Abstract
Why do ordinary people commit ethnic atrocities? To understand the psychology of ethnic violence we constructed a pilot project based on narrative interviews with five ordinary people who participated in acts of ethnic violence during the Lebanese Civil War. The interviews present striking evidence that identity constrains choice for all individuals, regardless of their particular ideological or socioeconomic demographic background. Our findings challenge both the rationalist approaches of realistic conflict theory and rational choice and the institutional claims of consociational democracy and suggest the tremendous power of identity and perceptions of self in relation to others to constrain political actions.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abrams, Dominic, and Michael Hogg. (1990) Social Identity Theory: Constructive and Critical Advances. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Adorno, Theodor et al. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. NY: Harper.
Alford, Fred. 1997. What Evil Means to Us. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Barakat, Halim. 1977. Lebanon in Strife. Texas: University of Texas Press.
Browning, Christopher. 1992. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: Longman. 2nd edition.
Bruner, Jerome et al. Contemporary Approaches to Cognition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Campbell, D. (1965) “Ethnocentrism and other Altruistic Motives.” Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. ed. D Levine, 13:283–311. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Doise W. (1988). “Individual and Social Identities in Intergroup Relations.” European Journal of Social Psychology. 18:99–111.
Euban, Roxanne. 1995. “Rational Choice theory and Fundamentalism: when World Views Collide.” Political Psychology. 16: 157–178.
Festinger, L. 1954. “A theory of social comparison processes,” Human Relations 7:117–40.
Festinger, L. 1957. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, Ca: Stanford University Press.
Glass, James. 1997. Life Unworthy of Life: Racial Phobia and Mass Murder in Hitler's Germany. NY: Basic Books.
Goldhagen, D.J., Kandel L., 1996. Hitler's willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holo Caust. New York: Knopf.
Green, Donald and Ian Shapiro. 1994. Pathologies of Rational Choice. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Gross Jan. 2000. Neighbors. Princeton NJ: Princeton U Press.
Hitti, Philip. 1957. Lebanon in History. London. MacMillan and Company, LTD.
Hogg, M.A. and J.C. Turner. (1985) “Interpersonal attraction, social identification and psychological group formation.” European Journal of Social Psychology 15:51–66.
Hogg, M.A. and J.C. Turner. (1987) “A Social identity and Conformity: A theory of referent informational influence.” In W. Doise and S. Moscovici, Eds. Current Issues in European Social Psychology vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Insko, C et al. 1992.: Individual-Group Discontinuity from the differing perspectives of Campbell's Realistic Theory and Tajfel and Turner Social Identity Theory.” Social Psychology Quarterly. 55(3): 272–291.
Kihlstrom, J.F. and N. Cantor. 1984. “Mental representations of the self.” In L. Berkowitz, Ed. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 1:.1–48. New York: Academic Press.
Kinder, D.R. & Sears D.O. 1981. “Prejudice and Politics: Symbolic racism versus Social threats to the Good Life.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 40: 414–431.
Kirk, George. 1964. A Short History of The Middle East. New York: Fredrick Praeger.
Kreidie, Lina. 1988. “Political Socialization in Lebanon.” MA Thesis. American University of Beirut.
Kreidie, Lina and K.R. Monroe. 2001. “The Psychological Dimensions & Ethnic Violence: The Lebanese Civil War.” Paper presented at The Annual Meeting of The International Society of Political Psychology. Cuernavaca, Mexico, July 2001.
Kupperman, J. 1991. Character. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson. 1999. Philosophy In The Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. Basic Books.
Langer, Lawrence. 1991. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory. New Haven: Yale U Press.
Lerner, Richard M. 1992. Final Solutions: Biology, Prejudice, and Genocide. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Lewis, Bernard. 2002. What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. New York: Oxford University Press.
Levine, L. 1980 “Reactions to opinion deviance in small groups.” In P.E. Paulus, Ed. Psychology of Group Influence. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Lijphart, Arend (1984). Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarianism and Consensus Government in 21 Countries. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Monroe, Kristen Renwick. 1996. The Heart of Altruism: Perceptions of a Common Humanity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Monroe, Kristen Renwick. 1994. “'But What Else Could I Do?' A Cognitive-Perceptual Theory of Ethical Political Behavior.” Political Psychology, 16,1:1–22.
Monroe, Kristen Renwick. 2001. “Moral Action and a Sense of Self: The Importance of Categorization for Moral Action.” The American Journal of Political Science. (July 2001) 45,3: 491–507.
Monroe, Kristen Renwick. 1991. The Economic Approach to Politics: A Critical Reassessment of the Theory of Rational Action. (editor). NY: HarperCollins.
Monroe, K.R., J. Haukiu and R. Vanvechten. 2000. “The Psychological Foundations of Identity Politics.” Annual Review of Political Science 3:419–47, Nelson Polsby, Editor. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews.
Moscovici, Serge. 1988. “Notes towards a description of Social Representations.” European Journal of Social Psychology 18: 111–150.
Oakes and Turner, 1980. Social Categorization and Intergroup Behavior. Does minimal Intergroup Discrimination Make Social Identity More Positive? European Journal of Social Psychology. 10: 295–301.
Patterson, M. and K.R. Monroe. 1998. “Narrative in Political Science.” Annual Review of Political Science 1, 1: 315–331. Nelson Polsby, Editor. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews.
Ringmar, Erik. 1996. Identity, Interest and Action: A cultural explanation of Sweden's Intervention in the Thirty Years War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Salibi, Kamal. 1965. The Modern History of Lebanon. London: WeidenField and Nicholson.
Sarbin, Theodore, and Karl Scheibe, Eds. 1983. Studies in Social Identity. New York: Praeger Publisher.
Sears, D. O. 1981. “Life Stage Effects on Attitude Change, Especially among the Elderly.” In S.B. Kiesler, J.N. Morgan & V.K. Oppenheimer (Eds.) Aging: Social Change.(pp 183–294) New York: Academic Press.
Sears, D. O. 1988. Symbolic Racism: In P.E. Katz & D. A. Taylor. (Eds.) Eliminating Racism: Profiles in Controversy (pp.31–52) New York: Plenum.
Sidanius, J. et al. 1993. “The Psychology of Group Conflict and the Dynamics oppression: A social dominance Perspective.” In Explorations in Political Psychology, Ed S Iyengar, W. McGuire, pp.183–219. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Sidanius J., Pratto f, Mitchell M. 1994. In-group Identification, Social Dominance Orientation, and differential intergroup social allocation. Journal Social Psychology, 134(2):15–67.
Serany, Gita. 1995. Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. London: Macmillan.
Speer, Albert. 1970. Inside the Third Reich. NY: Macmillan.
Tajfel, H. 1959 “Quantitative judgment in social perception.” British J of Psychology 50:16–19.
Tajfel, J. 1971 “Experiments in a vacuum.” In J. Israel and H. Tajfel, Eds. The Context of Social Psychology: A Critical Assessment. London: Academic Press.
Tajfel, H. And Turner, J. 1979. “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict.” In The Social Psychology Of Intergroup Relations. Edited by W.G. Austin and S. Worchel. Monterey, ca: Brooks/Cole.
Trianosky, George. 1986. “Supererogation, Wrongdoing, and Vice: On the Autonomy of Ethics of Virtue.” Journal of Philosophy. 83(1):26–40, Jan 1986.
Turner J. (1982) “Toward A Cognitive Redefinition of Social Group.” In H. Tajfel (Ed.) Social Identity and Intergroup Relations. pp.15–40. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Turner J.C. 1987. Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-Categorization Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, L. 1998. “Lectures on Religious Beliefs.” Vop Filos (5):122–134.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kreidie, L.H., Monroe, K.R. Psychological Boundaries and Ethnic Conflict: How Identity Constrained Choice and Worked to Turn Ordinary People into Perpetrators of Ethnic Violence During the Lebanese Civil War. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 16, 5–36 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016578210778
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016578210778