[THS] Scientific American: John Horgan: Why Soldiers Get A Kick Out Of Killing

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25331.htm


Nature or Nurture?

Why Soldiers Get A Kick Out Of Killing

By John Horgan

April 27, 2010 "Scientific American" - April 23, 2010 -- 
Do some soldiers enjoy killing?
  If so, why? This question is thrust upon us by the recently released video of U.S.
Apache helicopter pilots shooting a Reuters cameraman and his driver in Baghdad in
2007. Mistaking the camera of the Reuters reporter for a weapon, the pilots machine-
gunned the reporter and driver and other nearby people.

The most chilling aspect of the video, which was made public by Wikileaks, is the
chatter between two pilots, whose names have not been released. As Elizabeth
Bumiller of The New York Times put it, the soldiers "revel in their kill." "Look at those
dead bastards," one pilot says. "Nice," the other replies.

The exchange reminds me of a Times story from March 2003, during the U.S.
invasion of Baghdad. The reporter quotes Sgt. Eric Schrumpf, a Marine
sharpshooter, saying, "We had a great day. We killed a lot of people." Noting that his
troop killed an Iraqi woman standing near a militant, Schrumpf adds, "I'm sorry, but
the chick was in the way."

Does the apparent satisfaction—call it the Schrumpf effect—that some soldiers take in
killing stem primarily from nature or nurture? Nature, claims Richard Wrangham, an
anthropologist at Harvard University and an authority on chimpanzees. Wrangham
asserts that natural selection embedded in both male humans and chimpanzees—our
closest genetic relatives—an innate propensity for "intergroup coalitionary killing"
[pdf], in which members of one group attack members of a rival group. Male
humans "enjoy the opportunity" to kill others, Wrangham says, especially if they run
little risk of being killed themselves.

Several years ago, geneticists at Victoria University in New Zealand linked violent male
aggression to a variant of a gene that encodes for the enzyme monoamine oxidase A,
which regulates the function of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin.
According to the researchers, the so-called "warrior gene" is carried by 56 percent of
Maori men, who are renowned for being "fearless warriors," and only 34 percent of
Caucasian males.

But studies of World War II veterans suggest that very few men are innately
bellicose. The psychiatrists Roy Swank and Walter Marchand found that 98 percent of
soldiers who endured 60 days of continuous combat suffered psychiatric symptoms,
either temporary or permanent. The two out of 100 soldiers who seemed unscathed
by prolonged combat displayed "aggressive psychopathic personalities," the
psychiatrists reported. In other words, combat didn't drive these men crazy because
they were crazy to begin with.

Surveys of WWII infantrymen carried out by U.S. Army Brig. Gen. S.L.A. Marshall
found that only 15 to 20 percent had fired their weapons in combat, even when
ordered to do so. Marshall concluded that most soldiers avoid firing at the enemy
because they fear killing as well as being killed. "The average and healthy individual,"
Marshall contended in his postwar book Men Against Fire, "has such an inner and
usually unrealized resistance towards killing a fellow man that he will not of his own
volition take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility
At the vital point
he becomes a conscientious objector."

Critics have challenged Marshall's claims, but the U.S. military took them so seriously
that it revamped its training to boost firing rates in subsequent wars, according to
Dave Grossman, a former U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and professor of psychology
at West Point. In his 1995 book On Killing, Grossman argues that Marshall's results
have been corroborated by reports from World War I, the American Civil War, the
Napoleonic wars and other conflicts. "The singular lack of enthusiasm for killing one's
fellow man has existed throughout military history," Grossman asserts.

The reluctance of ordinary men to kill can be overcome by intensified training, direct
commands from officers, long-range weapons and propaganda that glorifies the
soldier's cause and dehumanizes the enemy. "With the proper conditioning and the
proper circumstances, it appears that almost anyone can and will kill," Grossman
writes. Many soldiers who kill enemies in battle are initially exhilarated, Grossman
says, but later they often feel profound revulsion and remorse, which may transmute
into post-traumatic stress disorder and other ailments. Indeed, Grossman believes
that the troubles experienced by many combat veterans are evidence of a "powerful,
innate human resistance toward killing one's own species."

In other words, the Schrumpf effect is usually a product less of nature than of
nurture—although "nurture" is an odd term for training that turns ordinary young
men into enthusiastic killers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Horgan, a former Scientific American staff writer, directs the Center for Science
Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology. (Photo courtesy of Skye Horgan.)