AbstractsPsychology

Abstract

The past century was marked by unparalleled human cruelty, and has been dubbed "The Century of Genocide". The Rwandan genocide has become a touchstone for debates about the causes of mass violence and the responsibilities of the international community. Yet many of the widely held beliefs about the causes and course of the genocide remain incomplete. Social psychology is one of the few disciplines that have the potential to help us understand how ordinary people participate in genocide. The central aim of this thesis is to evaluate whether the two psychological theories of Staub and Waller contribute to an increased understanding of how ordinary people in Rwanda became perpetrators of genocide in 1994. Both the literature on the Rwandan genocide and my empirical analysis suggest that many of the psychological mechanisms introduced by Staub and Waller took on significant importance during the Rwandan genocide.