What Actually Is Evil? And What Makes People Carry Out Evil Acts?

Adolf Hitler speaking at the Kroll Opera House to Reichstag members about war in the Pacific, December 11, 1941 Source: On Wikimedia Commons / Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1987-0703-507 / Unbekannt / CC-BY-SA 3.0

From genocide to malware and everything in between, it’s easy to feel demoralized about the moral fiber and caring of our fellow humans. It can certainly seem that malice is endemic to humans. The default state, perhaps.

And yet, as the highly cited social psychology researcher Roy Baumeister noted in his seminal work Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty:1 "One starts a work like this wondering, ‘Why is there evil?’ But after reviewing what is known about the causes of aggression, violence, oppression, and other forms of evil, one is led to the opposite question: Why isn't there more evil than there is?"

For starters, Baumeister debunks the very notion of evil, “the myth of pure evil,” making the point that the factors driving people to do bad things to each other are highly complex. The notion of evil is a simplistic one. Nevertheless, for practical purposes, he uses the term in his analysis:2

"There are four major root causes of evil or reasons that people act in ways that others will perceive as evil. Ordinary, well-intentioned people may perform evil acts when under the influence of these factors, singly or in combination."

1. The simple desire for material gain
2. Threatened egotism
3. Idealism: "Noble ends are often seen as justifying violent means."2
4. The pursuit of sadistic pleasure: "only 5 or 6 percent of perpetrators actually get enjoyment out of inflicting harm."2

Why is “evil” not more prevalent than it is?

Bad people or bad actions?

A disproportionate amount of violence and crime in ordinary societies is perpetrated by the small minority of people with antisocial personality traits. And an even smaller percentage are psychopaths, at the extreme end of the spectrum of antisocial traits—the ones most likely to commit sadistic acts of violence.3

But aside from the disproportionate contribution of nasty personality types, a lot of other violence is simply committed impulsively rather than premeditated, and many of those kinds of perpetrators do actually feel regret or shame for their actions afterward. Human interpersonal violence is often carried out by people acting impulsively, fearfully, insecurely, passionately, vengefully, or misguidedly. A lot of this is reactive aggression. Only some violence is premeditated, calculated, or predatory (proactive aggression). And when violence and crime are committed by groups, there is also the huge factor of peer pressure and influence.4

So far, we have mostly been talking about “ordinary” violence and crime, not war or government tyranny.

People who do evil things generally don’t consider themselves evil

People often tend to minimize the harmful impact of what they are doing or rationalize their reasons (even if motivated primarily by the simple desire for material gain or by threatened egotism), often seeing their action as much less of a big deal than the impact experienced from the victim’s point of view, or feeling that the victim threatened or provoked them or deserved what was done to them. Baumeister suggests that while the victims’ motto is “Never forget,” the perpetrators’ motto is “Let bygones be bygones,”5

Evil villains in Hollywood movies aside, Baumeister notes that “most people who do evil do not think of themselves as doing evil […], most of them regard themselves as good people who are trying to defend themselves as the good guys fighting against the forces of evil. The world breaks down into us against them, and it almost invariably turns out that evil lies on the side of ‘them’”6 (referring here more to violence between groups, nations, ideologies, etc., than to individual criminal acts).

Even Hitler considered himself and the German people to be victims—principally of the Jews, whom (together with the leftists) he blamed for Germany’s defeat in the First World War and its subsequent crushing economic conditions and humiliation.7 He portrayed the Jews as a greedy amoral race living parasitically off the German people and set on destroying Germany. He viewed the Nazi persecution of, and subsequent mass murder of, the Jews as self-defense. An anxious man with a nervous digestive system, neurotic contamination obsessions, volatile temper, lack of formal education (not having completed his secondary schooling), and a strong tendency to externalize blame for his personal failures, Hitler was just the sort of person to believe and propagate bizarre paranoid conspiracy theories.8-12

[Note: This blog post is a bare-bones summary of a vast and complex topic. It warrants elaboration, which I’ve provided in the footnotes, with additional illuminating material, for readers who want to understand more about the motivations of evil-doers. The footnotes include, for example, quotes by Heinrich Himmler—a foremost architect of the Holocaust, explaining and justifying his own motivations.]

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Societal control and self-control

Baumeister states: "All told, the four root causes of evil are pervasive, which leads one to wonder why violence and oppression are not even more common than they are. The answer is that violent impulses are typically restrained by inner inhibitions; people exercise self-control to avoid lashing out at others every time they might feel like it."13 Violence is often the result of reduced self-control or a breakdown of societal control.14

Inhibitory control or self-control is largely a function of the frontal lobes of our brains (especially the prefrontal cortex). As the neuroscientist and biological anthropologist Robert Sapolsky pithily puts it: The frontal lobe helps us do the harder thing when it's the right thing to do.15

There is very wide variability in frontal lobe functioning across individuals—probably best described by a bell curve, like most traits. A great many people have relatively lower frontal cortical brain activity and consequently lower self-control (and, more generally, weaker executive functioning). The most common clinically defined “disorder” associated with these characteristics is ADHD.16 ADHD plays an outsized role in human aggressive and criminal behavior. A recent meta-analysis of the prevalence of ADHD in incarcerated populations found that compared with published general population prevalence, there is a fivefold increase in the prevalence of ADHD in youth prison populations (30.1 percent) and a 10-fold increase in adult prison populations (26.2 percent).17

Context, context, context

The biological and social-cultural determinants of human behavior are vastly complex, as Sapolsky lucidly demonstrates in Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst—his richly complex multilayered explanation of the many biological and cultural factors influencing human behavior including aggression. He repeats a cautionary statement several times throughout the book, whenever we might be tempted to conclude that we have arrived at a complete explanation and understanding of what makes humans do the things they do: “It’s complicated.” Genes and the environment interact inextricably, all the time. And he reminds us of the importance of “context, context, context,” in influencing the basic biological factors that underlie human behavior.18

How a person will behave is strongly influenced by genetic predisposition, past experience (especially early childhood experience), socio-economic and cultural factors, the presence of an intact society with prosocial norms, specific interpersonal dynamics between individuals, and the particularities of the immediate circumstances.

Innate tendencies and long-term trends

There is a larger philosophical debate about whether humans in their natural uncivilized state are innately “bad” or “good,” often referred to as “Hobbes” vs. “Rousseau” views. Sapolsky helps us see why, unsurprisingly, it’s “a mixture of both.”19, 20

Steven Pinker’s magisterial work, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,21 provided mountains of data demonstrating that violence has actually been substantially declining in the last few centuries. Among the very many factors contributing to this, a major one was the establishment of centralized societal control in the form of the state (initially religious and authoritarian, and later democratic in many countries). There has also been an increase in norms of (and possibly even capacity for) self-control in modern societies. Improving standards of living, literacy, education, employment, and health have of course all contributed hugely too. Economic interdependence, cosmopolitanism, the resultant expanding notion of within-group (“us”), and the generally increased ability of people to understand the points of view of others very different from themselves, have also contributed greatly. The empowerment of women has also been enormously influential.

The internet and social media have amplified both the best and worst aspects of human nature, increasing the availability of both high- and low-quality information, equalizing the ability of individuals and groups to disseminate information far and wide, breaking down traditional group boundaries while also fostering new “tribal” affiliations.22

In summary

People who do bad things often tend to believe that their actions are on the side of the good, or they rationalize that their actions are justified or not such a big deal. Biological and cultural evolution have conferred many brakes on violence and malice, and have favored cooperation and even compassion. In the long view of history, there has been an uneven but unmistakable trend toward less violence and more interdependent cooperation within and between human societies.

Being a victim of an evil act is utterly devastating, demoralizing, and disillusioning, and telling victims that evil is not as common as it seems does nothing to reduce their trauma. But it might help a little to know that the world is not a pervasively bad place, that most people are not innately “evil,” and that the world is steadily becoming a less violent place.23