What is science?

Our core goal is the accurate description of causal relationships (this is hard!)

• A change in X produces a change in Y
  • E.g., wearing a seatbelt reduces the probability of dying in a car crash
  • E.g., dehumanizing attitudes cause mass killing(?)
• When X and Y merely move together without a causal link, this is a spurious correlation
  • E.g., ice cream sales and drowning deaths both rise in summer

What is a theory? What makes a good theory?

• Theory: A body of statements that systematize knowledge of, and explain, phenomena
  • Not just what happened, a theory is a story that explains how and why things are related
  • Example: People get wet when it rains because water falls from the sky and hits them
• Theories generate hypotheses: testable, falsifiable predictions that follow from the theory
  • “If my theory is correct, then I should expect to see A, B, and C in the world”
    • If it rains, people without umbrellas get wet
    • If people use umbrellas, they stay drier
    • If there is no rain, people don’t get wet
  • If we observe A, B, and C, the theory is supported, if we don’t, the theory needs revision
• Theories are never fully proven, only supported or undermined by accumulating evidence
• In social science, theories are usually probabilistic
  • X increases the likelihood of Y, not that X always produces Y

Logic and social science

Consider the claim: “Oversleeping makes you late to class”

• Oversleeping = the \(X\) or explanatory variable
• Lateness = the \(Y\) or outcome variable

Logic and social science

• Oversleepers are more likely to be late, but not always (probabilistic, not deterministic)
• Not all students who are late overslept (cannot reverse the logic)

Why this matters for studying mass killing

• Most major theories of genocide and mass killing identify factors that are very common
  • Social cleavages, dehumanization, national crises, authoritarian governments
• But mass killing is rare relative to how often those factors are present
• The key question is not: does X co-occur with mass killing?
• It’s: Does X reliably distinguish societies that experience mass killing from those that do not?

Social cleavages and dehumanization

• Deep ethnic, racial, religious, or class divisions may create conditions for genocide
• Polarization \(\rightarrow\) intergroup conflict \(\rightarrow\) erosion of moral obligations toward the out-group
  • Dehumanization: out-groups treated as animals or as inert (e.g., prisoner numbers)

Authoritarian personalities or obedience

Individuals as psychologically predisposed to commit atrocities. For example, “F-scale”:

• Rigid adherence to conventional values,
• Submissiveness to authority figures,
• Aggressiveness toward out-groups,
• Opposition to introspection and creativity, etc.

Your reactions to the authoritarian personality scale

Obedience, conformity, compliance

• Obedience: the change of an individual’s behavior to follow a demand by an authority figure

• Conformity: the change in a person’s behavior to go along with the group

  • Even if they not agree with the group

• Compliance: conforming to an implied or explicit request in public

  • Even if they disagree privately

Tests of compliance with authority

Arendt, the “banality of evil”: ordinary people can be evil because of unreflective compliance

• Milgram experiment: 65% of subjects administered what they believed were lethal shocks
• Asch experiment: subjects conformed to an obviously wrong group consensus
• Stanford prison experiment: “guards” rapidly adopted abusive behavior toward “prisoners”

What personality and obedience do and do not tell us

• Obedience, conformity, and situational pressure are real and powerful

• They help explain how ordinary individuals participate in mass killing once it is underway

• But they cannot explain why mass killing begins in the first place

• These mechanisms exist in virtually all societies

Valentino’s argument: “A few bad men”

• Mass killing does not always require widespread public support, only passivity

• A well armed, well organized minority can generate mass violence against unarmed victims

• Starts with leaders (political/military)

Evolution of policies and moving to mass killing

• Perpetrators seldom view mass killing as an end in itself

• They typically try less violent options first: removal, segregation, repression, etc.

• These preliminaries strategies are preferred because they may face less resistance

• Mass killing becomes attractive for:

  • Radical communization
    • Massive societal changes (communist policies like agricultural collectivization)
  • Counterguerrilla warfare
    • Guerrillas rely on civilians for support
    • Civilians are largely defenseless and easier to engage than guerrillas
  • Settler colonialism
    • Removal of populations to open land for settlement or resource extraction
  • Perceived existential threats (might be result of racism, nationalism, etc.)
    • Existential implies it can only be countered by removal
    • If expulsion cannot be achieved (people resist or there are too many)…

How to approach social science readings

• Do not be intimidated by unfamiliar methods/math
• Before you read the rest of the article, read the introduction and conclusion to get a roadmap
• Make sure you understand the argument and evidence
• If you still don’t understand, come to office hours!
• A variable is a characteristic that takes on different values
  • An outcome variable \(Y\) is one we want to explain
  • A explanatory variable \(X\) is one we believe accounts for change in the outcome
• Our goal: how is a change in \(X\) associated with a change in \(Y\)?
  • Does \(X\) make \(Y\) increase or decrease?
  • Does \(X\) make \(Y\) increase or decrease by a lot or a little?
  • Are there other variables that shape the relationship between \(X\) and \(Y\)?
• You will never be tested on math!

For Monday: displacement, disappearances,and torture

• Next week we turn to three more specific forms of state violence
  • Why might a regime displace a population instead of killing them?
  • How do disappearances work as a state strategy?
  • What is torture? What purposes does it serve?
  • Are these distinct from mass killing, or continuous with it?