Attribution: The Two Theories Of Genocide

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In the past two centuries, tens of millions of men, women, and children have been systematically murdered and tortured in acts of genocide and/or mass violence; having been raped, tortured, forced from their homes, striped of their identities, isolated from their friends, family and the rest of the world. The first known case of genocide, according to Ben Kiernan (2004), was the destruction of the Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War (149—146 BC), he labeled it as “The First Genocide”. Which is ironic because the term Genocide was not coined until the year 1943, by Raphael Lemkin; from the words genos—, which is Greek for family, tribe, or race, and –cide, which is Latin for killing (Stone, 2005). The most notorious acts of Genocide include: …show more content…

Attribution theory explains most of why we act the way we do because of our beliefs. There are two types of attribution : defensive attribution, which is the tendency to attribute our success to our own efforts (dispositional) and our allures to external factors (situation); and fundamental attribution error, which is the tendency people have to overemphasize personal causes for other people’s behaviors (dispositional) and underemphasize personal causes for their own behavior (dispositional) (..., ____). Relevant theories of attribution in regards to the question that we are attempting to answer includes: situational attribution, in which our actions are attributed to external or environmental factors; along with that includes stable, in which conditions are always present, and unstable attribution, in which conditions are not stable and may be occasional or …show more content…

Prejudice is an unwarranted and usually negative attitude toward a group (Brewer, 1999), stereotyping, a collection of ideas someone has about another individual or group that influences how they interact with them, can lead to prejudice (Feldman,1972). This also stems from ethnocentrism, which is the belief that one’s own culture is better than another’s’ (Brewer & Campbell, 1976), and the acting on one’s prejudice, is discrimination towards another group. Within discrimination people may act out with two types of aggressive behaviors: instrumental aggression, which is directed to secure some purpose or particular end, or hostile aggression, which has no clear