This work investigates the psychological and social mechanisms that enable individuals and societies to participate in or permit acts of genocide. Editors Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber compile contributions from leading scholars in social psychology to analyze the cognitive processes, group dynamics, and situational factors that facilitate mass violence. The text moves beyond historical documentation to provide a framework for understanding how ordinary people can become perpetrators of extreme atrocities.

Experts recognize this volume as a foundational interdisciplinary text for students of social psychology and conflict studies. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which provides a rigorous examination of the human capacity for violence.