Psychological Mechanisms of Oppression

AbstractThis chapter is concerned with explaining how our cognitive psychology equips us for oppression, that is, what psychological mechanisms we have that allow and motivate us to oppress or suffer oppression. It addresses the question: what psychological mechanisms account for our tendency to form social groups and to invidiously discriminate among those groups? It argues that there are two main types of material forces of oppression — violence and economic deprivation — and that oppression cannot survive without being enforced by at least one of these material ways of harming persons. Violence is separated from economic deprivation to illustrate how different cases of oppression involve different kinds of reinforcements and argue that they will require different strategies of resistance.