On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society

by Dave Grossman

Remember that desensitization is a vital aspect of killing-empowerment techniques used in modern combat-training programs.

Unlike operant conditioning, in social learning it is not essential that the learner be directly reinforced in order for learning to take place. This means that you can learn behavior, and form attitudes and beliefs, by seeing a role model get rewarded for a behavior.

Men are recruited at a psychologically malleable age. They are distanced from their enemy psychologically, taught to hate and dehumanize. They are given the threat of authority, the absolution and pressure of groups. Even then they are resistant and have trouble killing. They shoot in the air; they find nonviolent tasks to occupy them. And so they still need to be conditioned. The conditioning is astoundingly effective, but there is a psychological price to pay.