Reflections from The Roads to Evil: Understanding Why People Commit Harmful Acts

Sven Granath started with offering a long-term perspective on the changing views of what is considered an evil act and how this relates to how common the commitment of evil or monstruous acts is. He defined an evil act as criminal deadly violence. Interesting is how our perception of the reasons behind and acceptance of deadly violence has changed. Whereas in the Middle Ages uncontrolled behaviour with deadly outcomes was more accepted, the growth of institutions and societal importance of self-control has led to lower numbers of murders over time.

Granath argued that this change is related to wider societal developments that influence deadly violence, with a key role for institutional developments that come with specific behavioural expectations and social rules. He used the Nobel prize dinner as an extreme example of a highly regulated and civilised context in which any type of violence is unthinkable. Simultaneously, he drew attention to shared peculiarities between Medieval violence and modern-day gang violence, such as pragmatic methods of violence, the commitment of violence in public spaces and the role of honor.

” The number of murders is not only related to how many ´monsters´ there are in society but also to social behaviours and the context in which the violence occurs” explains Granath. ”To commit murder there are requirements that need to be fulfilled” Granath continues. “These are a motivated killer, the right moment and a lack of self-control.” Granath concludes with a question: what we consider monstruous acts in society changes over time, but why are some people more likely to commit such acts than others?

The latter connects to Katarina Howner’s talk about a group of individuals who are more likely to commit evil acts: people who lack empathy, for example psychopaths. A lack of empathy often occurs together with other types of problematic behaviour such as manipulation, impulsivity and a lack of guilt. Different types of empathy develop at different ages and it is important to understand which type of empathy is lacking to understand individual problems and behaviours.

However, not all people who lack empathy commit violent crimes and not all people who commit deadly violence lack empathy. Some who lack empathy can be called successful psychopaths, like the main character in the movie “Wolf of Wall Street”. Often, they have good interpersonal skills, are charming and have good self-control. These people are often never caught for their crimes, but tend to commit ´white collar´ crimes. On the other hand, unsuccessful psychopaths display more problematic behaviour, lack impulse control and are have a strong temperament. They are more likely to be caught for their crimes. Compared to the Hollywood image of psychopaths as serial killers reality is thus much more nuanced and above all much more varied. Moreover, a person can have a strong sense of empathy for their own group and none for ´outsiders´. Lastly, Howner emphasises that there are different reasons behind violence. The commitment of violence depends on personality, empathy and personal reasons as well as the specific situation in which the crimes are committed, echoing Sven Granath.

The last speaker, Torsten Pettersson, formed a bridge between the societal perspective of Granath and the individual approach of Howner by looking at how society has tried to explain the monstruous acts committed by Adolf Hitler. Pettersson argued that the explanations we have for Hitler’s crimes depends very much on the time itself, ranging from “Hitler was born evil” to Hitler’s behaviour being “a response to childhood trauma” or him being “an opportunist taking advantages of the specific historical circumstances in Germany”.

The heavy topic of the symposium is concluded with a discussion and positive end notes on how we could make the world a better place – ranging from waking up with good intentions to more support for schools and children to expose them to culture and literature to nurture empathy. But it should be kept in mind that what we consider evil nowadays is also very much a judgement about other people and their behaviour and we need to remain careful about calling people evil, because after all we are all products of our time.

Filmo Verhagen, Project Coordinator, Circus