Table of Contents

Miller, Introduction and Overview. Part 1: Conceptual Perspectives on Good and Evil. Zimbardo, A Situationist Perspective on the Psychology of Evil: Understanding How Good People are Transformed into Perpetrators. Staub, Basic Human Needs, Altruism, and Aggression. Baumeister, Vohs, Four Roots of Evil. Duntley, Buss, The Evolution of Evil. Part 2: Harming Others: Contexts, Causes, and Implications. Fiske, What's in a Category? Responsibility, Intent, and the Avoidability of Bias against Outgroups. Dovidio, Gaertner, Nier, Kawakami, Hodson, Contemporary Racial Bias: When Good People Do Bad Things. Anderson, Carnagey, Violent Evil and the General Aggression Model. Miller, What Can the Milgram Obedience Experiments Tell us about the Holocaust?: Generalizing from the Social Psychology Laboratory. Muehlenhard, Peterson, Conceptualizing Sexual Violence: Socially Acceptable Coercion and Other Controversies. Part 3: The Self-Concept in Relation to Good and Evil Acts. Crocker, Lee, Park, The Pursuit of Self-Esteem: Implications for Good and Evil. DePaulo, The Many Faces of Lies. Tangney, Stuewig, A Moral-Emotional Perspective on Evil Persons and Evil Deeds. Part 4: The Possibilities for Kindness. Batson, Ahmad, Stocks, Benefits and Liabilities of Empathy-Induced Altruism. Eisenberg, Valiente, Champion, Empathy-Related Responding: Moral, Social, and Socialization Correlates. Wills, Resko, Social Support and Behaviour toward Others: Some Paradoxes and Some Directions. Snyder, Omoto, Lindsay, Sacrificing Time and Effort for the Good of Others: The Benefits and Costs of Volunteerism. Aronson, Reducing Hostility and Building Compassion: Lessons from the Jigsaw Classroom.

About the Author

Arthur G. Miller, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He received his doctorate in social psychology from Indiana University in 1967 and spent 1979-1980 at Princeton University on a National Institute of Mental Health Fellowship, studying with Ned Jones. Dr. Miller's primary teaching and research interests include stereotyping and stigma, biases in attribution and social judgement, and judgmental reactions to diverse explanations of evil and violence.

Reviews

This volume tackles one of the most profound issues of human life - why people engage both in behavior that is extraordinarily harmful to others and behavior that is extraordinarily beneficial. Chapters shed light on this issue from a wide range of perspectives, resulting in an extremely thought-provoking work. A useful text for advanced undergraduate- or graduate-level students, the book might even inspire social psychologists to organize new seminars around this topic. - Alice H. Eagly, Northwestern University

Why do people sometimes engage in unimaginable brutality? Why at other times do they go out of their way to provide crucial assistance to others - even at great cost to themselves? And what could be more important questions for social scientists to address? The essays in this book will not definitively resolve these issues, but they will certainly change the way you think about them. I don't know of any better review of research on the nature of good and evil - in fact, it's hard to imagine one. - Leonard S. Newman, University of Illinois at Chicago