Science & Cocktails: Why do people kill?

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When we see the news we tend to distance ourselves from the perpetrators as well as the crimes and argue that they, the perpetrators must be very different from us ordinary normal human beings. We tend to believe that they must have a violent past, long criminal records or mental deficiencies otherwise they would not be able to do this. But: Is that really the case? Are perpetrators born to be violent and cruel? Or are they made that way? And if so: by whom, how and why? Or are they normal after all? ‘Terribly and terrifyingly normal’ as the famous philosopher Hannah Arendt suggested when, during the sixties, she witnessed the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the main organizers and executioners of the Holocaust. But if that were true: does that mean that we could all become perpetrators of mass atrocities?