“It is difficult and perhaps impossible to understand any human phenomenon at the same time that one is condemning it. Setting aside one’s moral values, however risky that may be, is helpful when one attempts to understand the perpetrators of evil.”
In order to understand why an evil act occurs you need to be able to look at what is going on with the perpetrator. Situational factors, personality traits, state emotions, etc., all add to what could drive an individual to do an evil act. The take home message that we find at the very end of Baumeister’s Evil is that evil needs to be examined without assuming value or morality of the situation.
“But knowledge about evil ultimately can be fully useful only if it is used with the moral sense that had to be silenced for the sake of gaining knowledge”
This relates to how many women (and probably men too) don’t put full blame onto the person who sexually assaulted them. An example to explain this can be seen in an episode of Switched at Birth. While the show finished airing a few years ago the problem is still relevant and prevalent. The victim of rape can’t remember what actually happened and only has a few faded memories of the conversation leading up to the incident. She remembers being so drunk that she blacked out and so drunk that she could not have properly consented. But since her memory was not fully intact and he was also very drunk she considers possibilities like, ‘did I actually say no to him.’ She also doesn’t know what to trust since he was saying a different conversation happened than what she remembered in her faded memories. While everyone else saw a drunk girl getting taken advantage of, she saw a close and intimate friend whom she trusted who was also drunk. She saw a grey area rather than the hurt that was done onto her.
Women in some cases try to look at the situation of rape and sexual assault through a considerate basis. They look at what happened leading up that may have made a grey area. In other words, what was going in the perpetrators experience that made the act of evil occur? While they know that something wrong did happen, they don’t want to assume 100% blame to the perpetrator as while the action was 100% the perpetrators, influencing factors that make logical sense may have been at play. An influencing factor at play in situations like these may be that the perpetrator thought there was no way in which consent was not given, or they simply thought they had consent even though they didn’t. Situations like these do occur and while there is no ethical excuse behind this act of evil, these victims find themselves looking into the grey areas to explain the perpetrator’s decision.
To relate back to the second quote from the reading – these women set out to gain knowledge, and in doing so, they ignored the plain immorality of the situation and instead, turned of their sense of morality to look at the bigger picture. It is not just women as victims who recognize the grey area, men who think about preventing a sexual assault where they are the perpetrator recognize that they themselves have a grey area as to what is consensual.
Brockbank (2019) addressed a gap in the literature on how straight white men talk about how they understand sexual assault. Seven men were recruited through social media groups for the university. Ten questions were asked and discussed in an interview format. It was found that the men found that between consent and sexual assault, are actions, words, and behaviours that lead to a grey area in which they cannot see whether something is consent or sexual assault. Alcohol was thought to either be something that made the examination of these actions, words, and behaviours more difficult, either through the intention to make it more difficult, or unintentionally making it more difficult. The concept of mixed signals was also addressed as being in the grey area. The men noted that consent was difficult to define.
Potentially it is through the grey area perceived through both perpetrators and victims, that people acknowledge the harm done to the victim, but take away the moral judgement and seek for information of what happened in that grey area.
Overall, seeking knowledge by acknowledging the grey area shows an example of what Baumeister was aiming to tell people; in order to understand evil we must put aside our moral judgement and look at what is going on with the perpetrator.
Brockbank, M. (2019). The myth of the “grey area” in rape: fabricating ambiguity and deniability. Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence, 4(4).
Psychology of Evil Online Journal 
Hello Madison, I enjoyed your post this week! I think your choice of topic was very interesting, I didn’t fully understand what Baumeister meant when he said evil needs to be examined without assuming the value or morality of the situation. However, your example helped my understanding. I have never seen Switched at Birth but the way you described it perfectly relates to how many individuals don’t put full blame on the person who sexually assaulted them. I think the article you chose addresses gaps in the literature, specifically, on how straight white men talk and understand sexual assault, this was relevant to the topic and answered some questions for us. Overall, I’d like to hear your thoughts on Baumeister’s definition of evil in the final chapter, were you satisfied with this definition, did you notice anything new that we didn’t include in our class definition?
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I think if we are to look at evil as purely something social the definition he gave is quite sufficient in capturing most if not all instances of evil. I do think though that we should also be considering biological components like one of the other readings did so well while looking at empathy pathways.
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Hello Madison!
I completely agree with the view that evil needs to be examined by viewing it through the lens of both the victim and the perpetrator. It is scary how people can commit acts while intoxicated that can be interpreted as evil later. You have presented scenarios where the woman is second guessing herself because of her intoxicated state at the time of non-consensual sex. While I do understand that the perpetrators in these scenarios are men who may have taken advantage of women who were too drunk to say no or too drunk to remember saying no, I wonder how the culpability of the perpetrator may become doubtful if he was also black out drunk. In a case such as that, where neither party wanted to engage in intercourse while sober but ended up doing so while intoxicated, is that still sexual assault? If so, are both parties guilty? Who is evil in this situation? I apologise if this seems more relevant to legal studies than the psychology of evil but I was wondering what your thoughts are on this.
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hey! I really like your question as this is something I have wondered myself. My immediate response is that while most people assume men to be at fault in the woman is drunk if the man is also drunk and cannot consent I do not think he is at fault. Assuming that I go with my gut instinct, It would be logical to say then that neither person consented so neither is at fault. While the severity of trauma to both individuals should not be ignored, I do not think that that situation would have any part of it that is evil. I think some people might disagree with me though out of the pure need to have a bad situation have a blame to put on someone that is either evil or has done an evil act.
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Hello Madison. Really interesting take this week! In having evil acts be examined without any ideas of morality or value is easier said than done, which you showed perfectly in your example. I think that when someone is examining the situation, for instance a woman who was sexually assaulted in your example, it is easier to look at the morals of the person as it makes it seem less evil. It could be an accident or a misunderstanding perhaps, and this makes it easier for someone to handle the situation that they are in. I would like to hear your thoughts on how the victim of sexual assault could attempt to only examine the situation, and if you have any ideas? Thanks for your post!
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I know some people only look at the situation of the assault and do not consider any feelings of morality of the other individual simply because the person did not see the situation as assault. I think with the lack of understanding on what actually occurs might be when a person can perfectly look at it as just a situation. It might be then that if we looked at acts of evil as just situations taking place with no frame of reference, we would be able to look without morality. But as people living in a society, we have a lot of frames of references for evil acts built into our schemas already so this would be difficult.
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Hey Madison!
I really think the idea that in order to understand the concept of evil we must look at it from the eyes of the perpetrator; why did they do something like this, what was the motive, what were the outside factors? These questions certainly help in trying to quantify evil, especially when using Baumeister’s four themes, however do they help us to really understand it? If we have a concrete reason as to why it happened, do we still really understand? This is something I have struggled with this whole semester in trying to understand evil as I find that often a reason does not help my understanding as to how one person could do a thing so horrible, but I suppose this is one of the only ways for us to really put meaning to evil. The four cases that Baumeister puts forward allow us to classify the perpetrator’s evil, but do you think that they allow us to truly understand? Let me know!
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While I find that it helps me to understand most of the time, I see how for others it might not. Having the logic to one or few situations of evil may help us understand those situations, but without a broad understanding of a broad amount of situations of evil, we find ourselves thinking and thinking until we find a gap that either stumps us or unravels the whole thing. If that makes sense
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