Looking for Evil in Everyday Life

May 23 -- There is evil in everyday life, says Michael Welner.

And Welner, a forensic psychiatrist and New York University professor who studies depraved behavior, is trying to develop a scale to measure just how evil regular life can be.

"Evil is not confined to the criminal realm," he said, arguing that some acts of evil aren't even against the law.

For instance, a boss who boosts his ego and gains stature by publicly humiliating his employees should be considered not just a tough guy to work for, but evil. Or a health-care worker who deliberately exploits the physical weakness of a patient is not just bad, but depraved.

"These are exceptional cases, but they do happen in everyday life," Welner said.

Welner is working to create criteria of what exactly constitutes everyday evil in hopes that the work will eventually help juries in civil cases decide when a defendant should be punished for "outrageous" actions. It could also help mental health professionals and ordinary individuals look out for warning signs of people capable of truly evil behavior, he says.

Ignoring or Intensifying the Harm

Welner unveiled his criteria this week. They include a set of 14 traits such as "creatively causing suffering," "exploiting physical, mental, emotional vulnerability," or "maximizing destruction of another, or property." The list also includes stalking and inspiring others to commit evil acts.

The common thread is that evildoers don't just commit bad acts. They choose to make their actions even worse by behaving sadistically and deliberately ignoring or intensifying the damage and suffering they cause.

"Of all of these 14 items, none of them happened by accident," Welner said. "There is much more of an element of intent."

Welner hopes to get public and professional feedback on his list to show there truly is a consensus on what constitutes everyday evil.

Most people's lapses into bad behavior don't qualify as evil, he believes. A normal person might exhibit some of Welner's criteria — "choices not to remedy another's suffering," for example. But it would be evil only in an extreme case, such as choosing not to help someone who had just been sexually assaulted.