Hi readers!
Well, we’ve made it to the last post of the semester! First and foremost, I wanted to thank you for riding with me on this journey of exploring evil. It’s been a pleasure.
Our last assigned reading of the course was Chapter 12 of Roy Baumeister’s book, titled “Why is There Evil?” Great question, Roy! In this chapter, Baumeister explains that evil does not occur in a vacuum, it is a product of social circumstances that happen between people. He then walks us through the 4 root causes of evil: the desire for material gain, the threatened egotism, idealism, and the pursuit of sadistic pleasure. Baumeister also touched on the longstanding debate between nature vs. nurture, and said that it is an interaction of both. Evil roots itself both in human nature and human socialization. He finishes by discussing how hard it is to understand evil, and how mind boggling it is that ordinary people can commit such heinous crimes, all over the world (Baumeister, 1997).
Honestly, I wish we had gotten a chance to talk about these four cornerstones of evil before our classes got cancelled. I think the class would’ve had a fantastic time trying to classify evil acts into those four categories.
Roy Baumeister also touched on the topic of magnitude and banality. He prefaced that a lot of evil acts are not committed by people who are stereotypically evil, and that we are often very surprised by the person who does evil things (Baumeister, 1997). I think we learned this a couple weeks ago during a presentation about the Blue Code of Silence, where police officers cover up their crimes. I think that’s the epitome of surprise evil, because cops are supposed to protect society.
This idea of being surprised by the commission of evil reminded me of one of my podcast episodes that I listened to recently, Crime Junkie. The episode covered the Laci Peterson case, which is the epitome of “I can’t believe the husband did it!” In a nutshell, this young couple that seemed so in love and who were about to have a baby wound up with the wife, Laci, dead and the husband, Scott, in jail for her murder. During the episode, they played voicemails of Scott telling Laci how much he loved her, on top of a lot of testimonials from family that speak to how much Scott and Laci loved each other. Scott was an upstanding citizen, who was preparing to be a dad, or so everyone thought. After further investigation, it is revealed that Scott was having an affair and that he can’t really speak to where he was while Laci was being murdered. I think they paint the perfect picture of the happy couple that ended up in a completely different situation (Flowers & Prawat, 2017).
I looked into some research on men who kill their wives. The literature says that a majority of men justified their violence towards their wives by claiming that their wives did not meet the expectation of “a good wife”, or because their wives were disobedient. The consensus among the perpetrators was that their partners were to blame for their abuse (Dobash & Dobash, 2011). In addition to this, murderers often present themselves as reasonable people who were just pushed to their limits by their “unreasonable” wives (Dobash & Dobash, 2011). To circle back to one of the four root causes of evil, this sounds a lot to me like threatened egotism, where the perpetrator had their confidence threatened and reacted in an evil way, which I believe happened in Scott and Laci’s marriage (Baumeister, 1997). I don’t think that any of the other root causes suited Scott, but what do you think?
To recap, in Baumeister’s chapter, he touched on the fact that many of us are unable to predict who commits evil acts and are shocked when someone that seems ordinary commits a crime (Baumeister, 1997). I thought that the case of Laci and Scott Peterson really illustrated this, as Scott was the last person that people in his life thought would commit a crime, let alone kill his wife. In looking at the research, I learned that the wives are often blamed for their murder in situations of intimate partner violence (Dobash & Dobash, 2011), which related to one of the four roots of evil: threatened egotism.
I’m curious to know, which root of evil do you think is the most evil? Which one do you think is the most justifiable? What is one instance of evil that really shocked you?
References
Baumeister, R. (1997). Evil: Inside human cruelty and violence. New York, NY: W.H. Freemand and Company
Dobash, E. R. & Dobash, R. P. (2011). What were they thinking? Men who murder an intimate partner. Violence Against Women, 17(1), 111-134.
Flowers, A., & Prawat, B. (Producer). (2020, February 17). Crime Junkie [Audio podcast]. https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-laci-peterson/
Jessica's Evil Psychology 
Hey Jessica! Really good post this week. In one of my earlier blog posts, I did a similar case as you did about a husband killing his wife (but he also killed his 2 children). This is one case that struck me as incredibly evil. His name was Chris Watts and after he was caught having an affair, his wife threatened to leave him. He killed his 2 daughters after he killed their mother because they were asking too many questions about their mom. This really shocked me as it seemed so far removed from anything I could have thought would happen. Having said this, I think the most evil root is sadism. I think this because although it occurs in the smallest amount of cases, it can also cause the most pain and terrifying cases. This is due to the fact that they derive pleasure from committing these acts, and they do not do it for some other meaning. This would make the root of evil in which one commits negative actions for material gain as the least evil in some circumstances. If an individual is needing material goods for a certain reason, such as becuase they are homeless or they are trying to aid someone else, this can be seen as justifiable. Sadism, on the other hand cannot.
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Hi Jessica,
You’ve asked some interesting questions. In my opinion, pursuit of sadistic pleasure seems the most evil to me. This person enjoys harming people and intends to do harm. This fits almost perfectly and clear cut under the definition of evil because it has the intention to harm and there’s a victim. I think this is also the creepiest intention because not many people want to cause harm. I feel like there’s more unknowns in this because normal people don’t understand sadistic pleasure. I think this is where psychopaths lie, and it’s difficult for us to relate to them. In terms of the least evil, I think that idealism is the least evil reason to be evil. These people usually genuinely believe they’re doing the right thing and don’t see the harm they’re causing. I feel like this is more understandable because the average person could easily fall into this situation and be blind to all the negative things. I guess the intention is more positive, it’s more familiar to what a normal person would do, so I think it’s less evil. What do you think is the least/most evil reason?
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Hi Terri! I agree with you that I think idealism is probably the most understandable. It can spark evil acts, but at least there is some sort of reason and motivation for committing the act and this makes it a little easier to understand. I definitely think that the sadistic pleasure root is the most evil, because I think that it doesn’t really serve a purpose other than to obtain pleasure from someone’s pain. Personally, I think the “threatened ego” root is the most inexcusable. There are so many other ways to handle conflict, but clearly there is a delusion going on.
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Hi Jessica,
I agree that threatened egosim is definitely a major cause of domestic violence, however, I believe that idealism (in a potentially modified form) is also a cause of domestic violence and may have contributed to Scott’s decision to kill his wife, Laci. You mentioned that Scott was an “upstanding citizen”: to me, it sounds like he had idealistic, traditional values that may have influenced his cognitions when he had his ego threatened. For instance, if he valued traditional masculinity, stereotypical gender roles, obedience to authority, and projecting a social image to others that reflected these ideals, he may have been more likely to be more personally affected by a blow to his ego and responded with violence. Furthermore, these values may stem from political (i.e. Republican, conservative) or religious ideologies, thus reflecting the contributions of idealism as a root cause of evil. In my opinion, most cases of evil aren’t caused by one lone root cause of evil: they result from a combination of factors. What do you think?
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Hi Jess,
Good points about people being ‘surprised’ by evil actions. I think this is a fairly common belief when people close to the perpetrator find out about their evil actions. This was even present in previous week’s readings when Zimbardo talked about how families and previous coworkers of Abu Ghraib guards talked about how they couldn’t believe they had committed such horrible acts because they were nice people. I agree with you that domestic violence often falls into the category of threatened egotism, but I also think often it could be a case of material gain. Whether that gain be life insurance, a new family, or something else the perpetrator gets as a result of abusing or killing their partner. Do you think Scott could have been motivated to kill his wife because he wanted to be with the person he was having an affair with? Also, do you think that these people intentionally put on a show of being ‘upstanding citizens’ or do you think that it’s more often a case of someone who is actually a good person being driven to commit an evil act in the moment?
Let me know your thoughts!
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Really interesting thoughts!
I think often we want there to be defined physical char sa characteristics of an evil person, so we know exactly what they look like. But as you said, we’re always shocked when we find out that the nice looking guy from down the street, who works a 9-5 job and does his groceries – also killed his wife.
Regarding your question about which of the four roots is most evil, I think it would be sadistic pleasure. Granted, each of the roots obviously results in evil, whether that be murder or otherwise. But I think the ambiguity of our lack of understanding as to why someone could enjoy murder or the like perpetuates the pleasure root to being more evil. We can understand crimes of passion, threatening, traditions – but it’s hard for normal people to understand how someone could enjoy and derive pleasure from such horrible, evil acts.
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Hi Jessica!
In the case of Scott and Laci, I certainly agree that threatened egotism was at hand, but I also think that idealism may have played a part as well. Perhaps he had ideals of how his wife should be and ideals of the perfect marriage, which would have been ruined by him having an affair. I agree with you that it is hard to fully comprehend the reasons why an individual would kill someone who they were so close with, especially given the fact that everyone around him seemed to think that he was a good guy.
In terms of the more evil of the four, I definitely think that it is sadism. I believe this because while yes, material gain, threatened egotism and idealism are all evil, they still seem to have an explanation that seems plausible. In this, I am not negating the fact that sadism makes sense, but rather I am trying to say that in my opinion it is the least understandable. I think that the idea of someone committing an evil act for their own personal pleasure is very hard for me to understand, and I would rank this as the most evil, followed by threatened egotism, then idealism and then material gain as the least evil. Do you agree with this? Or did you have a different order in your head? Let me know!
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Hi Emily! I think you brought up an interesting point in relating idealism to Scott and Laci. Perhaps, he thought his ideal life was with Amber (his mistress) and he wanted to remove divorce from the picture, so killing Laci was a way to get to his ideal situation. I never thought of it that way, perhaps it was a mixture of that and threatened ego. If I had to rate the root causes of evil from mild to worst, I would rate them idealism, material gain, threatened ego and then sadistic pleasure. It’s also quite possible that there was an aspect of material gain in this situation too, where Scott thought he could profit off of Laci’s life insurance or maybe not having his child was a gain for him.
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I think the case of Scott did relate to egotism. One reason I agree with you is because from a reading in another course, men turning violent on women who are their partners for not being what society expects a woman to be for a man is related to prejudice. It is related to prejudice in that is comparable to men acting violently on gay or lesbian individuals for not fitting the “correct way of loving”. Violence against women and gay or lesbian individuals for not loving correctly as these men put it is not only prejudiced, but also used as a legal excuse for violence in some places and up until a short while ago, was used this way in many places. In short, I think a lot goes into play in the case of Scott that contributes to the ego that he had. I think this has to do with the strong influence of the idea of love and how society says love should be. What do you think?
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Hi Jessica! Great post this week, I really liked your example of Laci Peterson. I am familiar with this case and it is also is still surprising to me that Scott killed her, and so I can only imagine how those around them felt when they learned about it. As for what motivation I think is the most evil, I agree with some of the other commenters, that sadistic pleasure is the worst. To me, I can see the logic behind the other motivations and somewhat understand why these people were moved to do what they do. Like with idealism, the individual becomes so devoted to cause, whether that be through manipulation or indoctrination since birth, that they override any thoughts of harming others in order to further the cause etc..Threatened egotism is also slightly more justifiable too, as a lot of research has examined this and it makes somewhat sense to people. When people’s ego and sense of self is threatened, they will whatever possible to maintain or restore it. In the case of sadistic pleasure, that person is completely ignoring another person’s autonomy and rights, to fulfill their own desires. Sadistic pleasure is usually intentional to, whereas the other motivations are not always. A person harming another for their own pleasure is intentionally choosing to do that, and I can’t think of an example where it would be an accident. Great questions and thanks for sharing!
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