cover image Evil: The Science Behind Humanity’s Dark Side

Evil: The Science Behind Humanity’s Dark Side

Julia Shaw. Abrams, $24 (320p) ISBN 978-1-4197-2949-2

This overview of various kinds of aberrant behavior grouped under the umbrella term evil is well backed up by the expertise of Shaw, a senior lecturer in criminology and psychology at University College London. Emphasizing that her approach is not philosophical or religious, Shaw eschews deep philosophizing for social and neuroscientific research to discover why people engage in transgressions against moral norms, including murder, bestiality, and inaction in the face of others’ transgressions. Her survey draws on the work of distinguished psychologists, including Stanley Milgram, known for his Yale study of obedience, and Elizabeth Loftus, who debunked the validity of recovered memories. Shaw is careful to state that her intent is therapeutic, not moralistic—to discuss “why we do terrible things to one another, not whether these things should happen or what the appropriate punishments for them are.” Arguing, like Friedrich Nietzsche, that what one calls “evil” is relative to individual experience and culture, she nevertheless finds keen things to say about the subject, notably in her explanation of the psychological concept of the “dark tetrad,” a cluster of personality traits associated with aggression, namely psychopathy, sadism, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. Shaw’s work will be particularly appropriate for college and high school libraries for its sober-minded, academically rigorous examination of an oft-sensationalized subject. (Mar.)