Conflict Over the Consequences of Humiliation

In 2010, a provocative conference on the psychology of genocide was held at Clark University. I had hoped the conference would result in some agreement about the psychological dynamics involved in genocide and lay the groundwork for future collaboration in our community of peacebuilding psychologists. Instead, I found more disagreement than consensus. Often people talked past one another, and I began to realize that some of the clinical and social psychologists who attended had completely different understandings of the dynamics involved in violence. One example of this-a disagreement over the dynamics involved in humiliation and aggression-deserves particular attention.