| Popis: |
Chapter 3 explores issues in the application of the traditional methods of psychological science to understanding the Holocaust. Three such issues are (a) What is the nature of available “data” in studying the Holocaust? (b) Can contemporary laboratory research inform our understanding of the Holocaust? (c) Can we reconcile the exculpatory implications of a deterministic analysis with our moral assessment of the Holocaust? Psychologists accustomed to exerting considerable control over the data they produce and study confront considerable challenges in the use of historical data. Laboratory research, while potentially relevant to the Holocaust, similarly presents considerable challenges in assessing the generalizability of such findings to temporally and culturally distant events. Insofar as psychological explanations are framed in the vernacular of social science, the risk of such explanations being seen as inappropriately exculpatory cannot be avoided. |
