The chapter provides testimonies of individuals who took part in a genocidal process in order to understand how mass atrocities can take shape across different human societies. Through the analyses of interviews conducted with former genocide perpetrators in Rwanda and in Cambodia, it appears that many of them reported that they participated because they simply followed orders. It thus suggests that obedience to orders strongly influences individual actions during a war or a genocide. The chapter also highlights the key role of other forms of social influence, such as conformity to a group and compliance. However, the interviews reveal that complex additional factors have influenced former perpetrators in their actions, such as elements of coercion, the fear for one’s own life, and hateful propaganda. This chapter illuminatesthe many reasons that can lead a human to perpetrate evil acts.

Hierarchical situations are a complex example for determining individual responsibility, as typically a superior communicates a plan, and a subordinate executes it. Thus, the superior bears responsibility for the decision but is distanced from the outcomes, while the subordinate experiences authorship over the action but may not experience responsibility for its outcomes. This chapter focuses on how authority is wielded and how decisions are made by commanders in order to understanding the dynamics of obedience. By reviewing the claims made by some leaders of genocide, this chapters show that despite their high position in the hierarchical chain, they are frequently trying to reduce their responsibility for the atrocities conducted. Neuroscience research further showed that giving orders leads to a reduction of the sense of agency and moral emotions towards the pain of victims. These results show how hierarchical situations can allow people to commit actions that could transgress moral conducts, as agency and moral emotions are split across two individuals.

The “just following orders” argument has been used across many documented wars and genocides around the world. It suggests that the justifications given by perpetrators perhaps reflect, at least in part, a reality in their brains that would be shared across all the members of our species. The brain is a complex structure composed of trillions of neurons that controls our thoughts, our feelings, our decisions, our memory, our senses, and that regulates our body. Even though a wide range of environmental and social factors can modulate how our brains process information and computes decisions, the brain is nevertheless the central processing agent. By providing a novel perspective on what is happening in the brains of those obeying orders, I seek to reveal the mechanisms leading to immoral behaviors under obedience at a deep and individual level – that is, at the neural level. This knowledge can be used to develop personalized interventions that take into account unique neurobiological profiles.

This chapter focuses on the individuals who actively worked to protect and save members of targeted groups during genocides, often at great personal risk. By presenting sociological, psychological, and neuroscience research designed to understand better the profile of those who risked their lives to rescue strangers in times of war, this chapter asks what makes this small subset of the population react differently than others. By combining research and interviews with rescuers, the chapter shows that both individual processes and environmental factors contribute to risking one’s own life to rescue threatened human beings. People who engaged in rescue efforts during a particular event came from a range of different backgrounds, and no single factor can be reliably used to predict why they chose to help. Some rescuers were motivated by their religious or moral beliefs, while others were motivated by empathy or a desire to protect. The chapter also argues that even though rescuers are not numerous, they are nonetheless a living examples that another choice is possible, and that human beings may find the strength to overcome hateful propaganda. This raises hope of developing efficient interventions aimed at reducing susceptibility to blind obedience.

Humans have the ability to recognize that when they perform actions, they produce effects in the external world. Even though humans are not the only animalsl with this mental capacity, their ability to perform actions is accompanied by a feeling of authorship, a feeling that “I” am the one who did it. This is what academics have called the sense of agency. When individuals claim reduced responsibility because they were “only obeying orders”, this defense is often viewed with skepticism, because the defendant has a clear motive of avoiding punishment. However, scientific methods can now be used to investigate the experience of receiving orders and how it influences how the brain processes information. As this chapter shows, obeying orders impacts the sense of agency and the feeling of responsibility at the brain level. Further, working and living in some highly hierarchical and sometimes coercive social structures, such as the military, can also impact the sense of agency when people make decisions. It thus appears that hierarchies provide a powerful ground to obtain a reduced feeling of responsibility and agency in individuals.

When we witness another person experiencing pain, be it emotional or physical, we have an empathic reaction. And even if we commit a harmful action against another person, we most of the time experience guilt in the aftermath, which prevents us from performing the same action in the future. Guilt and empathy are critical moral emotions that together usually prevent us from harming others. However, as this chapter shows, systematic processes of classification and dehumanization at play before a genocide can alter moral emotions towards another part of the population. Activity in empathy-related brain regions is generally reduced towards individuals that we consider as outgroup or towards dehumanized individuals. Neuroscience studies have further shown that when obeying orders to hurt another person, neural activity in empathy- and guilt-related brain regions is reduced compared to acting freely. Such results show how obeying orders diminishes our aversion to harming others.

Recently, while listening to the radio, I have rediscovered a French song, “Né en 17 à Leidenstadt” (“Born in 17 in Leidenstadt”) by the singer and songwriter Jean-Jacques Goldman. I hadn’t heard this song since I was a child and, at that time, I certainly did not understand its meaning.

This chapter shows how human obedience is captured in an experimental setup, and how such research methodology can help us understand how people can comply with orders to hurt another person on a neurological level. By reviewing past experimental research, such as the rat decapitation study of Landis, the studies of Stanley Milgram on destructive obedience, and the Utrecht studies on obedience to non-ethical requests, this chapter shows that under certain circumstances, a majority of individuals could be coerced into inflicting physical or psychological harm on others at levels generally deemed unacceptable, even without any tangible social pressures such as military court or job loss. The chapter also describes a novel method where people can administer real painful electric shocks to someone else in exchange for a small monetary reward, and describes how such a method allows neuroscience investigations that would focus on the neural mechanisms associated with obedience.

Wars and genocides only bring desolation. Of course, we first think about the dramatic psychological consequences of those who survived extermination or those who have witnessed their families and friends being killed or mutilated. Psychological and neuroscience research have shown that surviving a psychological trauma leaves long-lasting imprints on individuals with notable life-long post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, which can also extend to the following generations. Importantly, the psychological disaster observed in the aftermath of a war or a genocide not only touches the victims, their relatives, or their descendants. It also has disastrous consequences on the mental health of the assailants. The chapter argues that in order to stop the cycle of conflicts, we must also understand how both victims and assailants are impacted at the psychological level by their respective experience, and how to help them overcome their demons and potential feelings of revenge. Taking care of their mental health is a step towards stopping cycles of conflict.

This chapter brings together all the previous ones. Based on the detailed presentation and analysis of the MRV requirements of so many different carbon pricing and management mechanisms – hereafter “carbon pricing mechanisms,” it synthesizes and compares how they answered to the five cross-cutting questions identified in the general introduction to the book:

1. • What are the MRV requirements?

2. • What are the costs for entities to meet these requirements?

3. • Is a flexible trade-off between requirements and costs allowed?

4. • Is requirements stringency adapted to the amount of emissions at stake (materiality)?

5. • What is the balance between comparability and information relevance?

MRV requirements across schemes

The first cross-cutting question – what are the MRV requirements? – is too large to be answered in a synthetic way. This section thus focuses on two components of this question that have a major impact on MRV costs: requirements pertaining to third-party verification and those pertaining to monitoring uncertainty.

Verification requirements are broadly similar across the board

Most carbon pricing mechanisms impose a verification of the reports by an independent third party. Verification requirements are broadly similar across carbon pricing mechanisms:

1. • the third party must be accredited by a regulator for GHG emissions audits and this accreditation tends to be sector-specific;

2. • the third party must assess whether the methods used and the reporting format comply with the relevant guidelines;

3. • the third party must assess the accuracy, i.e., the absence of bias, of the reported figures;

4. • the regulator is allowed to question the opinion of the auditor, but seldom does so;• the third party tends to be paid directly by the verified entity. Although this creates a potential conflict of interest, the risk of losing the accreditation is a much stronger incentive and keeps auditors from being complacent with their client (Cormier and Bellassen, 2013).