Things you might want to know about people who believe in pure evil

Psychologists have devised two new scales for assessing people's belief in pure evil and pure good - characteristics they say have important links with broader attitudes towards altruism and the use of violence. Russell Webster and Donald Saucier first demonstrated the validity and reliability of their scales with over two hundred undergrad students. The belief in pure evil questionnaire contains 22 items including "Some people are just pure evil" and "people who commit evil acts always mean to harm innocent people", each rated on a sliding 7-point scale of agreement. The belief in pure good questionnaire has 28 items including "There is such a thing as a truly selfless/altruistic person" and "selfless people help anyone in need, even their rivals." Scores on the two scales are entirely uncorrelated suggesting they are measuring distinct constructs. Scores were also stable over time, based on re-retesting a subsample of participants two months later. Belief in pure good, but not belief in evil, was associated with stronger religiosity. Most revealing is the other attitudes and beliefs that went hand in hand with high scoring on the two new measures. Tests with over 400 students found that a strong belief in pure evil went together with more support for the death penalty, for torture, preemptive state aggression, reactive state aggression (if the USA were threatened by Iran), and racial prejudice, alongside belief in a dangerous and vile world, less support for criminal reh...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Source Type: blogs