Prejudice scales cannot measure readiness to participate in genocide.
Evidence
This is a crucial issue. Although some version of authoritarianism may under lie how the individual relates to the occurrence of ethnic persecution (and the construct is probably the most plausible candidate among currently known personality variables), mere prejudice is not the same as participation in, or even agreement with, genocide. Believing that society condones too many immoral lifestyles is not the same as wanting to kill those who practice such lifestyles; the fear that the health care system is heavily burdened by the pointless exten sion of the lives of comatose or hopelessly senile patients is not the same as advocating that they be murdered. The Nazi death camps were not some banal expression of aversion to Jews and other non-Aryans; they were the embodi ment of extreme evil (cf. Kressel, 1996). — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 460
Categorization
- XREF: Challenges the authoritarian personality tradition’s reach that chapter 68 established; also connects to Hannah Arendt’s banality-of-evil reading being implicitly rebutted. — connects to: Revised authoritarianism measures diluted the construct’s link to genocide. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 457; Prejudice is neither necessary nor sufficient for genocide — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 702; People without prejudice can still participate zealously in genocide (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- People without prejudice can still participate zealously in genocide
#corroborates(0.90) - Prejudice is neither necessary nor sufficient for genocide
#expands(0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 702 - Racism cannot be reduced to a scaled-up version of interpersonal prejudice
#expands(0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1387 - Prejudice research cannot be reduced to individual psychology
#expands(0.75) — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 737 - Prejudice is an interpretive concept lacking fixed definition
#qualifies(0.72) — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 45