Structural factors alone can produce violence without prior animosity

Evidence

Other researchers have demonstrated that, contrary to Allport’s argument, violence does not require a history of animosity at either the group or individual level. Weingast (1997) has shown that social groups can become poised for armed conflict, even when they have a history of good relations and a preference for peace, if political institutions fail to safeguard each group’s interests and mutual trust is undermined. At the individual level, experimental research has shown that organizational factors alone transform ordinary people with no personal pathologies or prior hostility into demons who torture and punish their victims for minor infractions or for no reason at all (e.g., Milgram, 1974; Zimbardo, 2004). Such organizational factors include instructions that permit or legitimize the use of violence, a chain of command that relieves perpetrators of responsibility for their acts, the assignment of anonymous identities to perpetrators, and granting pervasive powers to perpetrators without threat of retaliation or sanctions. Experimental results were validated by the revelations in 2004 of widespread torture, abuse, and humiliation of detainees in Iraqi prisons under the supervision of ordinary young American men and women during the American occupation of Iraq. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 655 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Group conflict is not an inevitable outcome of structural inequality. For this reason, study of the social-psychological processes through which conflict emerges is needed. In particular, empirical study of the role of group conflict in racial attitudes and ideology requires a specification of the attitudinal forms that group conflict motives assume. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3360 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Group violence arises from interacting cultural, situational, and motivational influences, not single causes — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 174; Structural exclusion that hides its own mechanisms constitutes violence — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1741; Family abuse is common but not necessary for later violent extremist intent — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America:…, 306 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Group violence can erupt without any prior history of animosity #corroborates (0.97) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 655
• Structural inequality does not inevitably produce group conflict #complicates (0.85) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3360