. Accessed 4/6/2020

[2] Hare, R. and Neumann, C. (2007), Psychopathy as a Clinical and Empirical Construct, Annu. Rev. Clin. Psychol. 2008. 4: 217-246.

[3] Staub, E., 1989. The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, Cambridge University Pres, New York, pp. 126-127

[4] Browning, C. 1993, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, Harper Collins, New York.

[5] Lifton, Robert J., 1986. “The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide,” p.423 Basic Books, New York.

[6] See Arendt, H. 1963. “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.” Penguin Books, Toronto, Canada.

[7] Klee, E., et al, Ed. 1991. “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders. Konecky & Konecky, Old Saybrook, Connecticut. pp. 163-171

[8] R. Narvaes and R. de Almeida (2014), “Aggressive behavior and three neurotransmitters: Dopamine, GABA, and serotonin—A review of the last 10 years,” Psychology and Neuroscience 7(4):601-607. Internal citation: Von Borries, A. K. L.,Volman, I., de Brujin, E. R. A., Bulten, B. H., Verkes, R. J., & Roelofs, K. (2012). “Psychopaths lack the automatic avoidance of social threat: relation to instrumental aggression,” Psychiatry Research, 200, 761-766

[9] J. Reid Meloy (2012), “Predatory Violence and Psychopathy,” In: Hakkanen-Nyholm, H. & Nyholm, J., eds. (2012). Psychopathy and Law. London: Wiley and Sons.

[10] https://www.med.wisc.edu/news-and-events/2011/november/psychopaths-brains-differences-structure-function/.  See also A. Glenn et al, “Antisocial Personality Disorder: A Current Review,” Curr Psychiatry Rep 15 (2013): 427.

[11] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192811/#S22title. See also K. Blair, “Neuroimaging of Psychopathy and Antisocial Behavior: A Targeted Review,” Curr Psychiatry Rep 12 (2010): 76.

[12] https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSBRE8460ZQ20120507.

[13] S. Pirot, et al (1992), “Inhibitory effects of ventral tegmental area stimulation on the activity of prefrontal cortical neurons: Evidence for the involvement of both dopaminergic and GABAergic components,” Neuroscience, 49:4, 857-865.

[14] P. Mehra and J. Beer, “Neural Mechanisms of the Testosterone-Aggression Relation: The Role of Orbitofrontal Cortex,” J. Cog Nsci 22 (2010) 2357; G. van Wingen, et al, “Testtosterone Reduces Amygdala-Orbitofrontal Cortex Coupling,” PNE 35 (2010): 105.

[15] Babaev, O., Piletti Chatain, C. & Krueger-Burg, D. “Inhibition in the amygdala anxiety circuitry,” Exp Mol Med 50, 18 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s12276-018-0063-8